Topic: "Microsoft Vs. Immigration"

[Maverick]

Been reading about this over the last few weeks over at Penny-Arcade, re-posting from another forum 'cause I'm too god damn lazy:

I've been following this thread since its inception over at Penny Arcade. The guy had a legitimate problem with X-Box Live and one of their dumb policies.

It continued to develop and get way out of hand with these articles appearing on Game Partisan, the guys place of "employment" (he works voluntarily "off and on").

To sum up, the guy moved from the UK to the US, and wanted to transfer his UK Live account to the US and maintain his GamerTag and gamerpoints, as well as his MS points and downloads. MS told him this was not possible. He then proceeded to blow it out of proportion and claim "discrimination", while accusing MS of trying to get him "fired" from Game Partisan. Now two (horribly written) articles have appeared on Game Partisan, and the story has over 1000 diggs.

Now, this is a legitimate problem with X-Box Live, and it sucks that MS doesn't have a system in place to transfer accounts for people who move from one country to another. I agree that that sucks and I wish they would fix it for those with that problem.

But the way things are worded and described by the poster and Game Partisan is just terrible, and many suspect that it is all some sort of traffic-grab for the site. The owner of Game Partisan even describes himself as an "opportunist", here (in a terrible interview).

Personally I'm more offended by the website itself than anything else, they claim to be professional, and have "staff meetings" and "editorial teams", yet they can't even manage to not have broken links on the front page?

Read the links for the full story and all the twists and turns, but frankly, I'm tempted to apply for a job at Game Partisan, as I know I can write much better than any article I've read from them. I could turn that place around I tell ya! :-P

EDIT:  I'm retarded and didn't copy over my hyperlinks.

[matt oz]

If Microsoft has a policy that they can't (or won't) transfer XBox Live accounts between countries, then that's their policy.  I bet it's even in their membership agreement when you sign up for a Live account.  It's certainly their right to do so, whether it's fair or not.  And claiming discrimination is way off base here.  Granted, telling a customer to go back to their home country is kind of mean, but it's a legitimate solution to his problem, which is apparently taking such a huge toll on his life that perhaps he should just shut up and do it.

[Flames_of_chaos]

Well if they said to go back to your country then that could be considered very racist. But if such policy exists in the EULA of Xbox live then the user is boned but I wonder what Microsoft will do considering what one of their customer service reps said to the guy.

[Maverick]

The thing is, when he first started his thread, everyone agreed with him and said that that sucked and it was wrong of MS Support to say things like "Go back to England."  Then he posted his e-mails to the company which read, paraphrasing,

"I was told on more than one occasion to 'go back to England.'  Now, I wasn't very offended at first, but I could find myself VERY offended for the media."

And then claimed that MS contacted the Editor In Chief of GamePartisan, and asked that he be removed from the staff.  That, coupled with the huge amounts of histrionic prose present in the two articles, kind of puts me off.  I just don't understand what MS would CARE about that site at all, and can't fathom why they would be in any sort of contact with GamePartisan.

Now if you find the thread, it devolved into a lot of people calling him out and kind of turning on him, and I don't think he's responded recently, at least last time I checked.

Maybe this is a case of "so impossible it's true"?  

[Crimm]

Aren't 360s region coded?  Why should Live accounts be different?

[Maverick]

They have to be different due to different laws and such I assume.  But I do think that Microsoft should have a system in place to accommodate those who move from one country to another.  It's a small percentage of people who will run across this problem (especially for native Americans), but it would be nice.  Maybe MS just decided that the small percentage wasn't worth the cost of changing it.  

[oohhboy]

What makes anyone here think that MS ever goes the extra mile just to be nice?

[Djunknown]

Its a shame. I agree they should read the EULA, re-read it, get a lawyer (solicitor?) if need be. This brings up two points for me that has been nagging me for a long time.

1)Do you really 'own' the content you purchase on Live?
2) Is 1-800-4MYXBOX the worst of the worst when it comes to customer service?

That fact that MS was so unwilling to bend while his story with Apple/iTunes was so uplifting makes this more disturbing. DRM might as well stand for "Denying Rights to Merchandise" or something...

Can't blame the folks for trying to get some publicity. This is definitely an odd story.

[Maverick]

Latest word is that he's been talking to Major Nelson through e-mails, and Nelson is trying his hardest to resolve the situation.  Whatever that means.  Hopefully MS takes a look at its policy and makes a solution for everybody with this problem.

[matt oz]

Quote
Originally posted by: Maverick
Latest word is that he's been talking to Major Nelson through e-mails, and Nelson is trying his hardest to resolve the situation.

What does Larry Hagman have to do with any of this?

