Xbox Live support is a joke

I keep getting e-mail notification indicating that my Xbox Live subscription is about to expire. That's alarming since I recently re-upped using a card I bought at retail (it was old, and came with another headset and free billiards game from Arcade).

So I went to the official site and filled out a support ticket to find out what the deal was. This is the drivel I got back:

"We deeply apologize for the inconvenience. It sounds like this has been a very frustrating experience for you. After careful review of your issue, about your account which says that it is already expired, we have determined that it is best that you call the Xbox Customer Support number for better assistance..."

Do you get the feeling that a human never even read the message? I replied and asked them to just look at the account and tell me what's up. Then I got this reply:

"Thank you for writing Xbox Customer Support!

We appreciate your feedback. Although we can't respond to your suggestion individually, we, at Xbox Customer Support, apologize for the inconvenience.

We consider all of the suggestions and comments sent in by our members, and we maintain an internal database of suggestions that we consult and prioritize.

Customer satisfaction is our main goal and we will improve our service in the future. Again, In behalf of Microsoft Xbox Customer Support, we deeply apologize for the inconvenience.

For further assistance, please don't hesitate to write back or call Xbox Phone Support..."

What a complete joke. If customer satisfaction is your main goal, Microsoft, start by trying.

As it turns out, I fired up the console last night and found that my subscription is in fact still active, and expires next March. So the "customer service" is not only useless, but also incapable of finding they have a bug sending out incorrect e-mail. 

64 Comments

  • i agree.there fucking useless

  • I rang customer support for UK, and I got some foreign guy who couldn't speak english.

    After explaining my problem with Xbox Live, he replied.

    "So you 3 red lits?"


    lits isn't a typo.

  • Hi guys,actually i've contacted XBOX customer support twicw and they were very helpful,my ip failed and they were able to help me out and i can connect to xboxlive easily now.so i really wanna tell you that they are the best technical support EVER.

  • I'm with you lily,my ip failed before and i contacted xbox customer support,i've been answered by a very nice guy,who would able to help my out in less than 10 minutes and my xbox connection is great now...
    so really i wanna thank xbox customer support.
    guys to give them their rights,they really work so hard to help us while we are enjoying our games,they work under stress,answering 100s of calls, so we should thank them after all,and if sometimes we had a bad experience we also must remember the good ones as well
    Thank you all
    enjoy your games

  • lily works for xbox, i have been on hold for 45 mins cuz this guys system went down, theres no way this the best, especialy when this guy doesnt speak english,

  • no matter where u call for support u get a foren a$$ hole who cant speek english i started talling up the people seeing if they were american the ouccome was 28 forien and 0 anerican

  • i had a 40 pound 1 year subscriction on a card i got from GAME and i used it with a gamertag. i wanted to set up a new profile because i didn't like my name, and i wasn'tm about to pay 800 MP just to change my Tag name, so i set up a new one and deleted my old gamertag which the card had been used on. i shouldn't have done thta because i didn't know you couldn't use a gold mambership code on only one gamertag. now i want to ring these bastards and tell them what's on my mind, and hopefully try and get a new gold mambership code which i know won't happen, but i will try anyway.

  • Yeah I can't recover my account cuz they keep giving me automated messages.

  • could have been before your new subscription was activated and they are sent out automatically when your subscription expires (weather you have updated or not)

  • xbox live customer service is useless.They billed my acocount 4x for 62.50 because I cancelled my account.
    Because of their unwillingness to make this bill go away I will never activate this account for my son again, and further I will warn people who give their credit card info to microsoft buyer be ware there is fraud going on.

    UNHAPPY CUSTOMER

  • ofcourse its an option to use a gamertag you dont like and then be angry because you want to change it

  • Whats the point of having the Xbox tell you to go to Xboxlive/support if they cant even keep the support Website up??

