I seriously need help. I previously posted here that my xbox broke and I was trying to suspend my creators club membership. Well after seriously countless hours of phone tech support and no answers online, I managed to work out that we would cancel the membership and the remainder $28.28 was to be refunded to my account.

 Great, only problem is insted of refunding me the money, they charged me $28.28!!!!!

So now, I have no creators club membership, they robbed me of more money and I cannot get through to them on tech support now!

Seriously, I need to know how to contact someone who can fix this immediatly. This is really starting to sour my experience with xna and the creators club.

Edit: This brings my grand total to $78.27 for ~1 month of the creators club membership. (4mo $49.99 + refund $28.28)

Sorry no one's here to answer, you will prob. have to wait until tomorrow for a answer, as most that could answer a question like yours are not active on the forums right now.

I hate to tell you this but we can't handle billing issues in these forums... nobody in here has access to any of that stuff.

Your only choice is to go through the phone support mess once again.

Or possibly dispute the charges with your credit card company - though I'm not sure what evidence you need.

Most of the MS guys are on vacation right now for the holidays and post release winding down. there is a very small chance that after the holidays someone can escalate but it won't be for a while.

I sorta figured nobody directly on the forums would be able to fix the problem, possibly just point me in a better direction.

I actually tried the phone support when I saw this charge yesterday and when I got through the menus and the agent picked up, they immediatly hung up on me. So I posted here as I didn't know what else to do. I will try calling them back again today.

I am also going to try to dispute the charge with my bank if I get nowhere again. I definatly don't think that microsoft can claim or prove they sell a product or service which has a one time charge of $28.28. With or without sales tax added in.

 

There are several million xbox live subscribers and within that group a very small number are CC subscribers. So the folk on the phone have no clue what CC is most of the time when you call. I imagine the call centers are like any big company, low wage outsourced folk who are trained to deal with the top 10 problems as fast as possible. In general you have to go through the initial call and then ask to be escalated to get anything done outside these top 10 cases. "please let me talk to your supervisor" is the key phrase here.

I've raised this issue in general with Microsoft in the past and I've asked them about it again today. Maybe as more and more people sign up for CC the billing support people will start to learn about the issue.

Well, just an update on my situation. After even more calls to the tech support (been hung up on, new reference numbers etc), filing a fraudulent charge report with my bank, I am still sitting here without my origional refund and there is no news to be had on the money they robbed me for.

Xbox says here's a new ref number wait 3-5 more days and my bank says they can't do anything until microsoft gets back to them. The scarriest thing of all is microsoft still has my credit card information and who knows if they will rob me again!

Oh well, this has really turned me off to the whole xna experience. I seriously doubt I would want to ever give them my money again as this has now cost me more money than I would get back if I ever do get the refund I deserve.

Whatever

This truly sucks... however some folk have reported getting things sorted quickly of late... it seems like its just a case of getting the right guy. As I said I have escalated to Microsoft though its to the XNA team as I have no contacts in the Live part of the company. Have you asked for supervisors etc when you call.

[edit: the XNA guys tell me they forward the escalations onto the live support team so the complaints are getting to the right people. I wish the right people would come and post in here and tell you all what to do]

>The scarriest thing of all is microsoft still has my credit card information and who knows if they will rob me again!

That's pretty unlikely - its quite a jump from an incompetent support team to credit card fraud....

I tried numerous times to ask for supervisors, as a matter of fact, minutes before I posted my last comment I just got off the phone with tech support asking for a supervisor.

I still have not been able to talk to anyone in charge. The woman I spoke with just kept asking for me to confirm my account information and assured me over and over that I shouldn't worry as her records showed the "refund" for $28.28 had already taken place. I told here at least 5 times that they did not refund me they charged me and I would like to speak to a supervisor as this exact line of questions and answers had already taken place many times. She simpley would not transfer me to a supervisor!

I then told her my next step was to call the police as I had already tried my bank and numerous calls to support with no resolution. She tried to spin it around and tell me to go back to the bank and wait some more. I told her no, let me talk to a damn supervisor now! She then put me on hold for ~10-15 minutes and told me she had escelated it to her supervisor and I should wait 5 more days! I asked her if they intended to call me back when they figure something out with it, she told me no, just keep checking your bank and if it dosen't work call back again.

