To start off on a lighthearted note, this is what I was greeted with when I tried to sign up for Xbox Live with the name "thatbox" a week ago (last Monday).
"The Gamertag thatbox is currently in use on Xbox Live."
vs
"The Gamertag thatbox does not exist on Xbox Live."
... well, okay. I'll use the b-team name, cetteboite. Whatever. I just want to play some games with some dudes, and this borrowed 360 was my chance (my Xbox is modded and plays a key role in my media streaming setup, so I'd never had this opportunity before). As we will soon see, it is a lucky thing that I also happen to have a go-to third string online handle.
So Saturday afternoon I go to play some Halo 2 on Xbox Live. I'd only ever played Halo 2 on Xbox Live once before, and that was Friday. They made me pay four dollars for new maps (you cannot play online without them; how that's not extortion I'm not entirely sure), and the Xbox 360 froze a lot during games, so I'd only successfully completed maybe three of the games. At most I'd attempted a dozen.
But, Saturday afternoon, a surprise message!
A friendly blue dialog box popping up!
I was "permanently suspended" from Halo 2 matchmaking after four days of being a Live subscriber and maybe three total games of Halo 2 online. After three hours of phone time with five different tech support reps, the consensus was that it was a glitch in the system but that they couldn't do anything to help me - leaving me with three hours down the drain and a YOU ARE ****ED LOL diagnosis. I also sent emails to every address I could find on Microsoft's and Bungie's websites, but only ever got back form letters telling me to call the number (My email, response 1, response 2, response 3, response 4). (At one point one rep even told me to get support from Bungie.net, but the only thing Bungie.net says about support is "call 1-800-4-MY-XBOX".) I sent a PM to the Bungie.net forum head honcho (someone recommended this to someone else in a random thread for another problem - a thread in which two or three others were reporting the same issue as me was locked because "this is not a support forum.") and a GAF PM to Stinkles/Frankie (I had seen him helping another GAFfer out with his own problem a week or so ago), asking for maybe five minutes out of their days to look at my profile and see that something was wrong. Neither replied.
I called again today and demanded to talk to a supervisor, who was initially resistant ("I can't help you, and that's our final answer.") but I persisted. When she actually listened to me, she agreed that something was wrong. Even for a TOS violation, she said it would only be a temporary ban, and that there is nothing on their end that results in instant automatic permanent suspension - especially in light of the fact that I had really only played a few games. Once I had her on my side, an interesting detail emerged: MS's Xbox Live division has no control over Bungie's bannings. They literally and technically could not lift my ban, and apparently didn't have a Bungie contact to deal with things like this. This is kind of scary, because you'd like to think that Bungie has some accountability for their actions, and it's amusing to construct a fantasy of Bungie going rogue one day and wreaking havoc with Microsoft's most lucrative Live titles, leaving MS with little or no simple recourse. I pressed more on this issue, but she started saying she couldn't reveal anything more about the relationship between Xbox Live proper and Bungieland.
She sympathized with me, and this was the point at which she did some digging into a last-ditch method that might save my account. This came up empty. I asked if she could refund the two months I wouldn't be using after the H3 beta, and she did some more research (she was as helpful as she could have been, once she decided to be) and found out that being banned from Halo 2 matchmaking would almost certainly take me out of the Halo 3 multiplayer beta - but her words and tone made it almost sound like Bungie's special corner of Live was some sort of mysterious black box, and she didn't know for sure. Of course, the Halo 3 multiplayer beta is the reason I borrowed this 360 in the first place, and also the reason I paid for Live (three months, with the expectation of getting in some Gears and Halo 2 after the H3 beta period).
We were both audibly bummed out at this news. She said the best we could do was refund my cetteboite account (we were on the seven day tail end of this being possible - I don't know what we would have done if I'd called tomorrow instead of today) and have me make a new one, and that's what I've done, though I've only paid for one month to play the beta. No saved games or gamer points or friends lists or anything, and you can't unlink MS passport accounts from Xbox Live accounts so I'll never get to enjoy the Live IM integration with anohako, but at least I'll be able to play the game. (If this happens again I'll be SOL - I'm plumb out of languages I know how to say thatbox in.)
So that was the snafu. Wasted a lot of my time this past weekend, not just on the phone, but also trying to play H2 games online and getting network problem errors before the 360 got the message that I was out of there.
I'm also not naturally very aggressive on the phone, so it wasn't easy to work up the chain and argue with people to get this half-workable result.
As much as I enjoy Halo, I'm really doubting that I'll wind up buying a 360 and Halo 3 when it launches. My experience so far has been utter crap, and the inability of the support channels to fix such a cut-and-dried case of Bungie screwing up doesn't inspire confidence in their system. This whole experience has been disappointing and exasperating.
Has anybody else experienced this issue, or any other arising from Bungie's weird Live positioning? Has Xbox Live customer service been satisfactory for you guys, aside from the hardware problems?
"The Gamertag thatbox is currently in use on Xbox Live."
vs
"The Gamertag thatbox does not exist on Xbox Live."