[Maverick]

Apparently you need a Jeanie to solve problems with Microsoft.

[Nick DiMola]

Quote
Originally posted by: Djunknown
Is 1-800-4MYXBOX the worst of the worst when it comes to customer service?

A resounding yes to that question. My brother's 360 broke and I had called on his behalf to get it fixed. When I called them we went through all of the basic stuff to make sure it was actually a RROD issue and we settled on the fact that it indeed was. Now he needed my brother's registration number in order to exchange his system.

At this point my brother had owned the system for probably 9 months maybe a little more, but definitely less than a year. I know this because I bought my 360 before he bought his and mine had just been sent out for the same issue about a week earlier.

In any event, I give the customer service rep the number and he tells me the system is something like 13 months old and as such will not be covered by the 1 year warranty the 360 had on it. I inform him that this can not possibly be true (due to the conditions I explained above) and that there must be some sort of error with their system. He told me there was no error and I would have to prove the system's age with a receipt. I told him I had no receipt at this point and couldn't possibly produce one being that it is around 9-10 months after purchase. Following that statement the customer service rep, in not so many words, called me a liar.

A little ticked off, I told him I knew when the system was purchased and that regardless of the warranty issue they should be fixing RROD issues, no questions asked, because their poor manufacturing caused the RROD issues to occur, not any error in use on the consumer's behalf. He explained to me that "it's not [their] problem" and that if I wanted to get my brother's system fixed it would cost $150 (or some ridiculous sum of money around there). I then asked to speak to his supervisor which he absolutely would not let me do. He again told me the only course of action was to pay to get the system fixed and then asked me what I wanted to do. Again I told him I wanted to talk to his supervisor at which point he told me he could not do that for me and hung up on me.

I honestly couldn't believe what had happened and man did it piss me off. Thankfully the following day Microsoft announced that they were extending warranties to 3 years for RROD issues so my brother was able to get his system fixed on Microsoft's dime. But it pissed me off how they treated me on the phone and how unwilling they were to help me. I never experienced such issues with any other manufacturer when something broke under warranty. I still get annoyed over the thought of supporting Microsoft after how I was treated. I think if anything was to ever happen on that level again I would stop buying crap from Microsoft and just grab up a PS3.

[Maverick]

For the love of God, Jack, PLEASE change your avatar.  That... guy... has always creeped me the eff out.  

Anyways, now he's saying that he talked to his boss at Game Partisan's "contact" at Microsoft, "Steve", who after a half hour discussion told him that there's nothing they can do.  Didn't offer him any sort of compensation or point redemption, just nothing.  

[Ian Sane]

I doubt something like this would be intentional discrimination.  Odds are MS didn't think of this scenario.  In the past if you moved from Europe to North America your videogame console just wouldn't work on your North American TV and North American games wouldn't work on it.  Online gaming introduces a new element to everything and MS might not have thought about this.  Or they did and didn't think it was worth doing anything about.  Or they realized that it would be better for them to have people buy stuff twice and thus didn't address.  MS might be doing tricky sh!t here like they are known to do but I don't think they have any issue with Europeans or English people.  At worst they made a design oversight and are taking the opportunity to jerk the customer around because they have an excuse.

Is Live country based or region based?  If you moved from Canada to the US or vice versa would you have a problem?  It's the same region, we get the same games, everything's compatible.  I would assume it would be no issue.

In general when you assume anything bad that happens to you is a personal attack you sound like a nut.  Even if MS were racist against the UK why would they specifically want to get this guy fired from the site he works for?

[Djunknown]

Quote
If you moved from Canada to the US or vice versa would you have a problem?

Somewhat unrelated, but I came across this perusing PA's forums:

Quote
I'm from the US. I now live in Toronto. Damn near all my friends and family live in the US. And that stupid Virtual Console gift thing? Despite being in the same region, people in the US and Canada cannot send to one-another.

Its here.

On topic, I wouldn't be surprised if MS made the move from US-Canada just as inconvenient. I believe it has something to do with taxes tripping up the process.

In a more perfect world, this would be the situation:

1)Moved to another country
2)Purchased console where console company has a prescense
3)Call Customer Service, give them your information from the previous country
4)Customer Service contacts previous country's Customer Service, verifies stuff
5) Customer Service in current country transfers applicable stuff (Aside from some regional specific content)
6) Customer Service completes transaction (May have to pay a nominal fee)
7)Game to your hearts content, with all or most of stuff intact.

Perhaps this calls for taking it all the way to the top? Will they get a hold of Robbie Bach and Co.?

[IceCold]

I have experience with the Virtual Console thing from Secret Santa. One of you just needs to change their country temporarily.