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 $7.99/month. I figured I could always just switch back to the free membership if I didn’t use the Gold membership features. After a while of seeing that monthly charge appear on the credit card, I decided to cancel it. I first tried canceling it on-line via the webpage for Live, then through the Xbox console, and wasted at least a half hour before searching on the Internet only to find out that that only way to cancel it is to call up 1-800-4MY-XBOX (1-800-469-9269) to wait to talk to an operator. And that took an additional 18 minutes, most of which time I was on hold.
I really hate it when a company makes such an obvious attempt to hang on to subscription fees that it causes that level of inconvenience when attempting to cancel a service. Signing up took a few minutes and I didn’t need to call anyone, but canceling took 48 minutes from my life. So I’ll post this here for three reasons:
I hope someone Diggs this and maybe it will get the attention of the person Microsoft who can correct the situation. If they do, I’ll gladly remove this from my blog.
I just got an email today from Microsoft that they’re happy to inform me they charged me for another year of XBL gold automatically today, EVEN THOUGH I HAVEN’T PLAYED ON XBL FOR THE PAST FEW MONTHS AND DO NOT INTEND TO.
Fuck you micro$oft. I used to like you.
Great, I thought it didn’t auto-renewal. I mean I’m 15 years old, how the hell am I supposed to cancel that? Unless I get my mom to do it for me. Microsoft really needs to stiffen their pants up or they’re going to lose customers. Of all gaming consoles, only Microsoft charges for the “great online expirience” which is also unlogical because you pay for “1 month” of Xbox Live but the timer keeps on going even if you are NOT using your Xbox at all. Sucks big time, from now on I guess I’m going to use Xlink Kai and tell M$ to beat it.
thanks for the info. i spent hours trying to find out how to cancel my gold account online ,but all i see is upgrades and more games. i have not come across the word “cancel” in the online account, not even if it meant something else. Microsoft should give customers the option of paying manually online like any other bill. If everyone else experienced the same ordeal with Microsoft operators they wont show no partiality to me. taking these matters to court is futile. they probably have the best lawyers anyways.