Expired GamerTag? pft...

I had noticed that my Live account email had expired. so i logged in to check on my xbox live gamertag. little did i know, a account creation screen popped up. and i freaked out wondering why this was. so i called xbox live and found out that, even if you pay and don't use your account for so long. It can expire and never can be retrived. I'm not a fanboy by any means but this gives me another reason to Stay on PSN. I was getting excited because i actually had plans to use that gamertag on xbox live, but now that its gone. PSN for the Win.

You're live account is tied to your live account, and if you don't login to that in a certain time period (a year I think it is, or 6 months) it expires. Now, unfortunately this means gamertags expire as well.

Why MS has not corrected this boggles the mind, but all you have to do to prevent it is log in to your account once in 6 months.

Had you not used that gamer tag in 6 months?

i still find it rather silly. I don't know if thats true entirely tho. i think i have not logged into it since Feb. but thats only  4 months. its because i didn't really need it at the time. But gamertags shouldn't Expire just like that. even if you pay for it. its ridiculous

especially to those who are in War and have live accounts. but they can still expire. you know what i mean?

I'm pretty sure it only works like that if you register your Gamertag to a Hotmail / Live email instead of a 'real' email address.

I don't get the problem?  So pick a new name.  It's not like your profile itself is gone.

Major Nelson posted on his blog about this issue.  If you don't long in for about 6 months, your account gets deleted.  I believe that they are trying to fix this issue the last time I knew.

Thanks for informing me everyone. or Atleast giving me a heads up. What if i had a Gamerscore on that? OHHH man... thankfully i didn't

One more question, can you recover your gamertag via another e-mail? Sorry, it's just this is the first time I heard of this happening.
And yeah, just create a new account it's not thaaaaaat bad since you didn't have any gamerscore.

A few years ago, I moved and lost my access to high speed internet.  I suffered with dial-up for about a year and a half before rejoining the known universe.  During that time, I let my XBox Live account laps.  Why pay for the account when I have no idea when I will be able to use that account again?  When I did get broadband again, I called Xbox to reclaim my old gamertag and they told me I couldn't do that.  Once it lapses you can't get it back forever.  The woman on the phone understood and accepted my proof of who I was, but said it was against Microsoft policy to allow players to regain their old gamertags once those accounts have closed.  Blizzard doesn't do that, I don't know why Microsoft feels it needs to, but that's just how it goes.  I added a few digits to my old gamertag and that was acceptable, but I still would like my original "pure" version back if it is ever possible.