I've had a 360 since 2006 and loved it. Never bought so many games for a console before. I listen to Major Nelson and his podcast, needless to say I was a MS defender.

Then I decided that I wanted to play some games online so I upgraded my silver sccount to gold for one month. BIG MISTAKE! I've done it before using pre paid cards, but this time it was through XBOX Live and now there is no way to cancel short of calling them (only during business hours) and wait in line for 30min to cancel it and I've read stories from some people that they canceled the entire account instead of reverting to silver aking you loose all your points and stuff.

Some might say that it's common practise, but I've been subscribing to gamespot and other online websites over the years and all of them had an easy way to cancel online. I mean even porn sites are easy to unsubscribe to compared to this.

I know this is old news for most of you and many will probably defend M$, but I can't anymore. They are supposed to be about choices right? That's what they say on press conferences. Well then Mr. Microsoft TEAR DOWN THIS WALL...um I mean LET ME CANCEL MY SUBSCRIPTION!

I suggest to anyone who is only planning on using gold every now and then to buy pre-paid cards instead. If you don't want them to take $10 every month (yes that's what it costs where I live i.e not in the US)

I've had a 360 since 2006 and loved it. Never bought so many games for a console before. I listen to Major Nelson and his podcast, needless to say I was a MS defender.

Then I decided that I wanted to play some games online so I upgraded my silver sccount to gold for one month. BIG MISTAKE! I've done it before using pre paid cards, but this time it was through XBOX Live and now there is no way to cancel short of calling them (only during business hours) and wait in line for 30min to cancel it and I've read stories from some people that they canceled the entire account instead of reverting to silver aking you loose all your points and stuff.

Some might say that it's common practise, but I've been subscribing to gamespot and other online websites over the years and all of them had an easy way to cancel online. I mean even porn sites are easy to unsubscribe to compared to this.

I know this is old news for most of you and many will probably defend M$, but I can't anymore. They are supposed to be about choices right? That's what they say on press conferences. Well then Mr. Microsoft TEAR DOWN THIS WALL...um I mean LET ME CANCEL MY SUBSCRIPTION!

I suggest to anyone who is only planning on using gold every now and then to buy pre-paid cards instead. If you don't want them to take $10 every month (yes that's what it costs where I live i.e not in the US)

Microsoft has had this policy, and people have been talking about this policy, since before you ever started subscribing to Live. Nobody forced you to use your credit card; I'm no Softy fanboy, but in this case, this is entirely your fault.

Dude, you PAY for your porn? pfft... that's mad crazy.

Well, you went through a few menu screens confirming that you are going to buy one month of Xbox Live Gold, so you obviously wanted to do it. Why even cancel when it is only one month? That is what doesn't make sense to me. $7.99 is a fine price to pay for experimenting with the service.

The second you made this topic and called them M$ I stopped taking you seriously.

I cannot take your post serious if you call MS, M$

Why didn't you have Gold to begin with?

Why would you cancel gold subscription anyway?  Also, Another guy up there was right, you pay for porn?

Pretty much every service that you subscribe to automatically renews your subscription at the end of each cycle. And all you have to do to stop it from being renewed is call xbox support and ask them to turn off automatic renewal. It's that simple.

xbox live is AMAZING

call them and cancel your subscriptions. do you have laryngitis or what the eff is your problem exactly?

I love how all the self appointed corporate ass kissing sheep are flocking to this thread to defend this bullshit practice. Someone even went so far as to say this was "entirely the OP's fault". It's bullshit enough that we have to pay for Gold, but beyond bullshit that there isn't a very simple way to cancel it. In all honesty it kinda pisses me off when customers run to defend a corporation. They don't care about you, they only care about profit maximization, why in the hell do you care about them? They're all the same, be it Microsoft, Sony, Apple etc. Either way I fully agree with OP, it's a bullshit policy for a bullshit service.

ever since I bought a 3 month card and they gave me 13 months, I always get cards

oh no I lost 3 dollars a month for a whole year :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :(

If you can't pay for at least a year of xbox live...just stop playing games..you don't have enough money for it..period.

Just call them, i had a credit card on my account, it took me 10 minutes and my credit card was not on my account anymore.

Some severe douchebaggery in this thread.  I'm surprised; it's not even the usual suspects (other than Jayge) acting like jerks.  OP was a victim like countless others, surely some of us.  Why pose irrelevant questions?  Who cares his motives for only wanting a month of Gold?  And to whoever said that if you cannot afford to pay for a years subscrition then you shouldn't play videogames at all needs to open their eyes.  Not everyone is on a payroll and and most certainly not everyone has the luxury to buy whatever the hell they want, especially lately.  I am actually kind of embarrassed that this generally friendly community would be so inhospitable. 


On the flip side, really though, who pays for porn?