  • Service here is a comepletely frusterating subject. Like youve already mentioned calling the support line results in yet even more confusion partially because I only understood about every fourth word of the cameljockey's speach at best.What makes it worse is Im thinking more and more they dont understand eithier because I kept getting answers unrelated to what i even asked.Support us? Hire Americans..English speaking

  • Xbox live support are idiots, they know NOTHING about the xbox and few of them even play the damn system
    They type a problem into their search program and read a pre-written answer for it, sometimes if your description matches enough words, they find your problem and lead you through a long and tedious recovery process that you only needed to do 10% of, but usually they have a 1 or 2 sentence reply that they love to repeat to everything that you say!
    Keep calling until you find one of the 3 people that know how to do there job, there are a few at every tech support and they can actually help you
    Usually if there is a pause and they say umm.. ok, so
    or anything like that after every part of the problem you describe just hang up the phone and call again

  • i can not find the phone numbrer any were for the supportline is hard to find if any one has it could they tell me i will be on msn all times my msn is ScubaSteve1@sunderland.co.uk thank you

  • Xbox Live Customer Support is terrible. It is painfully obvious to me that their staff has never actually used the Xbox Live service. Every 2 minutes I was put on hold so my rep could "check her resources", she had absolutely no idea what I was talking about and it seems my question was not anticipated by the people who print up the script she was reading from. She finally told me their was no possible resolution to my problem. I'd be willing to pay extra for Microsoft to hire competent english-speaking people who are thoroughly familiar with xbox live gameplay.

    My question was: How do I change the order in which my achievements show up in my gamer profile?

    Wow... earth-shattering.

  • Let them foreigners make t shirts and underpants have americans answer the phones I mean i contacted customer service once with the inability to access live and while shes trying to blame my ip i was fooling around with my xbox only to find out that she was trying to get me to reset all my ip settings F that i dont have that kinda time....

  • They double charged me for a subscription. So far its taken 3 months and phone calls totalling around 3 hours. I've still yet to receive a refund. Apparently it takes 8-10 weeks to do a refund to credit card. Strangely though, it only took a few minutes to take the money from my card.

    Clearly the guy means 8-10 days, but he doesn't know he means that so they refuse to look at it again until 10 weeks have passed, useless tossers...

  • They are the biggest assholes on earth - after sending my 360 unit in twice for the red light virus - the third time I accidentally included the hard drive and they claimed they never got it - said it waould have been discarded - bullshit
    Now they wont stant behind it and it was their fault this whole mess ocurred int he first place

  • Ive been trying to connect to XBL since October 2. and everytime I call them i keep getting in touch with an indian. I am in no way racist but its g. DAMN impossible to hold a conversation with someone who keeps repeating what I just said after I say it. Each time I try to get help they keep telling me to do the same things ive done the last 20! times ive called them. ARGH!!!
    I wish i knew someone who knows how to fix this.... i can be found on yahoo just in case

  • Yes, the phone support is useless and I believe it's a scheme to get us so frustrated that we have to buy new xbox's. I have been trying to get the shipper so I can send the console for repairs for 3 weeks now and they can't issue a service number because they are "upgrading" their systems. They may be able to issues a repair order to me by the end of the week, then 5 days to get the box, 3-5 weeks for repair and I wanted it fixed by Christmas. Email support says to call phone support since hardware is not their responsibility. Microsoft is making millions (just on Halo 3 ($150mm in one day!)and they can't fix their machines in less than 8 weeks? I would be out of business if I let my products fail for so long!

  • XBOX phone support is garbage. The people there speak like robots. They're definitely in a foreign country and I've got nothing against foreigners like some but learn to speak english correctly if you are going to support me. I'd rather speak to someone in India who has trouble speaking english than someone who tries to emulate it and insults the language even more. They have yet to be helpful for me other than sending me a box.

