Well, there are many reasons really, but I'll just rant about a few. So, to begin with, let's start with a complete lack of continuity between their many subsidiaries. I own an Xbox One. I found this guy on Craigslist mid-last-year offering his Xbox One with a number of games, a couple controllers, a headset, and some other nifty little accessories for $400 bucks. I had it and wanted a taste of that next-gen goodness before it was completely old and everyone had it. I hooked it up, grabbed CoD Advanced Warfare from Walmart, paid for my year subscription of Xbox Live/Gold and started the endless cycle of updating games.
After several hours on their slow servers, I was up and running. I was satisfied and little more. It wasn't the bells-and-whistles-loaded beast I thought it would be from reviews and hype, but it was nifty, and even beat out my PS3 for likability (barely.)
Well, the trouble began near the end of last month (June '16) when a friend grabbed me a $30 Xbox gift card from Game Stop (late birthday present.) I logged into my account on the laptop here and loaded it up. The intention was to get my Elder Scrolls Online account up to ESO Gold so I'd have the craft bag, all the DLC, etc. No dice. When I went to purchase, it would not allow me to change my payment method to the $30.00 balance showing clear as day below my linked credit card. I called customer support and was informed this was the wrong type of gift card (even though he, my friend, and I have both used these cards many times.) They told me it had to be a 16 digit numeric card number, not the 25 digit alpha-numeric code I had (even though when you try to enter a code on the Xbox One directly, which is what I should have done in hindsight, it's a 25 digit field?)
No way to refund the card or transfer the balance to the proper method of payment, I was told. I could barely understand the individual I was speaking to, so asked to speak to a native English speaker, a privilege I've been awarded when calling nearly EVERY customer service line I've ever had to sit on. To my dismay, the (pardon my 'french') wiseass son of a bitch transferred me to the 800 number for UPS (yes, that UPS, the one that ships packages and has NOTHING to do with Microsoft or Xbox in any way other than carrying their garbage around the country.) Needless to say, I was pissed, and still have this $30 credit on my account that I'll never use as I own NO Windows products nor will I ever.
So, come July, my yearly Xbox Gold subscription has come due. It was set to auto-renew but the card I had on file was for an account I had closed. Knowing this, I disabled the auto-renew feature online with the intent to just pay it with a new card come that time. So that time came and I did just that (after checking my account online to be sure that they hadn't tried with the old/inactive card.) Sure enough, there were no pending charges showing so I thought that for once in my life, Microsoft had done something right. I was wrong.
Even though my account showed no balance and a payment was required by July 15th to renew my annual Gold subscription, they managed to charge another card, my mother's, as she had signed in and purchased for me the $99.95 special edition of Fallout 4 with full DLC (badass game, btw, one Bethesda did right.)
This happened to be the same card that I used on the 15th to renew my subscription (it's a shared account between my mother and I so we can easily help one another out as needed.) And now, on the 18th, it has been overdrawn due to Microsoft/Xbox entirely lacking in competence or apathy. The wonderful customer service at Microsoft has so graciously began the process of cancelling my current two subscriptions and refunding the $59.95x2 to our account, though refuse to address the $32 overdraft fee this bullshit caused.
To try to get us back up and running until I've worked a little extra to cover that fee, my fiance has started a free one month trial of Xbox Gold. It's great, all but the fact it's worthless. When we try to play online or utilize any of the Gold features, it keeps sending us back to the "Try Gold Free!" page. We go through the steps again, but at the end, it says "Sorry, you can only use this once." Obviously not.
So to you, Microsoft, Xbox, Live, One, 360, Word, PowerPoint, your sad-ass attempt at 'smartphones', and any other lines of bullshit you keep feeding those willing to pay for it, I bid you a not-so-fond farewell and the absolute biggest FUCK YOU I can muster. May your sad ass attempt at shitty products and services one day soon finally fail and may folks everywhere finally be enlightened by the better choices of Linux, Libre, and OOO.
Don't worry, Sony, Daddy's coming home. Sure there's someone on Craigslist that'll swap out a PS4 for this pile of shit... somehow Microsoft manages to maintain a huge mass of fanboys.
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