This has been going on for a month now. I wouldn't be so pissed off, but winter is my down time  for work as I am a contractor and because they took that money when they did (right at christmast time), it caused all of my paymets to be off and now I am in the hole with a number of people because of late charges and borrowed money. I serously had my payments balanced to the dollar.

So when I deal with a month+ of run arounds with them it puts me in quite a bad mood. And what recource do I really have? If they simply keep telling me to call this or that number and wait a little longer and my bank says roughly the same thing, my next move is to take them to small claims court. If I have to take them to court, I will have to front almost as much money as they owe me just to file the claim. Then they will take their sweet time getting the paperwork together plus the allowed time the court will give them, I would be lucky to see the money by the end of the year! I have gone throught the whole court thing before and it a royal pain in the ass. Not worth it for a claim like this by far.

So I thought I'd vent here while I wait, at least it puts a public record of my complaint up for all to see and perhaps it can help others who may end up with similar problems.

Oh, and by the way. I don't honestly think they would take more money out but then again I didn't think they would the first time either...

It certainly seems like you have done everything you can... and we have escalated from this end.

Hopefully someone will sort this out - until the maybe some humor http://despair.com/cudi.html

 

Humor on the XNA forums, blasphemy!

Nice!  That site reminds me of the *** Operator from Hell series.

EDIT:  Apparently the forums don't like the B word.

Well thanks for the link to something funny, I appreciate the thought.

As for the status of my problem. I just recieved a call from someone with xbox live, he wanted to clear up the issue but his records showed that the refund had already been given. I explained the situation to him and he said he had to send it to microsoft to see what happened. He was very polite and said I should recieve a call within another week with more information. More waiting but at least I got a call instead of making one.

I will post here as I get more information.

One more piece of information.

My bank just sent me a letter which states they are denying my claim because they need a copy of my refund receipt to verify the amount? They recommend that I contact the merchant to resolve my dispute!

It is very nice to know that if I am wrongly charged and the company charging me decides not to take action on it, my bank will help them do it. I guess it is a good thing microsoft is a reputable company or I really would end up in court.

I guess we will see where this goes. I also guess it is time for a new bank!

This is truly becoming a learning experience and has helped me to realize that I may want to take more steps to protect against identity theft. If I can't get a simple charge removed by my bank, what the hell would happen if someone was really charging up my account?!?

You could request a reciept from Microsoft. Microsoft should be required to prove it was indeed a refund. Pretty simple, if your reciept says you got a refund, and your bank sees you were charged, I'd hope they'd reverse it for you.

Great!
I'll have similar problem but I'm from Poland. 60 minutes by the phone with USA cost same as 4mo membership. But the problem is that they charged my card which is no longer valid and I cannot add new payment method with new card as the card cannot be authorized. It is a bit unwise to charge a credit card which has expired. I don't know, maybe in USA you can change your card's expiration date in a bank, but here in Poland they give a brand new card, which is safer I guess.
I wonder what will happen if I just forget about it and do not pay those money?

Here in the US they will give you a new card when one expires, however that doesn't imply you will get a new CC number, and so as long as the card was renewed under the same number, it can be charged.

Lord Ikon:

You could request a reciept from Microsoft. Microsoft should be required to prove it was indeed a refund. Pretty simple, if your reciept says you got a refund, and your bank sees you were charged, I'd hope they'd reverse it for you.

True enough, I will go this route if within this week I get no farther with microsoft. The only problem I see with this route is that it will only cancel or void the $28.28 charge from my account and still leave the actual refund in limbo.

Ok, it seems I am half done now. Microsoft has returned $28.28 to my account, canceling out the charge error. Now I am back to needing the origional refund of $28.28.

I guess I call the bank or microsoft again.

Its the principal of the matter more than the amount I would think. If it were about the amount, the time it took you to get it back would be worth more than the refund.

Ok, i just checked my acct after a recent call to tech support and all appears well now.
The key seemed to be finding someone who even understands what xna was, supervisors included.
I have learned some things are more hassle than they are worth and microsoft is getting quicker about getting your broken counsels back to you.

Thanks for everyone's help on this.