  • i bought xbox live membership of EBAY and tryed to register it. It came up with an error message so i called the Xbox 360 help line who told me to that i need to register a US account so i did this and it worked a few weeks later i could not conect to xbox live so i rang again and quoted the error message and they said because i registered a US account (like they told be to) and i live in Australia they banned my xbox from xbox live and i am really anoyed because i only did WAHT THEY TOLD ME TO DO!!!! i would like to be unbanned please.

  • Perhaps they were just charmed by your incredible use of the English language.

  • Hello guys, ok, I'm going to tell you the truth about xbox customer support and thats because I work there, I agree with you guys, it is a joke. I'm not really sure why Bill Gates organized this so badly, probably because he is so busy trying to become the richest man on the world, well, I don't know, but first of all when you are calling to the customer support you are calling to Mexico, and when we (mexicans)call to the customer support, we are calling to Argentina, pretty stupid uh? I've work on different companies like this one, but in spanish language, and well, it is hard to understand to someone in your languge what the hell is he saying, now try to imagine in another languge. Secondly, we've been through a "training" and that was more like watch a video per day about the possible inconvinients with the xbox 360, let me tell you that the xbox 360 will be the last console that I'll buy. Have you ever though that it is not the fault of the agents? Have you ever thought "ok, every time I call, there's a different foreing guy answering and 0 americans... so what the hell is...
    microsoft doing hiring them instead of americans"??? Microsoft is not concern about you guys, not even about us, every time a customer tell me "you are a fucking idiot" I really feel like an idiot, probably I'm not as smart as you guys that buy a bad product and solve your issues calling to customer support... I'm sorry about that last comment guys, I guess we are all victims of microsoft, I'm trying to do my best every time a customer calls, and when they say "Thanks Mike, you've been really helpful" I feel like I'm flying. Still, I share your feeling about the service is a joke, but just think about this, its a joke just because this huge company is not even hiring american people to provide you support, is not even in North America, blame the company, not the agents, we are trying to do our best.

  • Yeah, I'm sure Bill Gates is personally responsible. [/sarcasm]

  • Why is that all the people complaining about XBox live support being so "foreign" can't spell or write English to save their lives?

    How nice it must be to be a foreign customer service representative dealing with Americans who can barely write let alone speak the language?

  • Wow Microsoft's XBOX support is absolutely rediculous. Somehow it is worse then their PC software support (I used to hold a gun while i called that number...)

    The time you waste finding answers and help from XBOX Help isn't worth it. Spend your time taking care of other stuff and hopefully when you come back your problem is miraculously fixed.

    Microsoft is a giant mistake.

  • it won't even let me log into my damn gamer tag and support isn't doing jasck shit for me.

  • just dont call our support line if you dont have any sense of listening why you experience your issues, you guys are the ones asking for assistance so you should listen on what the agent is telling you, even though some of them cant speak english well but you guys are not the people inside microsoft so basically you dont have any knowledge about troubleshooting the console. (thats why your calling right?) i guess this makes sense hahahaha! good luck

  • ok i just went and used my frinds storage device and i created a howhole new account and recovered it onto my xobx sp we both can play and it says that he dosent have a member ship and im like bull shit cuz he had the one month free any one plz help me if you want to i just want to know itsso frustrating ryanyomes@yahoo.com send me an email if you can help me

  • "XBOX Live Senior Tech Support Supervisor", I wish the world was as simple as your view,

    I am currently a recent victim of your "support service" battling with your colleagues to retrieve a "simple" status on a recalled peripheral I sent back over two months ago. After two weeks of phone calls every 2 days I am still left dealing with yet another clueless individual (who's only merit is serving as a punching bag to my frustration.) providing me with no further information than when the circus started.

    I could have been an XBL Tech Support Supervisor, but word got out I graduated high school and english was NOT my second language.

  • Wow i feel all of your pain. i pretty much hate xbox support. it just goes to show you that microsoft is cheap as hell to send their tech support call queues to some center in india. I just wish one person that i dealt with could speak english and actually comprehend what i say to them.

