loyal customer banned from live !!!

upallnight

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ive never experienced such a bag of ****:mad::mad::mad:
like most of you my launch xbox died
no problem after a month when they had decided to wake up to the problem i sent it for free repair and then got a replacement unit 25 give or take a few days later(got the original xbox on launch so have always loved my xbox experience)
when i got it back a few days ago all excited to catch up on demos so i logged in , no i didnt account suspended!!!
basically ive always used prepay live cards (as you know it is cheaper) and i dont have a credit card
a month before my xbox died i got a prepay credit card as i needed it for a purchase and as i had a few quid left i bought 1months gold through the xbox360 (my gold had just run out)
reason being a few demos i was eager to play where online but for gold members so it seemed the easier option
as i did it i never realised it was a recurring monthly charge untill you cancel , but even if i did surely if they can take no funds then it should go back to a silver account
so after many phone calls ,the last being to the supervisor/manager ive been suspended from live as i owe 2months for a gold service when my xbox was broken and i didnt know i owed !:confused:
they know my xbox was broken hence couldnt be using live
and there is no way im paying for 2months ive never had or wanted
so now
my gamertag is banned from live
and i have 10 arcade games linked to it which need live for me to play them :mad:(as its a replacement console)
the solution is i set up a new gamertag and they credit that so i can download them again
i want to use my gamertag that ive built up and have many people linked to :(
i asked who i would complain to and i was told they dont have complaints :eek::rotfl:
a lovely lady called manal basically told me tough **** ,thanks for your support:mad:
ive been without games and films for 2months (hddvd add on)
and i owe them money:suicide:
thanks for nothing microsoft
what to do now

cheers
leigh
 
well stop complaining as that gets you no where with these customer service rep's.

Phone up again and be nice, calmly explain the situation to the rep and ask what can be done to rectify this obvious mis-understanding.

If you did set up a monthly Gold Payment account then you WILL HAVE to pay what you owe to get your account un-banned there is no way around that as you should have read all the small print and facts before accepting them when you activated.

If then they feel you deserve a refund due to your system being in repair then even better but its a slim chance. Offer to pay what you owe get your account un-banned then raise the 2 months without LIVE issue and see if that can be resolved as a seperate issue.

Good Luck
 
cheers i see what your saying but want to stand my ground
they are willing to reinburse 10 live games but to not clear a debt i should not owe
i cant get my head round that :eek:
 
Wait

You use pre-paid game cards, so if I you buy one for 3 months, shouldnt you exspect 3 months and after that, its ended?

Dont you have to wait for it to run out before you can use a new one? This is all too confusing
 
To be honest I don't think it's made clear when you sign up monthly for Live that it is an ongoing commitment. I Know I did it thinking that I'd just pay for the odd month I had had a new game I wanted to play over live and was surprised that they kept taking payment. I also have an issue with the fact that you can set a monthly account on the 360 over live but cannot cancel it the same way?
 
i think the quickest way to get online will be to pay up for the 2 months, then if you are desperate to get the cash back write them a nice letter instead.

May get some freebies :)
 
Well they beleive that when it comes to the 2 months LIVE they are covered by the small print so they have every right to demand that payment from you and also suspend your account from LIVE until you pay up.

Also by stating that they will refund your 10 Arcade games for use on another gamertag again they are following that small print to the letter.

I am afraid it seems the only way to get our original gamertag back is to pay up and just use it as a lesson harsh leson learned in reading M$ or any other corporate companies small print before agreeing to them but who actually does?

If it was me i too would be ****** Off'd by i am afraid they have you by the jewels.
 
i really dont know what to do
i think im too angry to make a decision at the moment
im just really gutted :(
its put me off playing offline let alone online!

leigh
 
This is just my opinion and my view of this. On a monthly basis Xbox live costs £4.99 iirc so surely it is not worth all that hassle and stress you have had for only £10.

£10 is not much these days and its like being in a pub where everybody buys a round of drinks and it comes back to your turn again and you know your second round is the last round going to bought as its last orders. A. You have had a good time and you dont remember the £10 more you spent than the other guys or B. You sulk at the fact you got stroked.

As somebody has said pay up and then write a letter asking for your £10 to be refunded or credited to you in Microsoft Points. If you have got 10 Xbox Live Arcade games refunded already that must be worth close to £40 and can you honestly say you play them constantly?
 
i agree the prepay cards are the only way to go
i havent been refunded for the games just offered which as stated could be nearly £40 instead of having a mistake wiped for a shade under £10 :suicide:
odd really but there you go!

cheers all for your input
 
Fact #1: If you don't have a credit card, you wouldn't be charged beyond anything you entered in pre-paid codes.

Fact #2: There is no way you can build up credit with MS and be suspended for not paying that credit, especially if you don't have a credit card associated with that account.

Fact #3: You don't need Gold to play your Arcade games - if you downloaded them originally, you don't need a Live account to be connected at all, and if you're trying to play them on a different console to the original one, you can just use a silver account (ie. free) to connect.

I think you're missing out on telling us something in the story here, because for the reasons stated above, it doesn't stack up at the moment.

Tell us the real (simple) story pleae.
 