... well, okay. I'll use the b-team name, cetteboite. Whatever. I just want to play some games with some dudes, and this borrowed 360 was my chance (my Xbox is modded and plays a key role in my media streaming setup, so I'd never had this opportunity before). As we will soon see, it is a lucky thing that I also happen to have a go-to third string online handle.
So Saturday afternoon I go to play some Halo 2 on Xbox Live. I'd only ever played Halo 2 on Xbox Live once before, and that was Friday. They made me pay four dollars for new maps (you cannot play online without them; how that's not extortion I'm not entirely sure), and the Xbox 360 froze a lot during games, so I'd only successfully completed maybe three of the games. At most I'd attempted a dozen.
But, Saturday afternoon, a surprise message!
A friendly blue dialog box popping up!
I was "permanently suspended" from Halo 2 matchmaking after four days of being a Live subscriber and maybe three total games of Halo 2 online. After three hours of phone time with five different tech support reps, the consensus was that it was a glitch in the system but that they couldn't do anything to help me - leaving me with three hours down the drain and a YOU ARE ****ED LOL diagnosis. I also sent emails to every address I could find on Microsoft's and Bungie's websites, but only ever got back form letters telling me to call the number (My email, response 1, response 2, response 3, response 4). (At one point one rep even told me to get support from Bungie.net, but the only thing Bungie.net says about support is "call 1-800-4-MY-XBOX".) I sent a PM to the Bungie.net forum head honcho (someone recommended this to someone else in a random thread for another problem - a thread in which two or three others were reporting the same issue as me was locked because "this is not a support forum.") and a GAF PM to Stinkles/Frankie (I had seen him helping another GAFfer out with his own problem a week or so ago), asking for maybe five minutes out of their days to look at my profile and see that something was wrong. Neither replied.
I called again today and demanded to talk to a supervisor, who was initially resistant ("I can't help you, and that's our final answer.") but I persisted. When she actually listened to me, she agreed that something was wrong. Even for a TOS violation, she said it would only be a temporary ban, and that there is nothing on their end that results in instant automatic permanent suspension - especially in light of the fact that I had really only played a few games. Once I had her on my side, an interesting detail emerged: MS's Xbox Live division has no control over Bungie's bannings. They literally and technically could not lift my ban, and apparently didn't have a Bungie contact to deal with things like this. This is kind of scary, because you'd like to think that Bungie has some accountability for their actions, and it's amusing to construct a fantasy of Bungie going rogue one day and wreaking havoc with Microsoft's most lucrative Live titles, leaving MS with little or no simple recourse. I pressed more on this issue, but she started saying she couldn't reveal anything more about the relationship between Xbox Live proper and Bungieland.
She sympathized with me, and this was the point at which she did some digging into a last-ditch method that might save my account. This came up empty. I asked if she could refund the two months I wouldn't be using after the H3 beta, and she did some more research (she was as helpful as she could have been, once she decided to be) and found out that being banned from Halo 2 matchmaking would almost certainly take me out of the Halo 3 multiplayer beta - but her words and tone made it almost sound like Bungie's special corner of Live was some sort of mysterious black box, and she didn't know for sure. Of course, the Halo 3 multiplayer beta is the reason I borrowed this 360 in the first place, and also the reason I paid for Live (three months, with the expectation of getting in some Gears and Halo 2 after the H3 beta period).
We were both audibly bummed out at this news. She said the best we could do was refund my cetteboite account (we were on the seven day tail end of this being possible - I don't know what we would have done if I'd called tomorrow instead of today) and have me make a new one, and that's what I've done, though I've only paid for one month to play the beta. No saved games or gamer points or friends lists or anything, and you can't unlink MS passport accounts from Xbox Live accounts so I'll never get to enjoy the Live IM integration with anohako, but at least I'll be able to play the game. (If this happens again I'll be SOL - I'm plumb out of languages I know how to say thatbox in.)
So that was the snafu. Wasted a lot of my time this past weekend, not just on the phone, but also trying to play H2 games online and getting network problem errors before the 360 got the message that I was out of there.
I'm also not naturally very aggressive on the phone, so it wasn't easy to work up the chain and argue with people to get this half-workable result.
As much as I enjoy Halo, I'm really doubting that I'll wind up buying a 360 and Halo 3 when it launches. My experience so far has been utter crap, and the inability of the support channels to fix such a cut-and-dried case of Bungie screwing up doesn't inspire confidence in their system. This whole experience has been disappointing and exasperating.
Has anybody else experienced this issue, or any other arising from Bungie's weird Live positioning? Has Xbox Live customer service been satisfactory for you guys, aside from the hardware problems?
gamer points, IM capability (my actual Passport account is of course tied to my first Live account), and to have to retype my friends list in. At least this time I was aware of the ability to use the website instead of cramping up over the 360 pad for an hour. If it sounds hokey it's just my writing style or your reading style; the whole saga concluded not seven hours ago 