  • I received excellent support. I also talked with (as they are being referred to) an "English speaking American. Couldn't have been more pleased.

  • I didn't think it was that bad :\

    The line kept cutting in and out though.

  • I thought it was pretty good. When I got my red ring of death, I called Xbox live, a Russian girl answered and walked me through checking the console. After that, she told me the box would arrive a few days later. 2 days later my box comes, and I ship my Xbox away. 9 days later my Xbox comes back in top shape, with 1 month free Xbox live gold. I am very satisfied with the support, and I hope you guys' problems are solved.

  • I have been working with tech support so much i think i know some of the agents more than my brothers. Its been since November 2007 that they cant get my pre-paid card to work and they say they have no policy to give me a new number to use. They determined they cant fix it and just say sorry but nothing can be done accept i can go buy another. Also keep in mind i bought my system and everything together 300 miles from home (neerest) and they sent me back to that store to try to get a new one or re-activate the one i got. They did re-act it but still nothing and now out more money and time. They have no legal department they say and i have spent months finding someone to help. I am lost and give up. Lots of time and money down the drain and i cant even find legal aid to help take this case.

    Jeremy

  • can someone help me i need xbox live support phone number because i was bought,the 360 camera,headset and a 12 months gold subscription card.iv gone to use my gold card and iv noticed its expired and it wont let me use it.

  • I tried emailing them like 5 days ago, 24 hours my fanny.

  • Wow you guys are really bent out of shape, i actually just made a call to support about the three red flashing lights the guy was foreign but knew what he was doing, he walked me through a bunch of stuff that didnt work, but eventually came through with everything i needed to ship my xbox in....but i do understand where everybody is coming from though

  • this is a joke, i have been trying to get through to xbox live helpline for the last 2 days, and i have been told the numbers not in use, still awaiting a response to an email sent last week

  • Ive been dealing with them for over a month now concerning a one month card I brought. Their comps show I have a gold account, but my xbox says I dont. The subsciption expired five days ago and Im still waiting for a call back from them. As im told, my case got transfered to another department, which I assume is a fat balding 40 year old star trek geek that lives in his moms basement while eating spam from the can with his cat. These support folk are useless, all they do is read from a database which is exactly what you can do if you visit www.xbox.com/support, and I know its true cause everything the Indian guy told me, was quoted verbatim from the website.

  • you know its funny cuz i work for a company that sells video game consoles and i always tell people when they first buy the console to get the EXTENDED WARRENTY for 50 bucks more....it covers u for 2 yrs so if anything goes wrong with it, we can actually have it replaced in 2-5 days but EVERYONE seems to think its a rip off and they would NEVER need to use it....now look at most of yall crying cuz ur stuff doesnt work and microsoft is giving u guys a hard time.....see how much time and frustration u could have saved with 50 bucks?!?!?!?! high dollar investments are no joke...but what do us sales people know right?????

  • what the hell is the phone number

  • Please email me regarding sueing Microsoft and bungie and possibly gamecrazy for unethical busines. Contact me @ edwardcollins302@comcast.net

  • yah whats the phone number?
    im haveing the IP address failure :|

  • I actually thought the guy I talked to was very nice and helpful. I have the original Xbox and it requires service... and its an 80 dollar fee i'm not willing to pay, so i'm just going to buy another one. The dude totally understood but I agree most customer services lines are bogus. you guys gotta stop ragging it doesn't make the entire corporation at fault.

  • Their support is a complete joke, incredibly useless, and I'm very tempted to report them to the better business bureau! My fiancee spent the ENTIRE day yesterday (8+ hours) trying to pay off an old bill from a few years ago when he changed his card. (He didn't want to spend the money at the time, and put it off until now.)

    Sadly enough, he got the run around all DAY, and was given at least 5 different numbers to call, many of which had FULL Answering machines. This is ABSOLUTELY unacceptable! In my opinion, X-box Live should have just as much quality support as any other company, if more, and its frustrating that one of the most popular console companies can't even hire enough workers to take care of the problems!

