Canceling my account after 10+ years of service /RANT

I have been through 8 +- xboxs and xbox 360s. I took part in Beta testing xbox live before it was even had a name. I work in a major electronic retailer in their "tech" department. People come to me every day with question and concerns over video game consoles. Each conversation was so simple as the answer was almost always xbox. But now I am not so sure anymore and this is why.


Working for retailers give you access to a website called expertzone.microsoft.com. It consists of taking surveys and answering question to help you sell Microsoft products more efficiently. You accumulate points that you can use to then get discounts on Microsoft products. I took so many surveys and watched so many videos that I was able to pick up an xbox360 kinetic and two 12 year XBL cards. This is shortly after the price increase for XBL (TISK TISK) so I was really happy that I was able to do this. While waiting for the stuff to show up at my door (takes them for ever) I win a copy of halo reach for selling a bunch of Microsoft offices and a few windows 7 boxes. To hold me over and get right into halo I go home and buy one month of gold assuming my cards will come in the mean time. The cards show up within the month so I put them to the side and continue to use the month.

A family issue comes along where I am forced to move, I take my xbox with me but it is not my main priority so it sits unused for two and a half months. Just got everything back up and running a few days ago and I get a message that there was a billing issue with my account, so I open one of the codes for and input the key. I get some odd error code that XBL was unable to process this request at a later date. Then it sign me into live and it works fine. I assumed it worked and continued to start playing for a month or so. Today I sign in and it tells me that my account has been suspended, so I call up 18004myxbox and wait on hold for an hour. Finally someone answer the phone and I begin to tell them my story. The person on the phone finally told me the reason why it did not go through is because I have 2+ months of unpaid for XBL service and a balance of 20 some odd dollars.

I asked them why and they said its because they tried to charge my card and it will not go through. I told them that I only paid for one month and they should not have been charging me in the first place. But it turns on it was a recurring payment and I was getting charged for it anyway. The person on the phone said you just need to pay the balance do then you can use your cards. Apparently they can not deduct the two months from the one year card. So I asked her what are my options as 1. I don't think I should pay for the two months that I did not use anyway, nor did I want. 2. I don't have a credit card anymore because of the family issue. I was told to borrow a friends credit card and use that, then pay them the cash.


I was in shock and started laughing as I assumed the person on the phone was joking... They begin to point out other times over the years where they "waved" over $91 dollars in fees on my account making ME seem like a bad customer. They also went on to explain that because I opend the packages on the live cards that I can not return them. So this is where I draw the line. I put up with E74s, RROD, In correct Bans, refurbed xboxs, bad HDDs, bad lenses and dead PSUs and never complained or put the company down ever.

I will no longer recommend xboxs to my customers, I will never recommend xbox live, I will no longer sell office, I will no longer sell windows 7 and stop testing 8. I will no longer sell windows based machines or recommend them. The money is not the issue, its the fact that you treated me like trash after I treated you so well.

                                 Your not so happy customer