Got XBox Live? I guess you cannot move!
Monday, February 12, 2007 10:17 PM
A few months before I left Ireland to move to the USA I purchased an Xbox360 and setup an Xbox360 Live account, part of the process was filling in my credit card details and billing address which included Ireland as the country. Before I moved to the USA I sold my Xbox360 and games and then purchased a brand new one over here so I wouldn't have any region and NTSC/PAL issues.
Fast forward on a year and the account has expired and the Irish credit card that was used to setup the account no longer exists so I receive an email letting me know that I need to provide new credit card details but what should be an easy matter of filling out a few fields on a form and updating my address details hits a brick wall. The COUNTRY field is not editable, it's fixed to Ireland, this means that the credit card verification fails so I can't renew my account.
Ok, maybe it's time to call xbox support. They answer, I give my details and tell them the issue and their answer is that I cannot change the country. I tell them that people move countries all the time, they must have some method of updating account information, they tell me that they have no way of changing the country,
Apparently once the xBox360 Live account is setup the country you select is permanent. Their solution to the problem is to delete the account and have it setup again and this sounds like a reasonable solution until you ask about all the items that you have purchased on Xbox Live that are linked to your account.
Their answer is not a good one, Once the account is deleted you will lose all the items your have purchased and they cannot be transferred to the new account but you will be able to repurchase them on the new account. Ok, what about a refund... nope their system cannot provide refunds.
This is ridiculous, who designs a system that makes it impossible to change the country field in a users account details? People do move countries and not just to the USA but all around the world.
What makes this a really laughable situation is that I want to give Microsoft money for something and they are refusing it, without the update to the country in my account I cannot use the Microsoft Live marketplace to purchase new games on the Xbox Live Arcade, I cannot access the Xbox Live video marketplace to purchase and download movies and I can't play any of my xbox Live games online without my subscription account.
So if you have an Xbox Live account then make sure you cancel any plans you may have in relation to moving countries.