  • Damn I always get the arab guy that you cant understand!

  • Xbox live, is and always will be a fucken joke. I bought my first xbox about 2 months ago. After 2 weeks of play it got the RROD. So i bought another.Xbox live consistantly discounects. What a waste of money.

  • Well the idiots at MICROSOFT have screwed everyone again by having the servers down. You would think a multi-billion dollar company would have their shit together, but in fact they don't. They owe everyone a free subscription for this latest fiasco. I will never buy a new xbox again. PS3 and Wii, here I come.

  • xbox and microsoft are jokes and all of you who have said it here are damn right! wheres the last digit on there f-in phone support number? ill tell you where it is, up there asses with the rest of the shit we gamers gotta deal with from microsoft. they can screw any repeat buisness from me and i will continue to talk down all microsoft products until he hires somone to get his multi billion dollar companies sorted the f*** out!
    thanx for reading ive calmed down now

  • people who can't speek english given advice to people who only speek english its a fuckin joke.

  • They are notorious for billing you without your permission. My son signed up for 1 month and they kept rebilling each month after. It took awhile to catch this a I assumed this is what my wife agreed to and i pay this bill at my office each month (self employed).We called and canceled (49 minutes on phone) and told we would not see another bill. in fact my son could play another two days as he was paid up through then (he did not play though). Next month-new charge of 7.99 two days after we canceled. called cust. service and was told that was a retrospective bill. he said my bill on credit card dated 9-21-08 was actually for service in August and he would not reverse the charges. I called Master card today and they reversed the charge and stated they always fine the merchant for billing after service is canceled. If they bill me next month call back and they will fix it again. Don't take these thieves lying down they make a fortune gouging customers 7.99 a piece knowing you probably wont fight em. Go get em

  • id have to agree. they just dont help. i wonder if sony is better?

  • I am fuming.

    I for Live for my roommate's 360 so that we could play gears of war and halo with friends back home. It worked great for 4 months of the year long subscription and then nothing. I tried it on other systems and still no way to get in.

    Since my roommate moved out and took the system with him I had no way to use it anyway so I gave up.

    Here it is two years later and I bought a 360 for myself. I tried to recover my gamertag and finally found out what the problem is.

    My login email that was @hotmail.com is now @hotmai.com. Somehow Live dropped the "l" in hotmail which is why I couldn't get on. When I try to recover with the @hotmai.com address I can't because it is not a valid email address.

    MY PROBLEM: All I need is for someone with an administrator account to go in and add an "l" to the end of my login. Thats all. Log in and type one button.

    I have spent HOURS on the phone with customer service. HOURS. After hearing that there is no way for them to do that, hung up on by a supervisor in Asia and bitched out by a supervisor in Canada I was told that in 3-5 days I would get a call from escalations. Here it is on day 5 and I call to get an update.

    The new supervisor tells me that escalation calls take 7 days and that I should just "sit and wait" for the call.

    I am not rude. I am not trouble. I am a nice customer who needs help and I do not deserve to be treated this way.

    I find it amazingly strange how rude support can be with such a polite script. I have never talked to a tech support line that is more inept and unhelpful as the one for Xbox Live.

    I am really on the edge here because as a game creator myself, I like to support my industry and enjoy playing the 360, but with such unhelpful assholes representing that company I really don't want to support them.

  • what is the f**kin number!!!!

  • From a mother who is very frustrated along with the rest of you. Indeed these XBOX people are crooks. First they make you subservient to their product then they have this phantom technical support system where you have to answer 1,001 questions from some person with a barely understandable English comprehension before they give out their phantom repair garage somewhere in God knows where in Texas.
    From an American who asks questions, will can you or not, why can't they just have authorized dealers throughout the U.S. Even a foriegn guy or gal, who knew how to fix this box would be awesome.
    So here's the deal. In ten years or less, this proberbial xbox will be obsolete.
    The big technical guys would like you to believe, because we're all sheep of coarse, that it is impossible to fix this gimmick. Well, of coarse not, cuz we're Americans, not dumb, and we can and will most certainly find a way to fix our boxes if and when we want. Goodbye!

