General

Re: Can't purchase the membership!

The ZMan — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 21:24:48 GMT

No you cannot use points to buy membership. There's nothing we can do to change that. Sorry.

Enjoy some Indie games with the points

Re: Can't purchase the membership!

john marcher — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 21:18:12 GMT

Hi im new to XNA, and am trying to get a premium subscription.
I realise there are problems with using debit cards, and have assumed that you can use microsoft points to buy the subscription, but i have not been able to use them for this. I have more than enough to equal the price in £, so am feeling v. frustrated that my money has gone to waste.
Is there any way to use these points to get the premium subsciption? please help.

Re: Can't purchase the membership!

Geoff Graham — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 02:37:51 GMT

It's ok, we found a work around...I had to use my friends master card to purchase the member ship, then transfer everything over to my visa card. We're up and running now. Very strange though....

Re: Can't purchase the membership!

The ZMan — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 02:40:36 GMT

What error do you get?

I have no idea why the membership can't be purchased with points... but its very odd that a card would be valid for points but not the XNA membership..

There are some issues with debit cards see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/911113/?sd=xbox but I would expect that if you can buy points you should be able to buy other memberships.

Is possibly this: Your debit card cannot have restrictions on subscription-based or Internet purchases. Memberships are subscriptions based services which repeat every year or 3 months. So some debit cards don't allow that.

Please be patient - having problems like this is rare. The XNA team probably won't be able to reply till Monday

And yes I wish Microsoft (and every other company in the world) would realise that customer support is not the place to hire unqualified, minimum wage people.. half the time when you call they have never even heard of XNA.

Re: Can't purchase the membership!

Geoff Graham — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 02:20:54 GMT

This problem is making me very ANGRY!! I cut a couple hours out of work this morning to get a visa debit card from my bank. I go online from my comp at work, try to buy the xna premium membership....no dice! I get home later, try to buy the membership on-line again and then through my xbox, and fail! I managed to by points though!!

So, I call the xbox support team of wonder dummys, only to get stuck on the phone with some dude who has no clue what I'm talking about, and takes on average about 10 minutes to give me very simple answers that don't help in the least! Then.....after a long awkward pause on the phone, I hear the guy say "ummmmmmm awwwwwe I'm gonna transfer youuuu?"....so......I get transfered over to the "extra special" department, only to talk to another fool who sounds like he's googling my problem in the background as I'm explaining it to him. In the end, he sent a report/email to microsoft about my problem and told me there is no guaruntee of when or if I'll get an answer to the problem. But have a great day!!

So why exactlly can't we just use points to buy this membership anyways? And why can I use my card to get points.....but not the freakin membership? This is wasting my time and effort so far, which isn't cheap.

I don't meen to sound rude or dis-respectfull.......but I need to vent my frustrations.

Re: Can't purchase the membership!

Lord Cakeskull — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 19:49:54 GMT

Hi there Aztec

I've had this problem myself a few times, and after many pointless calls to xbox live "support" i found the problem myself by investigating my account. Here's what i did:-

1.) Go to https://billing.microsoft.com
2.) Enter your account email and password
3.) Make sure your balance is ZERO
4.) Go to marketplace and retry

I found that after i stopped paying the subscription fee, they kept trying to charge me for 2 months. It seems that the marketplace won't let you buy a new membership until you pay the outstanding amount through the billing site.

Wouldn't it be much more sensible to just add charge it at the same time as the fee for the new one?

Oh wait... "sensible" yeah, nevermind.

But they could at least just say that there's an outstanding amount instead of giving us a code that even the "support" staff don't understand.

Re: Can't purchase the membership!

Blue Agave — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 22:45:46 GMT

I had the exact same issue where I had canceled XNA and then couldn't rejoin later and got the 80150007 status code when trying to purchase the membership. I ended up needing to use a different card for payment and then it worked.

Re: Can't purchase the membership!

BrokenPlatypus — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 15:07:28 GMT

I was getting the exact same error. I had cancelled my account a few months ago when it was about to renew because I just wasn't using that much anymore. With the new announcements at GDC I decided to renew and I kept getting that same error code.

