Just wanted to share my frustrations with my Plex friends, and to the great creators of Plex…please don’t follow what Microsoft does. I posted this on the xbox forums today:
I have been a member since Xbox started, which was probably around 17 years ago or so. I have had the same username since then, and have gone from the xbox, then to xbox 360, then to xbox one. I have also never traded in a single game, so I have over 150 games (xbox, xbox 360, xbox one), along with 1 xbox, 3 xbox 360’s, and 1 xbox one.
Previously, we had a family account with my two sons as we like to play together and it was a decent deal ($59.99 year). They changed that a few years back to were we all had to pay separately instead ($179.99 year). Okay, great.
A couple days ago, my older son got banned until 4/20/9999. He is trying to figure out how to cryogenic-ally freeze himself until that time so he can get his account back. At first, he got an email that said he was banned with no reason explaining why. He was, and still is very upset, and begged me to help him get it unbanned. He is a good kid and I went to work to try and get his account unbanned. I searched for probably a half an hour to find a phone number to call, when I finally got connected they said that they don’t deal with enforcement actions and it has to be done online. Okay, so I followed her instructions and logged into my son’s account. I clicked on “ask for review” or something like that, and it gave me a 500 character space to write why he should have his account back. Well, since we don’t know why it got suspended in the first place it is kind of hard to explain why it might have happened. So I typed something in there that was nice, as I feel you get more bees with honey, and 24 hours later they declined it. So I guess he is banned until the year 9999, which is 7,983 years away. They only gave us 2 words to explain why it was banned, “Account Modification”. The only thing we can think of is that he went to a friends house last weekend and he logged in there to play, maybe something on his console is not right.
Well, I told my son that I guess I will just set up a new account for you so you can play. In my mind I was thinking of selling everything and getting a Playstation 4, but he has friends on Xbox that he likes to play with. I also think that Microsoft does this to make more money as they know kids will pay for another account, as you don’t get a refund. Along with the countless stuff they buy either to make their avatar look cool, or to buy some awesome weapon for their game. All of which is lost I guess.
Today before setting up his new account, I wanted to change my username as I have grown out of my old name. It said that you can change it once for free, but as I go through the process it want’s to charge me $9.99. I search around for a phone number on the page to call and can’t find one, so I guess I will go back and look on my phone for the previous time I called. I have never changed my name, so I would like the free change. My anger is rising now.
When I first logged on today to xbox live, a big banner said “Please take a survey”, well consider this my survey. I feel like Microsoft can care less about me and my family and all they care about is filling their pockets with my money. They hide their phone number on their website to prevent people from calling them with problems. As far as the banning of the account, thanks for the warning. I’m glad you guys have your own judge and jury available to hand out verdicts to your faithful followers. Keep hiding behind your confusing website so you don’t have to hire people to help your customers, I’m sure your customers will just give up complaining and just keep grazing like the sheep we are.
At this point I am sitting here deciding what to do. Do I continue with this behemoth money vacuum that doesn’t care about their customers? Or do I look elsewhere? Will the next version of xbox have a credit card swiper on the side of it? I know you have my email, and probably everything else as well, so I leave it up to you to reach out if you want to save a customer.
Thank you.
Update: I received one response from a volunteer that said “sorry for your frustration”, then he locked the thread. Watch your wallets my friends.