  • Yeah about Xbox support...
    I had to block my account because of something that happened with a credit card issue. Now i went and bought a 1600 point card and remembered that i had to unblock the account in order for the card to work. So I called Xbox live customer support, told them what my problem was, waited a half-hour on hold, and then finally i talked to someone who told me that i had to wait 72 hours untill it was unblocked. I first called them on Saturday. Then yesterday, i called them back because my account was still blocked. They said that the workers were not there on the weekends. Then I (again) told them the problem and waited for support to answer the phone. I told one of them that the account needs to be unblocked. They get a supervisor and tell me that the account is unblocked and in 5 min the points card would work. However 3 HOURS LATER i call them back and repeat the same thing. The man on the phone said that it was still blocked. He said that they were unblocking it now and they would call me in a hour to say that it was unblocked. That last call i made was a 8 pm. 16 HOURS LATER THE ACCOUNT IS STILL BLOCKED!!!! I don't understand how they are called support. Because they still have not helped me at all. All because i got a prepaid points card so i can download Map Pack 2 for Call of Duty World at War!!

  • i got the e74 errror today and called them and i get a paki who repeats every thing i say. bill gates you are an asshole.if i pay $300 for an xbox i expect it to work.if bill gates was'nt preoccupied sucking steve job's ass he could build a working system and employ people that speak english properly.

  • Oh Hi guys.. well it happens that I also work on support. Yeah most of us didnt even play with an xbox EVER, although there are lots of consoles on the floor. I personally own a PS3, a NDS, a PS2 -I would never buy an xbox- . Xbox 360, do you imagine how many 3 red lights calls people from the HW line of service get in one day? at least 40 per agent, each day.

    Crazy aha?

    And actually xbox just closed the support site in India, because it ranked the worse in quality scores, so the 3 left are located in Canada, Mexico, and Argentina (which is the one I work now.. oh yeah hate me but I find it cool because I just wanted to work there cause I've always loved videogames and all... so bla)

    ** Imagine this guys: a floor full of hippies, rockers, skaters, and freakies, and weird people between 19 and 26 yrs old (with some exceptions)
    those are the ones who you are talking to when you phone support in here. Haha.


    Srsly.... and I know most of us are very dumb, some doesnt even want to help you and will tell you to call back just because they are lazy...

    but some are actually nice people who really enjoy their work, like videogames like you all do and want to help you.


    So well, I think I made this post so boring and long *lol*

    PS: To think I have the ability to see each of your accounts, change its info, membership status, or MS POINTS balances uh?


    By the way, are u having problems siging in these days? lots of issues because of the recent dashboard update...

  • I cant even get Micro... or XBOX to send me my xbox-live/zune.com password. Xbox Live support is a joke is an understatement.

  • I agree and this is 3 years later! My recent experience was pretty terrible. I received an email notifying me I'd be banned from xbox live. No email addresses were provided for me to give feedback or to appeal, I was only told I couldn't respond to that email. I eventually found an appropriate forum...that I couldn't post in because I was banned from Live. After finally finding their support email address and sending 2 different support tickets (weeks ago and I have yet to receive ANY response to the second) the content of my email was ignored and a canned response was inserted seemingly based solely on the fact I used the word "gamertag". I am wondering just what exactly we pay for in this service, given that the majority of online PC games are free to play online. Surely we could expect some better support.

  • Just a headsup for anyone who is promised a call-back from customer support. If they say they will call you within 48 hours, you better call them in 24. I've been promised atleast 4 call-backs and have never received 1. It just means you're gonna have to call them back. Don't waste your time waiting on the call.

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