Xbox Live Billing Scheme

[schild]

I'm sort of posting this wondering how it was handled back in the xbox days. My account has an old credit card on it. That credit card expired long ago. They just tried to rebill it, denied of course. The same day they tried to rebill it, I put in a code for 12 months that came with the xbox live vision Balls Cam (TM). Won't let me use it. They tried to bill my card again, denied. Now my account is suspended and I keep getting errors with this 12 month code.

What the fuckery is that?

[Azazel]

I'm sort of posting this wondering how it was handled back in the xbox days. My account has an old credit card on it. That credit card expired long ago. They just tried to rebill it, denied of course. The same day they tried to rebill it, I put in a code for 12 months that came with the xbox live vision Balls Cam (TM). Won't let me use it. They tried to bill my card again, denied. Now my account is suspended and I keep getting errors with this 12 month code.

What the fuckery is that?

I signed up for XBL with the packin card (Crimson Skies, headset). When I signed up with the card they also wanted my credit card details for "verification". About 8 or 9 months after I signed up I hadn't used XBL for about 2-4 months and couldn't remember when I signed up, so I rang up to make sure that when my account expired that they didn't rebill me. AKA cancel the account as you would in Everquest (you pay for your month, and get to use it without being auto-rebilled).

The nice guy on the phone informed me that my account was only 8 or 9 months in (whatever it was) and that if I cancelled the rebilling option now that it would end my XBL access, even though I still had 3-4 months left on my account. I told him I'd leave it running then and thanksed him and went on my way. Went back to not using XBL.

So shortly afterwards, I moved house. Too tricky to feed an ethernet cable to the XBox and I didn't have money to switch all 5 broadband devices to wireless, so I didn't use it, then a couple months later realised that I should cancel XBL since I obviously wasn't going to be using it again anytime soon. I rang and spoke to a woman who informed me that once an account was cancelled, that it was gone, so there's no picking up where you left off with any online-only content you paid for or scores or whatever. She also informed me that my account had been cancelled 3-4 months ago, when I'd spoken to the guy. The guy who said he'd leave it running.

So in short. They're running billing like EA did with Sims Online. Money upfront, can't cancel recurring billing without losing any time paid upfront. Obviously they feel that you owe them money starting from the moment they attempted to rebill your old card and have suspended you as a deadbeat, which has in turn messed up your code.

They're not very customer-oriented or friendly with their billing policies.

[schild]

Yes, that's how my old account (schild) ended. Now with Xbox 360 stuff, it seems they revert you back to silver status so they can keep draining money through the digital distributed shit. My problem here is that I'm not being given the option to drop back to Silver right now. I'm going to call the Xbox Live folks in about 5 minutes here and have some nice words with their underpaid morning shift people. Then I'm going to call their PR department for some comments. Frankly this shit drives me up the wall.

[schild]

Just talked to Xbox Live Customer Care. Guys name was Peter. Really wish I recorded the call. This just went from minor nusiance to full on asshole assault.

[Sky]

Did you say you have a Balls Cam? 

[Azazel]

So what happened?

[Lt.Dan]

Schild admitted to owning a Balls cam I guess.

[Strazos]

I remember way back when I wanted to cancel my XBL account, I had used a CC that was no longer active. Since I didn't just have the actual number laying around, I could not access my account info.

No big deal - when they tried to re-up me for the next year, they got bounced off of a cancelled CC, and then cancelled my account for me.

Having to enter a CC# to access your account kind of...stinks.

[sinij]

Just talked to Xbox Live Customer Care. Guys name was Peter. Really wish I recorded the call. This just went from minor nusiance to full on asshole assault.

I want to hear you write a rant about it. NOBODY FUCKS WITH SCHILD AND GETS AWAY RANT-FREE. GET THEM!

[Azazel]

you mean treat them like they were Uwe Boll and destroy them with the hatred of a thousand burning suns?

[Sky]

Just talked to Xbox Live Customer Care. Guys name was Peter. Really wish I recorded the call. This just went from minor nusiance to full on asshole assault.

I want to hear you write a rant about it. NOBODY FUCKS WITH SCHILD AND GETS AWAY RANT-FREE. GET THEM!

Threaten to put them on BALLS CAM! Call it an exposé.

[HaemishM]

I'm sort of posting this wondering how it was handled back in the xbox days. My account has an old credit card on it. That credit card expired long ago. They just tried to rebill it, denied of course. The same day they tried to rebill it, I put in a code for 12 months that came with the xbox live vision Balls Cam (TM). Won't let me use it. They tried to bill my card again, denied. Now my account is suspended and I keep getting errors with this 12 month code.

What the fuckery is that?

When I got a new debit/checkcard about a year ago, I went in and tried to change my X-Box Live account to my new card. It was the same bank, same type of card, but it kept getting denied. So I ended up shuffling it to a credit card for a few months. When I changed banks, I put in the new bank debit/checkcard and it worked fine. I never got why that debit card didn't work.

So in summary, yeah, something's fucked up, but I have no idea what.

[Driakos]

I'm glad you posted this.  I was able to pre-emptive strike, and replace my expired credit card before my XBL sub ran out.  Way to take one for the team.

[Azazel]

Update? I'm actually interested to see how this pans out.