While I agree it is his fault for not paying attention to the fact it auto-renews and blahblahblah, I do agree that it is bullshit that you have to call them to actually cancel it.
MMORPGs and other similar services offer a simple, easy way to cancel your subscription. You go to their website, you click cancel subscription, they go 'are you sure?' you click yes and then TADAA. Cancelled subscription. Easy as pie.
I shouldn't have to call them, wait thirty minutes and then try to negotiate with some strong accented Indian chap from their outsourced call center or whatever it is that you'd call it and try to walk them through what I actually want to do.
It's a larger hassle then it needs to be. Yes they tell you upfront that it auto renews, yes the service has been around long enough that anyone interested in it should be aware of what you have to do to cancel it but that doesn't make it right.

Pro-Tip: Buy a one-month live card, use that. When it expires, you'll revert to Silver, not get picked up on your credit card.

I just fell into this trap today, actually. I was surfing around my usual deal sites, noticed that 1 month of Live is being offered for $1, knew I wanted to sign up anyway to play 1 vs 100, and didn't take the time to read that there would be auto-renew involved. I learned of it shortly after, and fully intend to wait on the phone however long it takes so I can give them a piece of my mind. If there is any trouble, I'll take it someplace higher.

The good news is that the credit card I used to pay expires next month, so lets see them try to charge me. The bad news is that, apparently, they'll get pissy at *you* for that, and cancel your account + threaten you with legal action if you don't pay. Not sure how much I believe that last part, but it's still something I'd rather not deal with, and makes me think twice about using Live and anything Microsoft related in the future. Way to go, MS.

i called and cancelled mine no problem. it took like 5 min.  and what is so bad about live in the first place? i just didnt have the money to pay for it

Did you say $10 a month?? I paid 65 Canadian for a 13 month subscription 

If you know your .NET/Microsoft Passport info you can do this...

Go to www.xbox.com, in the top-right corner is a green dropbox that says "my xbox"
Click on "my xbox" and drag down the menu to "My Account" to open the Account Summary page.
At the Account Summary page, on the left side, is a grey box with some options.  The last option is "Manage Payment Options."
Click "Manage Payment Options" and it'll bring up a page with the credit cards you have linked to your account.
Under each credit card it says "edit/remove", click remove and then "yes" when it asks you to confirm.
Now you have no credit cards linked to Xbox Live and you don't have to call the 800 number.

This is also how you edit your credit card info (experation date, address) like when your card is about to expire or if you move to a new address.

Look at all these M$ ass kissers in this thread. M$ doesn't care about their consumers, it's only about the money with them. 

Yeah, the same thing happened to me. Microsoft should have a way to cancel the subscription online, there is no reason why you shouldn't be able to.

If you have a 360 and you don't have Xbox Live, you're wasting your money.

"Look at me, I'm so witty because I put a dollar sign in place of the S in MS!"

Honestly, I'm sick of that. Every company that isn't a nonprofit organization is out to get your money. You might as well do that with every company.

$ony, Papa John'$, Micro$oft, Ne$tle, Walmart $tore$, $audi Aramco, Volk$wagen AG, General Motor$ Corp, Credit $ui$$e Group, etc.

See how stupid it looks?

Why would you want to cancel your subscription? But that's beyond the point.
Didn't you just say, you could call them and then you can cancel your subscription.
I also think there's some way of doing it from their site, see this post.

Well apparently you cant remove your card from xbox.com or passport.com. You can make a new card, then remove the old one, pretty lame. But it looks like using a 1 month card on top of the gold account will cancel the gold subscription when it runs out.

I'll agree it's pretty lame but only because I would prefer to not have to call them to cancel. Regardless, when I cancelled before, I had no problem with it. It wasn't that big of a deal and I don't mind paying the $50 a year, even though I hardly play games online. It's a good service and I support it. It's definitely something nice to have.

Lesson from this whiny thread...pre pay! Newegg sells 13 month cards for $40 shipped, and you don't have to deal with any bullshit.

"

@RsistncE said:

"No "champ", let me break it down your YOU.Just because the OP didn't read the fine print DOES NOT mean the company is absolved of having a shitty policy. SImple as that. You admit that the policy is stupid and probably not ethical...so now because the OP didn't look into it properly before diving in, all of a sudden it's not stupid and is ethical? Cognitive dissonance anyone? Fuck. "

I never said they were absolved of having a shitty policy. I did say, though, that the OP's ignorance of the policy doesn't place the blame on Microsoft. They probably should change the policy, but in the meantime, people bitching at Microsoft because they got caught in the trap is stupid. Are you excusing the OP's foolishness simply because the policy is bad? And how is anyone so illogical as to draw out that I suddenly approve of the policy simply because the OP made a dumb mistake? Are you really this stupid? "

Well I phoned up to cancel my gold subscription, anf five minutes later it was done... Simple as that.