It's terrible how you're always defaulted to auto-subscribe and have to manually disable it just to prevent your credit card from suddenly being charged later on. I wish that would stop happening.

yeah its pretty disgusting and i dealt with this all the way through my time with xbox live. im glad i have no reason to ever buy another one of their systems.

My biggest problem with Microsoft was that it was hard, at least for me, more than it had to be, simply with a debit card when I took the auto-renew off, because you had to call them then, and that annoyed me. Now, I have a new debit card, and I for some reason can't make an online bank account so I have to call the bank, and I hate, hate, hate that. Ughhhh. Sorry, off topic, but still. Microsoft I thought fixed this by having you simply go on and select no auto-renew, which would have been convenient when I had it. I hate calling customer service for things, and Microsoft's was the worst simply because there should have been an easier workaround.

I remember when it was mandatory to call Microsoft to cancel a subscription. They also would refuse to take any credit card information off of the console too.

The whole process was a real nightmare.

As long as I can do it on a website or something without having to talk to a customer service person where they try to convince me otherwise. There have been services that require a credit card that give you auto-renew subscriptions and your only way out is to call the company and practically beg for them to stop. That's the worst.

I am, in fact, no longer renewing. I am going to wait until I see if a bunch of free games look worth it. There are some good deals to be had but my backlog is big enough where I just don't need any more 360 games even if they are cheap. I think both MS and Sony have good deals with their subscriptions but I can't stand that they make you have to be diligent about canceling auto-pay. Netflix and Gamefly do it right. You can cancel pretty easy from those and re-open at any time.

this remind me i need to get a year of PS+

It does suck, but if you ever want Xbox Live again I'd recommend getting one of those 1-year cards off the shelf at your local electronics store. No credit card needed.

EDIT: And... uh... it seems like most of the games that MS puts out with their Games for Gold service, or whatever it's called, can be bought on Amazon or at Gamestop for cheap.

Good tip @believer258. I will keep an eye out for that. Thats the best way to do it. No credit card needed for hat.

I had an Xbox 360 in 08 but I thought auto renew was the ONLY option? (and I was not aware that Paypal was a choice, or at least I don't remember) The only way to buy sub time without auto-renew was to buy a code card from a physical store.

We shouldn't have to pay for multiplayer at all, autosub or otherwise. It isn't enough that console games are $60 a piece, but you have to shell out an additional $60 per year to play with other people AND get constant microtransactions, day one overpriced DLC, and generally overpriced games as well? This is the problem with being locked in to any console ecosystem.

I remember the old system being an giant clusterfuck. IIRC my situation was:

1. Bought a friend's 360 in like 06/07
2. Used my mom's credit card on the console to pay for XBL
3. Parents got divorced in 09 so the credit card was cancelled
4. Bought a 12-month time card and tried to use it on my account
5. Account wouldn't let me add a time card to an account with a credit card, and I couldn't remove the credit card because the payment had lapsed (because the credit card had been cancelled)
6. Had to call Microsoft like four different times to keep cycling reps until I got one that actually attempted to help me instead of just repeating the errors back to me like "well you need to pay the credit card off first before you can add a time card or remove the credit card"

It was probably one of the worst customer service experiences I've ever had.

I'm also not a fan of auto-renew.

The first year I get xbox live I use my credit card. From then on I buy the year card on sale. A year goes by and it tries to auto-renew even though I still have 9 months of service. It tries renewing through on an old credit card that has expired and I never updated that particular card on live. It does this once a month a couple of more times. I only know this is happening via email showing that activity.

Then I start getting emails they will lock my account due to non-payment. I still have 7 months of service active! Anyway I contact their online support and do a live chat. They get it squared away but had to give me my 7 months back by using monthly codes. I hope the system is getting less backwards over time.

You can avoid all of this by simply buying a card in a store. Hell, use your credit card to buy it. No auto renew there.

After companies are getting hacked so much these days, i don't see why anyone would give their CC info to a company when there are other options. It's a risk you're taking yourself because when it comes to CCs and big companies, things get super fucking sketchy from multiple aspects.

Canada's laws (and I believe certain states like Illinois) don't allow them to hide recurring payments like this. I was surprised to hear how awkward it was to cancel Gold on 360, because up here it's a fairly simple menu option.

Even so, i've found it easier to just buy cards in stores for subscriptions, you can often get them $20-25 off the full amount if you pick them up during a sale. Time is applied after your expiration date, so you don't lose anything for entering the code in early.

