Reader P bought a new Xbox 360 after his old console descended to Red Ring of Death hell. Having forgotten his Xbox Live password, P endured the arduous process of attempting to recover the password through Microsoft. The way P describes it, doing so was as simple and user-friendly as spinal surgery.

He writes:

Is this where we can report companies that provide ridiculously bad customer service or what we have to go through to get assistance. Here is my story with Microsoft customer service.

Not surprisingly, my Xbox 360 died on my and gave me the red ring of death. I ended up buying a new one as it was quite old but realized that I did not have the password for my Xbox live account any longer. The account was a 10 year old Hotmail account that was no longer in use. It had also started sending out spam at some point so I had changed the password but did not mark it down as it did not concern me

I don’t know how many people have tried to recover a Live password but I’ve quickly discovered how much of an exercise in futility it is. If you have no recourse such as a secret question, you must go through a tedious process with Microsoft which is aimed at Live/Hotmail. You have to provide a number of facts on the account such as contacts, folders, MSN friends, etc. which is difficult to do when you use either of the tools- even more so when you don’t have the password to access them!

So my only possibility was to provide as much information as I could on my Xbox Live account. This was done on the 14th of December. On the 22nd someone answered telling me I hadn’t given them enough information even though I clearly said I couldn’t. My response was to give them my address and even the credit card information linked to the account. The following day I gave them a complete list of what I had purchased on the Xbox Live account as I could still access the old hard drive in the new console. On the 29th I made a small purchase of points and told them what I had bought and the remaining total. Finally yesterday on the 8th of January they came back to say they still could not validate the account even with all I had provided!

During that time I also opened a ticket with the Xbox Live support who advised me to deal with MS Live. I called them again and they said they could not help me unless I got a password reset first. I asked for a supervisor and he explained it again that this is not an Xbox Live issue so it has to be Live that assists. It looks like both are unlinked and neither has any interest in helping me meaning I lose everything I’ve ever purchased off Xbox Live.

I have done everything I can… there is no further information I can provide them. So that said I ask the Consumerist if you can provide guidance on how I can get back my account on Xbox Live.

If you’ve reset your Xbox Live password, how did your experience compare to P’s?

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