March 20, 2005

microsoft xbox live, you need to change this too

Microsoft, your Xbox Live subscription renewal policy stinks. It is unfriendly to your customers, especially to families, and it makes you look like greedy profiteers. You should take the lead for the online gaming industry and fix it.

Here's the problem. When my kid's 12 month subscription expired, you billed my credit card automatically for a 1 year renewal. Unfortunately he doesn't like to play on XBL ever since Halo 2 turned out to be a disappointment to him, so he's not using it. I called your customer service line to cancel, and they told me that I could cancel the account, but they would not refund my payment. When I told them I expected the refund in full, they pointed me to the terms of service which state that they will bill customers for an automatic renewal, and once it is paid the policy is "no refunds". If I wanted to cancel, I had to do it before the previous subscription expired to avoid the renewal! Oh, and they told me they had sent me an email notice prior to the expiration; I never received such a notice (were they thinking that email to an address given during registration a year before, was as reliable as a registered letter???) At that point I was pretty fried and escalated my complaint up two levels of supervisors in the call center, of course to no avail. Finally, a manager told me that I could write a letter to Microsoft describing my complaint. The address? One Microsoft Way, in Redmond WA. Oh, MSFT corporate headquarters, yeah, that'll get results. Thanks for that advice, geniuses.

Anyway, with my intelligence firmly insulted and my 50 bucks firmly embedded in the Microsoft bottom line, I have a new reason not to like this company and not to buy their products. Unfortunately, predatory billing policies like this appear to be increasingly common in the online gaming industry (see my recent experience with Sony, for example). I would like to think that the large influential companies like Microsoft would take a more enlightened view of customer service, and lead the rest of the industry by positive example. I'm probably delusional for thinking that will ever happen though.

Posted by Gene at March 20, 2005 11:42 PM | TrackBack

Comments

Your's a f*cking idiot.... don't you pay your ISP for internet service.... well you gotta pay for the Xbox Live service too....

OMFG H2 is the best out there....

Posted by: The12pAc at May 1, 2005 09:49 AM

Damn refresh on this site!!

Posted by: The12pAc at May 1, 2005 10:09 AM

Thepac12 WTF ARE YOU SMOKING?! You shoudnt pay for what you dont use, AND Micro$oft shouldnt automatically bill you, you idiot! You should get asked if you want to continue & not to just automatically charge you. What if Im a high school student & I dont have a credit card? SHOULD BE JUST PAY & GO, GET IT IN STORE, YOU PAYED FOR IT THEN ENTER THE PASS.

Posted by: Alex at December 3, 2005 09:18 PM

i brought core packge for 400 pounds of ebay and brought everything else. however i thought all the games for the xbox were a mockery of next-gen and i should be able to sue the pathetic microsoft corporation. infact i should b able to sue our governments for allowing such legislation such as the automatic repayment.

8 players max call of duty 2 on xbox 360. 64 on pc! is this a bandwidth issue i asked on the support line. she said yes it entirely depends on ur connection. then i oooooo so u can get more than 8 at once....then she said....look on back of game it says 8 so 8 is max. looping me around in circles pissing me off even the more.

I hate microsoft. I hate their false advertising, unspecific prices and poor product service. i think the xbox 360 is shit! and 4 sum1 who worked hard all day dnt wanna come home and spend 1/2hr on the line waitin 2 hear such bS. FUCK U BILL GATES FUCK UR MUM IN THE ASS U TRAMP!

Posted by: bEN at December 16, 2005 07:57 AM
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