Friday, May 14, 2010

Shit, xbox!

What's up you handful of unsuspecting followers of a dead blog? Why haven't you been culling your RSS feeds?

Don't be a Douche must be more than calling out douchebags, if it is to be anything. At any rate, I've been unanimously criticized for unchecked negativity, and having no reply to that as well as a lack of drive in the first place, so I didn't write that anymore. Thinking of maybe doing a "where are they now" thing sometime soon, but that's it, promise.

Today, though, I want to record in this hallowed place a recent experience with customer service for Microsoft Xbox live! It begins a few days ago, when my Xbox that needs to talk to the internet in order to play media files on my local network was trying to do so, when it was revealed to me that my live account was suspended! This meant, ultimately, that the xbox itself had become useless, online or off, as I couldn't use the local user account associated with the suspended live account. Means no downloaded games (bought and play many), no saves or achievements for games I physically own, and no media files. (!!) . Used another device to watch Shutter Island, which was pretty good, came back to the problem this morning.

When I tried to login it said I was lacking a payment option, took me to choice between "new credit card" which is obvious, and "cancel" which aborted the entire login process. I use a prepaid credit card to buy 'microsoft points' for online content, and used some of those to extend my current prepaid card based live membership for 3 months on February 1. They went for the renew on May 1 and the $27 charge didn't go through. No big deal, I enter the code on my 12 month card I bought last month, expecting this to happen sometime soon.This is where it gets weird: instead of not furnishing me the service (3 more months) when they found out Mastercard would not extend me the credit, they took it upon themselves, with no permission or disturbance of service or notice that I was on a tab. They are a now holding me, my xbox,, hundreds of dollars in purchased content and my $70 prepaid card hostage for that $27 debt, which can only be paid by credit card and soon or they nuke all my shit.

So I gave them a call! 51 minutes with Kurt, call centre guy, who to the very end only said two things: "your only option is to enter a new credit card number", and "the system won't allow me to do that". This was a shock to me, expecting something more like "sorry, that was automated and I see you've paid for your next year another way". Not before getting him to admit that he could but won't fix my problem, I moved on to the next rung! Chris, call centre supervisor, was saying the same stuff in a more forceful tone. I had been marked hostile, though seriously was being really calm about everything. One hour, ten minutes with Chris, trying to explain my problem by repeating and reposing the question: "on what basis does your company presume the right to extend credit to me and enter into that kind of relationship without permission or notice, let alone solicitation?". Never attempted an answer, started referring to the Terms Of Use "cover your ass" policy where the company can do whatever they want with my shit, and told me explicitly that there was nobody in the office with the authority to override that bullshit. That was about 45 minutes, and I guess he forgot by 1:10, because it was then that he transferred me to that person, upon being asked directly this time. Got about 20 minutes of the same stuff from Dave, call centre manager before I had to go out and my phone was plugged in, so I took a number and said I'd call back.

I probably won't. I'll get back in line, put money on that card, and pay the man. I could write about this for ages though, and I'm right on this for sure, but it's $27 and they're coming in heavy!

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