I’m a gamer, I own an Xbox 360, and gosh dang’t I play on Xbox Live. I’ve enjoyed uninterrupted service for the past 3-4 years, until today. Long story short, don’t let your Credit Card on file expire, now read below for the long story.
1 week ago I received a letter in the mail stating that my Xbox Live Gold membership was about to be suspended because my credit card on file had expired. The letter suggested I update my payment profile through the console Live Dashboard or call a 800 number. My first attempt was a few days later via the dashboard…
First simply updating the expiration on my credit card failed, with an ambiguous message I might add. I couldn’t tell by the message if my credit card had been declined or if it simply wasn’t connecting to the server to run a check. Taking on screen suggestions I tried adding a completely different card, same problem.
Second I tried getting online and updating my account information via billing.microsoft.com, again greeted with the same ambiguous message. As a last resort I finally called the Xbox Live customer support line.(which is apparently a term they use very loosely -nails)
Surprisingly I was able to get through to a human being within a relatively short amount of time, let’s just say 3 mins of automated routing. Happy to be in touch with human, I figured my problem would be solved quickly, I figured wrong. After answering a number of questions I came to the realization the individual was trying to update my information the same way I had on my dashboard and he offered no other explanation.
“Get me the supervisor!”
Supervisor goes through the same song and dance, getting the same error I had received, yet with no explanation.
The 1 hour on the phone mark passed.
“Have someone call me back once this is fixed!”
After holding 1 more minute the rep came back to inform me that my account had been blocked from using any credit card. This was all due to the fact that my original credit card, which had been used for 3 years, expired. Instead of simply suspending my account until I updated, my account was blocked, locked, and my 1700 MS points were left to rott.
I’m waiting for a call back within the next 2 days to find out if they were able to recover my account. As of now it’s up in the air, as the supervisor had no words of optimism of my reclaiming my original gamer tag. Oh well, I wanted a reason to purchase a PS3 anyway.
/end long story….for now.
I just got an email from microsoft asking me to update my credit card as well. The expiration date on the card is 05/07, but my bank says that it doesn’t expire until 5/31/2007. Did your card actually pass its expiration date, or did xbox just go by the 1st day of the month of expiration instead of the last? I’m wondering if I should add a new card to my account.
Hi perfectstorm007.
To be honest I’m not sure at what point they banned me from using my Credit Card. Since I pay the full year in advance I pay and forget about it, until I received the letter. As soon as I received the letter I tried to update.
For what it’s worth, I never received a call back from Microsoft. Last night I went and purchased a new prepaid card to unlock my account, we’ll see if that works.
This just happened to me. I never played any games on XBL anyway, and I herd that it was a pain in the ass to downgrade to silver (you have to call them and argue with them apparently), I figured I’d just let my card expire so they couldn’t charge me anymore and it’d drop to silver. Now my only option is to enter a new credit card so they can charge me for more crap I won’t use. So I have to pay more money for the privilege of downgrading to a silver account? Really?
This is the last straw. I’m selling my Xbox and all my games and never buying a MS product again. I’m going to get a PS3 and never look back.
It’s consumer abuse on MS part. Sorry to hear I’m not the only one going through this issue, good luck on your new PS3 Jeff!
It was a pain in the ass to downgrade to silver (you have to call them and argue with them apparently. Instead of simply suspending my account until I updated, my account was blocked, locked.