I immediately called the support centre and got told the system was updating and I was to call back later. I called back and was told they cannot help me and I need to speak to a manager but they could not speak to me and I was to call back today. I called back today and got to speak to another person and she said I need to speak to a manager, 14 minutes later I spoke to a manager called Ron he was not interested in talking and told me I can call anyone I wanted but he will not help me. I called your office in Canada and they told me they will not help. I called the office in Washington and was told someone would call me back within 4 hours. I have wasted more time and effort on this then it is worth.

All I want is to transfer the membership under my gamer tag to his so he can do what we intended this to do. This would allow him not to lose the Microsoft points, reputation and experience points that are all on his gamer tag. As for my tag you can cancel it or terminate it whatever you wish to do. This is a 13 year old boy that just wants to play and I may have been stupid for what I did but I was just trying to be a dad. I would like a response prior to the weekend so I can get this fixed or I will cancel my member ship and sell the entire system as I understand now PS network is free and I do not need to spend all the money I spent to get nowhere.

A year passes and im back to internet connectivity, and I decide its time to reconnect the xbox live account. I log in, and then it disconnects me. I try to resubscribe but it wont work. I think the first time I rang them they told me to give them my details so they could activate it, but they told me the card was being refused. I give up, and then ring later with another card. This time some slightly rude guy (who later informs me his name is Brad Pitt) tells me actually because i didnt pay my account was closed. He tells me theres nothing I can do, as its been ‘deleted from the database’. Of course when I log on to the website my accound is still there (and funnily enough has also been breifly updated from the few seconds my accound tried to connect). When i ring again he says its closed, theres nothing either of us can do, and basically i should f off and stop hassleing him, as I am better off making a new account. Except for the fact that im not.

Due to microsoft being so clever everything is associated to the live ID, saved games, email, xbox live purchases. So if i have to make a new one, i have to make a new msn account, and start all the games again, etc etc. Changing to a new email is one hell of a hassle due to the amount of things that rely on that account, and i dont want to redo all my save games, (fortunately i buy/spend and microsoft points, so I haven’t lost any money, but its nice to know i would of lost all purchases).

I ring up again, to see if I can complain, and this is what he says. First ‘There is no one higher than me you can talk to’ and to top it off, ‘Microsoft has no complaints department’.

Well who knew Brad Pitt was so good at customer service.

Instead of telling them to shove their worthless, dated product up their wide, pimply bottoms, the higher ups at my place shrug their shoulders and say: We don’t have any choice, this is the best system we could get.

Why would you — as Steve Ballmer — pay for top-notch customer support if people keep buying your crappy product? Why would you — as the purveyor of slipshod editorial products to a dying industry — provide good support if your customers don’t make you pay when you don’t?

Join with others ranting against Microsoft at blogs with big audiences. Try to get your voice heard. But if there are too many complaints or the great behemoth simply won’t listen, use that discretionary income for something else. If you grit your teeth and pay them, that’s the same as dropping your pants, greasing your bum and bending over a table. You may not have asked explicitly to be buggered, but the request is strongly implied. That should be the approach whether one is buying a $500 video game system or a $5 million publishing system.

Googling for it came up with this instead: http://blogs.msdn.com/mthree/default.aspx.

It is shocking that the Xbox has had so many problems – and customer support hasn’t been ramped up to deal with them. No-one should have to live in constant fear their console is going to implode every time they use it. MS had a huge headstart over Sony this generation, and if they manage to blow it, it’ll purely be down to reliability and customer support.

Oh, outsourcing….

You’re solution isn’t very realistic either though. You don’t put your “best and brightest” making a high-dollar salary on the front lines answering phones. You have them developing the software and fixing the actual problems. However, you need to hire and then train the right people and put them in the right job.

The other insight I can give is that many times the “developers” have ZERO people/social skills to compliment their knowledge of the product. That’s not very helpful either.

This seems to be a trend: The folks that deal directly with the customer don’t tend to know what they’re doing, or how their product works. It’s the worst business model I’ve ever seen.

If I owned a company, where customer support was an integral part, I would put my best and brightest there. It’s not like people don’t talk … I’m sure not on my way to pick up an Xbox after reading your post.

Maybe someday companies will learn this. One can hope.