Fact #1: If you don't have a credit card, you wouldn't be charged beyond anything you entered in pre-paid codes.

Fact #2: There is no way you can build up credit with MS and be suspended for not paying that credit, especially if you don't have a credit card associated with that account.

Fact #3: You don't need Gold to play your Arcade games - if you downloaded them originally, you don't need a Live account to be connected at all, and if you're trying to play them on a different console to the original one, you can just use a silver account (ie. free) to connect.

I think you're missing out on telling us something in the story here, because for the reasons stated above, it doesn't stack up at the moment.

Tell us the real (simple) story pleae.

He is telling the true story.
He used a pre-paid credit card for 1 month of live. Pre-paid credit cards are available where a balance is deposited upon such card and dwindled down through purchases. They are not like regular switch/meastro/credit cards.

MS have then tried to take month 2 and then 3 and been unable to, hence freezing his live account due to them theoretically thinking he got it free although his xbox was being serviced.

He would need his live gamertag (which he can't access) to re-download those arcade games, unless he made a new silver account AND had MS credit said games to that a/c.
 
If you purchased twelve months gold membership through game or somewhere else would you expect microsoft to refund you a proportionate amount of that if they were repairing your machine for 2 months?

I think not. It's a contract, you signed up to it.
 
If you purchased twelve months gold membership through game or somewhere else would you expect microsoft to refund you a proportionate amount of that if they were repairing your machine for 2 months?

I think not. It's a contract, you signed up to it.


I sure as hell would. Especially considering that there is enough evidence out there to comfortably suggest that the reason for the repair lays at MS feet due to poor design and not the consumers.
 
He is telling the true story.
He used a pre-paid credit card for 1 month of live. Pre-paid credit cards are available where a balance is deposited upon such card and dwindled down through purchases. They are not like regular switch/meastro/credit cards.

MS have then tried to take month 2 and then 3 and been unable to, hence freezing his live account due to them theoretically thinking he got it free although his xbox was being serviced.

He would need his live gamertag (which he can't access) to re-download those arcade games, unless he made a new silver account AND had MS credit said games to that a/c.
I don't understand why he is having problems accessing his account though - MS shouldn't suspend your account if you run out of pre-paid credit - when my wife's account subs ran out and we didn't re-subscribe, it was merely down-graded to silver but was still perfectly accessible. That's what's confusing me...
 
I don't understand why he is having problems accessing his account though - MS shouldn't suspend your account if you run out of pre-paid credit - when my wife's account subs ran out and we didn't re-subscribe, it was merely down-graded to silver but was still perfectly accessible. That's what's confusing me...

I paid monthly with a credit card originally as I thought I'd be able to subscribe per month when I wanted to and not have an ongoing commitment... it does annoy me that you cannot cancel that the same way via live as it just runs on each month. My credit card ran past it's expiry date and I received my new card in the post but didn't update my details... M$ didn't downgrade my account to silver but kept it as gold and sent me a few emails saying that they could not take payment (for 3 months I think:blush:). When I did update the details they took payment for the months they hadn't received payment for.

Paying per-month is very different to using a prepaid card.:suicide:
 
Really? And they did they suspend your account while you hadn't paid? (I'm not doubting you, just very surprised they do this!)

No they didn't suspend the account it just kept running as usual but I got the odd email very now and again. That is why it ran over for so long as I was a bit too lazy to get my new card out and update the details as everything just kept working. Infact I only updated them so I could buy some more points to buy Jetpac from the arcade... oh the days of my youth.:smashin:
 
Sounds very wierd, when my credit card expired (and I did nothing) my Gold account turned into a Silver account on the day my paid for subscription ran out and a new payment couldn't be authorized.
 
Sounds very wierd, when my credit card expired (and I did nothing) my Gold account turned into a Silver account on the day my paid for subscription ran out and a new payment couldn't be authorized.

Was that a monthly, 3 monthly or yearly sub... cannot see why that should make a difference but you never know. Perhaps I just got lucky and fell through a loop hole, this was around January- March.:rolleyes:
 
Was that a monthly, 3 monthly or yearly sub... cannot see why that should make a difference but you never know. Perhaps I just got lucky and fell through a loop hole, this was around January- March.:rolleyes:

I was paying monthly at the time as I wasn't sure whether it'd be worth coughing up for the service, even though it is only a fiver. I got an e-mail saying that my card had expired, payment couldn't be taken -- blah blah blah.

It could be specific to these pre-pay credit cards (which I've never used). By the sounds of it your card hadn't expired, you'd just ran out of funds on it -- so perhaps it's more comparable to what would happen if my credit card reached it's limit and they tried to take payment...

I wonder if anyone with a real credit card has been in that position before; perhaps it's a scenario that that they handle by assuming that at a later date they'll be able to pull the funds (because the card details are still valid) so allow you to carry on with the subscription -- whereas when my card expired they know they'll never be able to get the funds with those details so cancelled the gold subscription straight away.

If I was in your position I'd pay the £10 to get back on live, it's not worth the hassle. You should really have rang them to cancel the Gold subscription so can't complain too much that they are charging you for a period when you haven't told them not to -- iirc they do make it quite clear that the payment is a recurring payment until you cancel it during the signup process.
 

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