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Microsoft’s Major Nelson posted an explanation of the problems I (and may other people) have been experiencing with XBox Live and our corrupt Gamertags.
I didn’t post about it when it happened, but MS finally contacted me back a week or so ago, and told me they couldn’t recover my gamertag. In compensation, they gave me 18 months of XBox Live to use. Not great, but at least I’ve got some closure and a few months of comped time. It doesn’t make up for the four years of fees I paid to keep my gamertag active, but its something.
If you’ve been following the drama (and who hasn’t?), you’ll know I’ve been waiting with not-so-baited-breath for Microsoft tech support to get back to me about my Xbox Live account migration problem.
Well, this evening I got a call from Derek, in the XBox Support department of Microsoft Corporate. He said the regular support guys had been trying to get a hold of me for the last few days. That was news to me, since my phone handn’t run and didn’t show any miss calls, but whatever, at least someone finally did call.
Unfortunately, Derek didn’t really have any news, he just told me what I already knew, which is that I probably sometime in the distant past tried to migrate my account via xbox.com and the account got corrupted. He took down all the possible email addresses I might have used as a Live ID, and said someone would get back to me again soon.
So, now I’m left waiting again. Derek did send me an email with his contact information, which I’ll use if I don’t hear anything by the end of the week.
I found another report of Gamertag issues due to trouble with Windows Live IDs, this one in an article titled “I Lost My Gamertag and Microsoft can’t find it“. The story there is a little convoluted and not exactly the same problem, but I’m pretty sure our two problems are related and if Microsoft could fix one of them, it could fix both of them. (And all the others posted I’ve already written about).
Again, I don’t know if it will help, but if you see this and have the same problem, post about it on this page (at getsatisfaction.com)
I have Logitech Harmony Remote for XBox 360, which I use to control my TV, TiVo, Xbox 360, and a computer I use to run XBMC. The problem is, I’m using a Microsoft Media Center PC remote receiver with the PC, and whenever I control the PC with the remote, the XBox turns on.
It turns out the solution is actually pretty simple: By default, the XBox recognizes both Media Center PC and XBox remote signals, but you can set it to only recognize XBox signals if you want.
On your XBox, go into system settings, and at the bottom of the list you’ll find an option to configure the remote control. Select the XBox 360 Remote Only option and you’ll be all set.
I found more reports of people having the same trouble I’m having with their expired Live ID’s here, and here. It appears a Microsoft employee named M3 Sweatt commented 13 days ago asking the original poster to comment on his blog with a description of his problem, so maybe something can be done. I don’t know if he has the power to do anything, but I’ll try and contact him too and see if I hear back.
If you have the same problem, I urge you to comment on this thread at GetSatisfaction.com, maybe if enough people comment, Microsoft will finally do something about the problem.
It is now day 6 and I still haven’t heard anything from the official MS channels. Its amazing that in this day when there are companies like Zappos.com that give their employees the authority to do whatever it takes to satisfy the customer, there are also companies like Microsoft that get away with such obvious disregard for theirs.
I found an article here covering some of the same issues I’ve been having with Microsoft’s XBox Live service.
Its unbelievable how long these service problems have existed, but I guess MS has no financial incentive to rectify the problems.