It is kind of shitty, but are we really complaining about making a phone call here? I've cancelled my bill three times now and each time it was a 10 minute phone call. I guess different things upset different people.

Also, buy a time card.

I bought a month of Gold for Halo 4 then unknowingly paid $10.95 a month for like a year after. On the one hand, it was my fault for not noticing it on my bank statement, but fuck.

I've always just bought the 12month+1month cards either from stores or online, I did this because at the time of starting xbox live (what... like over a decade ago?) I didn't have a credit card, but now that I do I still wouldn't use it for this cause it's so easy to just use paypal or cards to charge up the account as I go.. and not worry about it and let it expire if I lose interest in it's services without having to always remind myself that it's auto sucking money from a card that can fuck me if I don't pay it off etc. Xbox Live is one of those services that is fire and forget, you shouldn't have it tied to something that you need to manage closely like a CC.

Paypal has always had complaints with how it handles stuff, usually cause it's not easy to do a lot of stuff with it and they are way over careful to the point of screwing people over in some situations. I've never had issues with auto-payments with xbox live through paypal but also I've never had to stop or change things up, paypal is really good if you set it up and don't bother it for long periods of time, haha.

I have had that same experience and it made me switch to buying the 1 year codes on amazon when they are on sale, way better deal that way too.

Yeah, that was the shockingly bad time. I've gotten used to things auto-subscribing me even for a free trial, but I'm diligent in cancelling. However, the process to cancel Gold back in the day was abhorrent on an entirely different level.

While I do not like that it auto subscribes, I did not find it difficult to cancel my subscription at all. It was literally just a few clicks.

It took me about 6 months of calling them to get them to actually cancel auto renew. Every time I tried to cancel it would either error out or say it was going through then next month I would still get billed. It was a fucking terrible customer service experience. Never again. Only pre paid cards from now.

I had to call in once when I used my credit card and boy, it sure was something. The guy I had on the other end was super nice but I think he stretched out the call way too long just to cancel my gold. He talked about his time in college and I was so fucking bored lol.

I feel ya man. I have been without gold for almost 2 years now. Never buying an XB1 either. I'm officially done with MS consoles.

Yup, I was moving and wasn't sure if I would be able to connect to Gold (or that I would even use it and I haven't in 3 plus years) and I had to (maybe its changed but end of 2010 you had to call them to cancel and remove my card) fucking call them to cancel my sub and they tried everything they could to bribe me to keep my sub. Now I do my research and make sure I know how and where to cancel a sub if I want to. Already know where to go to cancel PS+ and GB if I want to/can't pay/shouldn't pay/etc.

EDIT: Prepaid cards are really the way to go with these situations.

It annoys me but it's become such a standard business practice these days that getting it turned off is just part of my standard consuming practice.

It's super lame but I called MS once about five years ago and it solved it pretty painlessly - if/when I buy an XBoxOne (or subscribe to pretty much any online service) I'll just remember to do the same.

It's less of an issue if you live in like one out of three states that care more about consumers than the others and let you actually cancel it online or via phone :(

@natetodamax said:

Paypal is a fucking nightmare with their Pay Me Later stuff defaulting...always the default it's a scam. Even with the option clearly set to off..

Lately I've been buying 1 months through xbox.com, but I always cancel the auto renewal minutes after. I need to get a 12 month card elsewhere for $40 or $50. Much cheaper this way.

Jumpin' jeesus. Thank god I looked in this thread. Speaking of autocancel and paypal autorenewal shit, I guess I've been paying for 1 year blocks of Rift for years, lol.

MS isn't the only company guilty of auto subscribe. I just received an email from Sony saying they were going to auto renew my PS+ account. But for the sake of shitting on Microsoft lets just pretend this practice is exclusive to them.

Ha! The email I got from Sony last week was "thanks for your purchase of Playstation Plus" - no warning that it was coming up, just bam, thanks for the moneys :-(

So, yes, it's not just MS that are guilty of this (though they definitely are).

Except Sony tells you that you are going for a recurring subscription when you go to pay it, but whatever.

Well, it's an american company running an american console, you should've expected that borderline scam. PS+ tells you upfront auto-sub will be turned on when purchasing through Paypal/creditcard. It's your own damn fault if you can't navigate two menus on your ps3/4 for an entire year.

Sony sent me an email a month before my 1 year renewal this year which is nice considering two years ago all I did was add a time card and sony decided to auto-renew using the card I had on file at the time without notice when it ran out last year.

@sasnake: I get notifications from MS as well as Sony but whatever. I get it, MS is bad, Sony is good.