Ebay seller has a $60 fix (+shipping) for your dead 360?

Amidst Demo's broken 360 fiasco, he decided to take a look on ebay at it's on-going collection of "broken 360"'s and "360 red lights". A couple of sellers are offering to repair the 3-red-lights problem for about $80 (shipped). That one is in Utah (where we are) and the other is in Georgia.
Shipping isn't even necessary for locals to northern Utah or London, Ohio:

You don't have to ship your Xbox, you can just drop by and it will be done in less than 1 hour. I'm located in Spanish Fork, Utah. If you are located in or near London, OHIO you can also stop by and we can take care of you as well. If you need to ship your Xbox email me and we will work out a discount.

Much better than $140 and dealing with Microsoft, eh? If the console is deemed unrepairable, they will refund the amount minus any shipping charges. For those who have given up on pressing into Microsoft's anti-customer service for resolve, this seems to be a viable option.

What really disturbs me, is apparently a non-Microsoft technician knows how to repair this problem, but I've never seen instructions about it on the internet. Stop being stingy and share with us. I realize there is profit to be made by not releasing the repair information, but at the same time, not everyone will be willing to attempt the repair.

Anyone got the sleuthing powers to find out the "repair trick"? I'm not talking about banging on the console, plugging into a UPS, or whatever other layman temp-fixes have been shared to date. I'm talking about the actual hardware that needs to be replaced/repaired. If you find anything, let me know, and/or the major blog sites so we can share this valuable information.

What I've found:

• The GPU may be overheating and needs new thermal paste


• There may be a bad connection/solder joint, so a heat gun may help things settle properly

For those who are brave, 360 disassembly instructions can be found here. Not recommended if you still have a warranty because this will instantly void it. Actually, I bet taking your 360 to a non-certified technician (i.e. like the ebay sellers above) will void your warranty as well. Then again, $140 buys you another whole 90 days of warranty with Microsoft! What a deal! /sarcasm

In our world, Cixel is moving on to Microsoft's corporate offer for now, so we'll see how that goes. If Microsoft ends up pulling a Sony, Demo is just going to take his 360 to the aforementioned local repair shop.

If you want to join the "pissed" crowd, assemble at xbox360defective.com and see if you can make a difference.

If it makes anyone feel any better, here's the PS3 with it's own blinking red light problem.

12/22/2006 Update: Microsoft has extended all 360 warranties to one year, so make sure you take advantage of the stock warranty before seeking 3rd party assistance.