I bought our first one off of ebay too, then bought an extended warranty through square trade.
1 - square trade cancelled the warranty and gave me the $$ back b/c it had been refurbished with a fan to fix the overheating problem
2 - I called to register it for xbox online and gave them the serial number, Microsoft gave me all kinds of problems b/c it had already been registered by the original owner and I didn't know their name/address/info, etc.
3 - we got the RROD in November, 2009 - called Microsoft and guess what? The machine was purchased by the original owner in September of 2006 -- so the 3 year warranty was up!!
They wanted $100 to fix it, I messed around with craigslist trying to set up something local to get someone to fix it - forget it, way too much hassle!
The arcade systems are $200 all day long, and I bought when I could get $40 back from walmart.com from bing.
So for $160 we got a new arcarde system which came with another controller ($40 value right there), no loud fan, and just took the hard drive from the old machine and put it into the new one. Much better solution for us, especially right before Christmas (of course I had bought a ton of xbox 360 games already for the boys for gifts).
We gave the old machine to my DS14's friend who couldn't afford to buy a new machine, he registered it in his name and sent it in to Microsoft with the $100 to fix it. He got it back in 2 weeks and is as happy as a clam with it!
