3 Months waiting for Microsoft

The LandoStander

At the start of this year, when my Xbox Live Gold account was up for automatic renewal I called Microsoft and canceled the account. The reason being that I no longer wanted my debit card tied to my Xbox Live account, I was going to use the store bought cards instead. I was told I'd be given a refund within 3-4 business days but that's obviously not happened.

From January to February I called about once a week to see why I was never credited the $49.99 that Microsoft said they would refund me. They certainly deactivated my Gold subscription, and they claim to have sent the refund but my bank statement and my bank would argue to the contrary. I've actually had to have my bank file a dispute with Microsoft over the matter, and now I have to wait on that to come to a conclusion.

Now that I've whined about it, I'm curious if anyone else has had this problem before and if so did you manage to resolve it or was it just a waiting game?

MoSiAc

I'm confused I thought you could at any time change your payment info without having to deactivate your account, just change your payment method?

But no, I have never had such a problem.

FyreWulff

Nope, once a CC/debit card is in, it stays in. The only way to get rid of it is to replace it with another card number. It's complete bullshit.

This is even if you use timecards. once your timecard expires, they'll attempt to charge your card.

The LandoStander

Actually I was told by the Microsoft tech support lady that even if I just switched payment methods my debit card would still be attached to the account. So I had to give it the full break. Of course we may not have properly understood each other (hooray for outsourcing).

Crashtard

When I canceled my subscription the last time, I called about a month before it was up and told them to cancel my subscription so that it wouldn't renew, but sure enough it charged my debit card anyway. They refunded mine right away though, so I can't get too mad about that. I hope you can get it worked out and get your money back. That's definitely the reason that started using the cards instead, and it's also part of the reason I canceled my debit card and got a new one.

MoSiAc

See I had the exact opposite happen to me. I got a time card as a gift once and plugged it in. After the time card expired my gold account wouldn't work until I re entered my debit card info, it didn't just roll back to charging me.

MushroomStick

Did your debit card expire while you were on the time card?

DHS Odium

Yeah, I don't trust support people. My nephew-in-law has a freezing 360, hasn't red-ringed just yet. Anyway one of the "fixes" they suggested was to delete his gamer account. No Joke. He wasn't dumb enough to do it, but it would have sucked losing game and achievement status.

exoplasm

Xbox Live account management is horribly shitty. It's to the point where people should be getting fired over it. I've heard of Microsoft employees losing their live accounts with no recourse because of how shitty their account management is setup.

Don't login for 3 months? Account closed and you can't use the same name again.

Oh and you're still going to get charged for it.

Yes, for 3+ years.

Teslan26

FyreWulff wrote: »

Nope, once a CC/debit card is in, it stays in. The only way to get rid of it is to replace it with another card number. It's complete bullshit.

This is even if you use timecards. once your timecard expires, they'll attempt to charge your card.

Could you not give them a soon to be invalid one to replace it and then grin?

I always seem to be cycling through cards for 0% offers etc so works well.

FyreWulff

Yeah, it's possible to just replace it with a soon-to-be-dead card or a VISA gift card.

You should still be able to hit a button to get rid of it though. Nintendo did it correctly.