The recent announcement that Microsoft were recalling 14.1 million Xbox power cables because of a slight risk of setting alight and destroying everything you own was met with mirth by some. One of my Xboxes was affected but I wasn’t too worried considering that cable had been plugged in for the best part of three years and had powered two Xboxes without once killing anyone, but I sent off for the replacement anyway. Better to be safe than sorry, right?

On Saturday I got home from work around lunchtime to find a package had arrived with “Xbox Protection Cable” slapped on the side – no great surprise that it was the new Xbox cable. I was faily impressed with what was in the box – a cable with it’s own dedicated surge protector and buttons to test and reset it. For all their elaborate new cables though, Microsoft apparently couldn’t tell which plug the UK used. Some idiot sent me one with a European plug.

I could have understood the blunder had the package come from wage slaves in the Far East, but this had been packaged, labelled, and sent by someone within the UK to a UK address with a non-UK plug. How exactly does someone not notice this when it’s sent out? I called Microsoft and was informed, from a French call centre no less (I thought the point of outsourcing call centres was to send them to places where people would work for nothing), that I was one of many calling in with the same problem and that I’d now have to wait 4-6 weeks for a replacement to make its way to me.

Just when they thought having to put that a falling Xbox could kill small children in the manual wasn’t embarrassing enough, we find out that they can burn you alive. Then they taunt you with the fact that you’re powerless against your Xbox’s malignity by giving you a weapon that is useless to fight it.

My tinfoil hat tells me that it’s all part of Microsoft’s plan to enslave the people of world under the mastery of their home appliances. You may already know too much…