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[Xbox-Scene]

Microsoft Charges you 50 USD for 2 Months of LIVE Posted by XanTium | August 18 19:08 EST | News Category: Xbox360

From consumerist.com: XBOX Live member ForceTrainer says that after he forgot to update his credit card information, Microsoft shut down his XBOX Live account. He was fine with this, but when he tried to update his info, pay his balance, and convert his account to silver, Microsoft demanded he pay an entire year's fee to settle the two months he was delinquent. Full Story: consumerist.com

[jasdev]

May I be the first to say wtf?

[linkinworm]

so hes 2 months over or what ever, and he has to pay a year? even tho they have a 3 month option, or how about he pay 2 1 months worth for what ever reason MS want, money grabing bitches

[readmore]

This story is 100% BS

[Casper1786]

eiherway bullshit or not, for awkward billing issues like these i prefer not to pre-authorize shit

[Kerii]

Sounds like bull.

When my credit card expired and my subscription ran up, my account simply reverted to silver automatically.
I got a 1 month e-mail reminder before it happened, and another one when it did happen.
Wasn't really gaming much at the time so I let it sit for over six months like that.

Reactivating earlier this year involved nothing but updating the expiration date of the card on my 360, and then selecting a subscription plan.

This post has been edited by Kerii: Aug 19 2008, 02:06 AM

[DCarnage]

QUOTE(readmore @ Aug 19 2008, 01:43 AM)

This story is 100% BS

No, this story is not BS.  I had something similar happen to me.  I had an expired credit card on my Live account.  They tried to charge to it but no dice.  I was going to let the Live account expire and just use point cards to do all my purchasing instead of by credit card... well, one day I went to enter my code in and it wouldn't let me connect to live, it just said to contact M$.  It wasn't even a month past my expiration date, so I called them up and I asked them if they could turn my account back on so I could enter my points card and pay for Live, they said "no, you have to pay $50 to have your account turned back on."  So I sucked it up, paid the $50 and told them change it so the account doesn't automatically charge my card next year.  After next year, Microsoft can kiss my ass.  They will not be seeing my money for Live again!

They did not revert my account back to Silver like I thought they would, they said I owed them for a month past my account expiring.  And I couldn't just pay for one month, it had to be for a full year.  I was really pissed.  Lesson learned.

This post has been edited by DCarnage: Aug 19 2008, 02:18 AM

[trentdadi]

It does sound like a load of bull.  If it isnt, I am willing to bet there is something about this in the Live's ToS or EULA.

I had a bit of time so I looked it up.

QUOTE

You may tell us to stop using your Payment Method by calling Xbox Customer Support. If you do so, however, we may cancel your Service and/or any Other Items to which you are subscribed. Your notice to us will not affect charges we submit to your Billing Account before we could reasonably act on your request. You must keep all information in your Billing Account accurate and current.

To me it sounds like he abused the ToS by not keeping his Billing information accurate.  They gave him his year subscription and they couldn't charge him for it hence they could not reasonably act on his request.  He can say Microsoft is evil all he wants, but they have done nothing wrong as far as I am aware.  I could be taking the ToS out of context somehow, anyone have any opinions on it?

QUOTE

6.6 Refund Policies. Except as stated otherwise, or as otherwise provided by applicable law, all charges are non-refundable. If you signed up for an annual Service and paid the annual fee with your Payment Method, we may provide you a full refund of the annual fee if you cancel within the first 60 days of your Service. Additional information about refunds is available at http://www.xbox.com/...nts/default.htm.

Also found that, he should try calling them up after hes paid his dues and see if he can get a refund.

[leorimolo]

I had this happen to me too, its fucking bullshit, I ended up paying 30+20 dollars for a 3 month+ credit card cancellation debit, that was one month

[MrFish]

Hell, at least they didn't kick him off for good, with no way to regain his account or gamertag, as I've seen happen in the past.

Don't ever pay for LIVE with credit cards; scratchcards are cheaper, can't re-bill you, and there's no chance of this kind of thing happening.

[leorimolo]

QUOTE(MrFish @ Aug 18 2008, 08:38 PM)

Hell, at least they didn't kick him off for good, with no way to regain his account or gamertag, as I've seen happen in the past.

Don't ever pay for LIVE with credit cards; scratchcards are cheaper, can't re-bill you, and there's no chance of this kind of thing happening.

If you live outside of the US its pretty hard to find these for retail prices

[DeMoN_DARREN]

Ahhh Microsoft, putting me off yourself more and more everyday

[BewareTheidesofMarch]

M$ tried to do that to me one time.

I talked to a supervisor and got the whole thing straightened out.

It happens due to the Auto-Renewal set up. You can easily fix this by not using a credit card on Xbox Live.

Just go to a store and buy a 12+1 month card.

[794]

if you read the whole article he states that he received multiple notices from MS to change his account information to keep it current and yet ignored these notices.  while i disagree with the $50 charge for "bringing his account current since it was about to be sent to collections," there still should be some kind of charge to at least cover the processing relating to his delinquency.

i have cancelled a few XBL accounts over the years and have 3 current accounts on credit card auto-pay without any problems...

sounds like using the pre-paid cards would not be a bad idea though if you do not want to worry about keeping your information current or changing the service type near the auto-renewal date.

[CandieCorpse]

yeah i had/have a similar problem still to this day i just got so sick of them i created a new account and lost out on all my arcade games and dlc , this is what had happened  i bought a prepaid card (1month) but for some reason my account didnt turn silver after 1 month , well i figured well ill roll with it, fast forward a year one day my account turns off, i call to see what the problem was ( it didn't turn silver it said i needed to update my payment options and wouldn't let me on live) after a year they finally figured out i bought a month of live and for some reason it registered at a 1 year , this isnt my fault , when i first called and we figuered out what had happened they said i owed for the last 2 months ( this is what i was going to pay) i wasn't using live atm so i forgot about it fast forward a few more months i called to pay it now they say i owe around $88 or close to it, WTF they keep charging me for months im not using , how can i fix this problem? so in the mean time i made a new name.