I got an Xbox 360 about a year ago with the hope of using it as a media player for my HP Media Vault because it is supposed to be a DLNA-compliant media server. It’s not. You can get it to work by installing Twonkyvision’s server on the Media Vault (which costs another $40), but it won’t stream Divx/xvid-encoded videos, which pretty much renders it useless as a media player in my opinion.
I’m not much of a gamer myself, and so the Xbox 360 hasn’t gotten much use. For some reason that I cannot recall, I decided to upgrade my Xbox 360 silver membership (which is free) to an Xbox Live Gold membership which costs about $7.99/month. I figured I could always just switch back to the free membership if I didn’t use the Gold membership features. After a while of seeing that monthly charge appear on the credit card, I decided to cancel it. I first tried canceling it on-line via the webpage for Live, then through the Xbox console, and wasted at least a half hour before searching on the Internet only to find out that that only way to cancel it is to call up 1-800-4MY-XBOX (1-800-469-9269) to wait to talk to an operator. And that took an additional 18 minutes, most of which time I was on hold.
I really hate it when a company makes such an obvious attempt to hang on to subscription fees that it causes that level of inconvenience when attempting to cancel a service. Signing up took a few minutes and I didn’t need to call anyone, but canceling took 48 minutes from my life. So I’ll post this here for three reasons:
I hope someone Diggs this and maybe it will get the attention of the person Microsoft who can correct the situation. If they do, I’ll gladly remove this from my blog.
Sign in to your account at http://xbox.com/accounts
You can cancel automatic renewal of your Xbox LIVE Gold membership.
Click on “Membership Level” on the left, then click “ON” next to Automatic Renewal. You should be able to switch it to OFF.
Thanks so much for this, I too have wasted lots of time and am incredibly frustrated trying to cancle this stupid account. Thanks for the help dood, and just so you know, typing this blog wasn’t a waste of time since, at the very least, it helped me 😀
Here’s how to cancel your account the quick and easy way 1) stop sending them money 2) Relax
Then only pay using the prepaid card should you decide to renew. If it was a direct debit, cancel it. If they are withdrawing money phone the bank and stop them paying, wait for them to come to you, and say I don’t want my account. You don’t have a minimum contract. ETC.