New Reasons to Hate Microsoft

A few years ago I finally abandoned Microsoft completely. I turned from the darkness of Redmond, WA and walked towards the light of Cupertino, CA. I am now a happy Mac user. One of the nice things about leaving Microsoft is not having to spend so much time hating that company. It takes a toll on one's life dedicating that much energy to loathing a corporation. I thought I was free of that hatred once and for all. How wrong I was.

I recently bought an XBox 360 for the purpose of playing Halo 3 and GTA IV. XBox has a pretty good online system that allows you to hook up with players around the world. Months ago I signed up so that I and a friend could play Halo 3 to the wee hours of the morning. Eventhough most services that connect players are free (ie. Blizzard's Battle-Net), XBox-Live charges a small fee per account. We created two accounts, one for him and one for myself. For some reason, we couldn't get his credit card to work, so I used my own. We were only paying for one month (at least, that's what I thought).

Fast forward a few months. My friend (Shaun) has since moved to Alaska for the summer. I've been enjoying XBox-Live by myself. Then one day I realize that Shaun's old account is still working. Upon investigation, I discover that Microsoft has been automatically renewing my membership. I have no recollection of enabling that feature. In fact, there is no way I ever would have enabled that, because we both knew Shaun was leaving in a few weeks.

So, I go into the console to turn off the credit card payments. Unfortunately, there is no way of doing this. You can replace the credit card with another card. You can upgrade the account from monthly to yearly, but there's no way to remove the credit card. After digging, I find that the only solution is to call in to cancel the subscription. This I do.

I will not bore you with the hour and a half I spend trying to get this taken care of, during which I am hung-up on multiple times. There was one good exchange though. I finally spoke with a man named Ray. I explain the situation and he says that he needs the contact information for Shaun's account. I don't have that information. We specifically put in a bunch of dummy information because we were just using the account for a little while. But this was ridiculous in any case. I simply wanted them to stop billing my credit card, I shouldn't have to give any information other than my credit card information. He obstinately refused on the grounds that it is against company policy. I just love that excuse.

So, finally I asked him what I should do. He suggested that I--and let me note that I am not making this up--cancel my credit card. So, the solution to getting Microsoft to stop charging me for an unused XBox-Live account is to cancel my credit card. That is the dumbest idea I have ever heard in my entire life. Upon saying that to him, he told me that it was my first warning. I should also note that I laughed hysterically when he told me this, that's probably what he disliked. I unfortunately failed to use my other two warnings, though, at that point, I fully intended to do so.

Eventually I started digging and got lucky enough to find a bit of contact information that we had actually put in correctly and I was able to get the credit card removed. At that point I decided to have it removed from my other account as well. Eventually I'm going to want to cancel my other account, and I don't want to have to go through this again. In the future, you can by month and year subscriptions at GameStop. I will just buy those and enter the redemption code. That will keep my credit card safely out of the hands of Microsoft.

In case anyone from Microsoft is reading this, I will give a few pieces of advice:

• Stop automatically billing people's credit cards without asking them to do so first.
• Allow people to cancel/change their subscriptions directly, without calling your stupid customer service department. When I cancelled my World of Warcraft account, there was no hassle. I simply went into my account management and stopped my subscription. It was quite simple. So simple that I later re-instated my account for a few months.
• These sorts of actions are simply costing you money in the long run. You created a very negative experience for myself. A simple search online shows you have created a lot of ill-will as a result of this policy. I am not the only one who has been screwed. You may trick a few people into paying for a service they're not using (clearly your goal), but the bad publicity and anger it creates in people outways that small gain. I have now removed my credit card completely and will no longer impulsively buy arcade games as I have in the past. I would sooner die than give you my credit card again.
• Lastly, how I loath you Microsoft.