XBox Live Ripoff

Posted Fri August 28, 2009 9:16 pm, by Cindy S. written to Microsoft Corporation

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I would like to lodge a complaint agaist the XBox live division of Microsoft.

My son has been a loyal member of XBL since back when the game Halo came out. On August 12, his account was suspended without prior notification to either him or me as his father. He subsequently received a message that that he would be able to log on after 8-24-2009. Well, the 24th has come and gone and he is still unable to log in to his account.

Numerous calls to MS have yielded no satisfaction or resolution to this problem. As a matter of fact I have made at least 5 distinct calls to MS trying to deal with this issue. The only thing that has come out in those conversations is that the is a permanant ban on his account. This occured without any warning or notification to either my son or myself as his father.

My son left a message in the proper online forum inquiring as to why he did not get any type of message regarding this action. The person who responded (who goes by the online name of "The Pro") responded in a one sentence replay that is was for modification/theft of marketplace assets. I replied to that message, politely requesting a specific reason and all I got was a conceited, arrogant, stuck up response saying that basically it was none of my business and that information would not be turned over short of a court order.

As to all of the phone calls, I have been unable to get any kind of specific info, just vague terms as to why he would have been banned or a reiteration of the modification/theft theme.

My son assures me that nothing of the sort happened in the time prior to the banning. Since they are unable/unwilling to provide any facts in this case, I am forced to conclude that there IS little or no documentation on their part, whereas I have documentation of the message about logging in on or after August 24th. If there is in fact no documentation, then this arbitrary action on their part possibly constitutes a violation on their part and I am within my rights to persue all venues of redress.

Please note that I have, prior to this, persued this matter within the process provided by MS. I have spoken to 5-7 CSR's, to the MS Billing Department on 2 seperate occasions, many technical support people, resolution specialists, and on my final call last night (which lasted over 90 min.) 4 different managers all of whom were of no help whatsoever.

I would like to have my son's existing account reinstated for the remainder of time that is due. This account is paid through August 2011.
At the very least, he needs to be reimbursed the approximately $330.00 that it took to have this account paid up for that amount of time after which he will walk away (albeit with a bitter taste in his mouth) from XBox live forever. This is money that he earned by doing mystery shops and selling some of his other older, unwanted games.

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i'd say.... by PepperElf Posted Sat August 29, 2009 @ 9:53 AM if it's worth the cost, get a lawyer i use to do online gaming myself and i know there's a lot of rules in those EULAs If you haven't yet, I'd recommend reading the EULA in it's entirety. It'll be boring but if it's anything like the one I played... there's actually a lot of rules regarding player conduct. Now I'm not saying your son broke those rules, but it's best to know all the information specifically before you go against them. going on the claim of "modification/theft of market place assets" it might be a charge of basically buying in-game items etc on ebay or from other online sources. Or perhaps using 3rd party programs or software to hack. i'm not sure about the xbox live world but i'm suspecting it's not much different from the online games i've played in that ... they will suspend or ban accounts for things like that. also... if it's anything like the online game i played, as according to the EULA, if an account is banned the remaining money left on the account is forfeit. (meaning no refunds). Additionally... along with online gaming, i've worked tech support on a navy network ship. I mention this because there's one thing I know about computers and accessing someone else's system... there is no privacy. in laymen's terms, the company reps have the ability to look at every single thing you say through their system, even if it's a private message to someone else. slight off topic detour, but a good example is the "navy knowledge online" web page. On the page you can make private chat rooms. In one of my schools some students in a previous class found out the hard (and painful) way that the webpage has techs who investigate anything that looks like it may be inappropriate. the private chat room they'd made had an unusual name (candyland) so it got attention. The conversation in the room, from what i'd been told, went x-rated. The sailors didn't realize a tech went into the chat room invisibly and documented what they were posting.... From what I was told one sailor was kicked out of the navy for what was said. so back on topic, yes the ability to see all of the private messages or mails etc... yeah they have it. So. Arm yourself before going up against them. Find out for sure if any of those rules were broken. of course i'm not saying your son did break any of those rules of course it's just best to know everything you can before you get a lawyer, because if you go that route, they will invariably collect every document they have on the system to prove their side of the case. Good luck! Reply