It’s difficult to imagine such a rustic, primitive existence, but Dustin doesn’t have broadband Internet access at home. He seems to manage, though. Except when it comes to his Xbox 360. When he downloaded a game expansion, a Microsoft representative gave him bad advice, instructing him to put his hard drive in the console of a friend who does have broadband at home. The representative left out a step, and the game expansion license now belongs to Dustin’s friend’s account. No one at Microsoft is able to help him get the content back under his own gamertag so he can use the content he paid for.

I am an Xbox360 owner who does not have high-speed internet connectivity at my home. First, I contacted phone support and asked for assistance with downloading a game expansion from LIVE market. The phone support instructed me to bring my hard-drive to a friends home, and use their console to download the material. The support agent did not instruct me to “recover my gamertag” (live account) and so the license was purchased for my friends account inadvertently. Because of this I am unable to access the downloaded content that I have paid for.

I have contacted 5 different support agents, 2 of which were supervisors, 1 of which actually told me “we are not responsible for any issues caused by incidental damage caused by tech support resolutions” and called me a whiny. I spent 5 hours on the phone regarding this, each operator I talked to offered conflicting information and instructions; none have been able to provide an acceptable solution.

The best solution offered was for my friend to recover his gamertag onto my console and transfer his licenses thereby, and then for myself to remain offline while playing the downloaded content. Unfortunately this is impossible because my first phone service agent erroneously instructed me to perform a license transfer at an inappropriate time and license transfers can occur only once every 120 days. A manual authorization requires 2 weeks time for the escalation department to complete the request. This would work if I were able to access Xbox LIVE at home in two weeks time, but fundamental to the problem I am not able to do this and a delay of two weeks to correct an error made by a phone service agent is not acceptable.

I do not believe I should be expected to expend this amount of effort to use a product I have purchased per the guidelines instructed by Microsoft’s own tech support, or to receive a trivial $20 refund or reimbursement for an unusable product.

I have since then, attempted an executive carpet bomb to no response, perhaps the addresses I had were not up to date, perhaps I need to give more than 3 days, but I’m not waiting 14 or 120 days for the ability to attempt to allow me to circumvent the system by never logging onto Xbox Live again.

On a side note, according to 2 different supervisors at tech support, they are apparently not allowed to give you their manager’s information, which helps them ensure that they are never held accountable for their actions or insults.

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