Xbox Live Sucks - Wed, Mar 12, 2008

So I decide to get on chromehounds today to play (like I usually do every night) when I get a message that my Xbox LIVE account has been suspended. Hm, thats wierd, I dont remember pissing anyone off (or even playing anyone within the past few days or so). It says that I’m unbanned as of 3/13/08. I check my email and I recieve this:

Inappropriate Content

Do not respond to this email address. It is not monitored.

This email is to notify you that your Xbox Live account privileges have been suspended due to feedback received from other Xbox Live users about your inappropriate content on the service. Additionally, Xbox Live has deleted the content in question.

You have been sent a message in the Xbox Live Dashboard notifying you when your suspension will end. During this suspension time, you will not be able to log into Xbox Live. Your Xbox Live privileges will be automatically reinstated at the end of your suspension period. The length of a suspension is not announced by Xbox Customer Support and is subject to change without prior notice by Xbox Live.

Xbox Live expects that all customers abide by the Xbox Live Code of Conduct. The Code of Conduct provides guidelines for appropriate behavior while playing on the Xbox Live service. You can view the Code of Conduct from the Xbox Live Dashboard under Xbox Live Policies in Account Management, or by visiting http://www.xbox.com/live/legal/legal-tou.htm. Your failure to abide by the Code of Conduct in the future may result in, among other things, longer suspension periods or cancellation of your account.

If you have any questions regarding the Xbox Live Code of Conduct, please contact Xbox Customer Support.

Thank you
Xbox Live Community Management team

What the fuck? What content did I have on there that was fucking inappropriate? So I call, and are promptly wait on hold for a bazillion years. Not even any fucking hold music. You would think that with 4.5 x 10^99 dollars Microsoft can sport a little hold music for us poor saps that need to call. So I wait, and wait, and wait and wait with only silence to keep me company on the phone.

Once the rep picked up (who was located in India, go figure) this is what happened.

  • The rep could not look up my account, even though I gave her my gamertag and full name.

  • The rep’s computer then locked up and needed to be rebooted. Cue another 10 min of hold time (also cue the windows jokes here)

  • The rep told me that my account was active, and had no idea it was suspended. It was after I sat there and yelled at her that it was suspended before she put me on hold for another 10 min to “investigate” why I was showing up at active.

  • The rep said that my account was terminated due to violation of the Code of Conduct. When I asked what exactly I violated she did not have an answer, only that I violated it. She said that I cannot talk to the department thats in charge of suspending account.

  • Since they had no reason why my account was suspended, I asked for it to be unsuspended since they had no evidence of any wrongdoing that they can give me (a paying customer) so obviously it must of been a mistake. When she said that it was not possible I asked to speak to a manager.

  • The manager said that my account was suspended due to negative feedback due to the nature of XBL self-policing itself. She did not have an answer other than “you need to consult the code of conduct” to the following questions/comments:

    • How am I to know what I did wrong when you will not tell me what the complaints were
    • How its theoretically possible for me and my friends can send negative feedback to an innocent third party to get his account suspended and him/her not have any sort of idea or recourse
    • How does XBL validate the complaints it gets? It does not log voice or game-logs, so its all based upon the honor system, which as you can probably guess a bunch of 14 year olds with small cocks + video games + any sort of power = bad policing.
    • How am I supposed to determine what *NOT* to do again if I have no sort of idea what I did wrong in the first place?
    • Why can I, a paying customer, not be privileged to knowing what complaints are filed against the account which I pay for?

    After this point it just got into a round-go-round argument as to how she cannot release who complained against me, and me insisting that I did not want to know WHO complained against me, but WHY they complained against me. She could not release that information due to XBL policy. I ended up hanging up on her. She obviously has never played XBL and did not realize the basic frustration of being accused and punished for something that you had no idea you did.

    So here I sit, unable to play XBL due to something that I obviously did but have no idea doing and nobody is telling me why. If you are microsoft and reading this, your policy sucks. I have a right as a paying customer to know WHY my account was suspended so I can not repeat the mistake (if there was one) in the future. I expect a reply or comment to this post explaining to me and the rest of the people who read this exactly the basis is for your vague draconian communist rationale for punishing people without telling them what they did. If it was a computer glitch or mistake then be upfront and admit it. Obviously if you cannot keep your Cust Service rep’s desktops from crashing it tends to make me believe that this is a big mistake and you are just too stupid/proud to admit that I did nothing wrong.

    You can expect now that I’m going to be filing complaints against everyone and anyone who does anything that makes me angry. The “Code of Conduct” says its perfectly fine if I did that (thats how vague it is).

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