I went through a round with support, which were not very helpful at all, and eventually on a whim I tried another debit card, which is linked to the same bank account, and it went right through.

On billing.microsoft.com the original card had a cancelled xna creators club membership attached to it.. maybe because that was there they wouldn't let me get another?

So, new card, same bank account, same gamertag, and I was able to get my membership back.

Re: Can't purchase the membership!

Michael Klucher — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 17:43:37 GMT

Aztec:

Thank you for helping, and yes I am trying to purchase it with the 'Aztecgames' gamertag.

Sorry it took so long on this, I am not able to look up this information, so we have to work with several other teams. I sent you a few messages over Xbox LIVE as to why you are running into the issue. If you have questions please feel free to email us!

Thanks!

Re: Can't purchase the membership!

Coatl Studios — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 22:21:17 GMT

my problem of the xbox live billing system rejecting my card seems to be over its was very weird.. the bank people didnt know what to do.. i even tried with other cards.. like my brother card and my dads card all visa debit cards and none was being accepted..i was loosing all hope

but today as a last resource i tried once again to buy something from xbox live but i didnt thought the result was going to be different.. but to my surprise my card passed!! i succesfully bought a couple of points from the xbox.com site and later will try to buy the xna cc membership i hope it still passes hehehe

so i dont really dont know what happened.. but i hope this time everything gets solved ...

i hope aztec games gets his problem solved too :)

and yeah.. buying the subscription with points would be a very cool alternative..

Re: Can't purchase the membership!

The ZMan — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 10:44:31 GMT

Man you get the worst luck... i wish i had an answer for you.

As for the prepaid cards - lack of demand and economies of scale. Getting the cards into the supply chain probably isn't as straightforward as we think and whereas every xbox owner is a farily likley XBLA subscriber the percetage is much much smaller for CC members.

THe REAL question should be - why not buy CC membership with points then you could just buy point cards. (but I dont know the answer to tht either)

Re: Can't purchase the membership!

Aztec — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 08:57:53 GMT

I will check on the charge attempts. However I can tell you that there is plenty of money in the account and the card is infact a visa debit.
The thing is, this is the same card and account I have used the entire time. It worked with the auto renew subscription before, it only will not work since the creators club cancelation when my xbox was sent in for repair.

Why isn't there simply a card you can purchase somewhere similar to the xbox live gold cards? Isn't this what they give away for the contest winners?

Re: Can't purchase the membership!

The ZMan — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 21:03:26 GMT

Every time I have had a credit or debit card declined my bank has been able to tell me. I do not know if all bank can or will do that.

I do think that MS tech support is the wrong people to call.

While you are on your phone to the bank make sure you ask them the specific questions from the billing FAQ

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/support/live/acc-debit.htm

Your debit card must have either a Visa or MasterCard logo.
Your debit card cannot have restrictions on subscription-based or Internet purchases.
You must have more than 99 cents available in your debit card account.
The expiration date on your debit card cannot be the same month and year as the date you set up your account.

I suspect 1, 3 and 4 you can validate yourself. However #2 is likely a potential problem. If you have purchased on the internet before then you know about that but not everyone has purchased subscription based services. This (I think) is where you agree to be rebilled automatically. Maybe you bank does not allow that.

Re: Can't purchase the membership!

Aztec — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 12:20:08 GMT

Its my belief that the 'no debit cards' is a rumour created by an irresponsible or uneducated custoemr support rep.

The way visa fulfillment systems work is that XBLA takes your information and send it to the credit card processing provider which says 'Yes OK' or 'No thats wrong'. Often the errors they get back do not provide enough information on why it was rejected and only the bank or fulfillment agency can find that out.

If your bank will not give you this information then its not XBLA fault - thats jsut the way these systems work. I would be ripping my bank a new one right now to be honest.

Well, i am just so frustrated with this situation right now. I've contacted tech support for this problem more than any other problem I have ever had. Each party just says it could be the other partys problem and contact them.
I simply want to put my games on my xbox just like before and it is too hard now.
The thing that sucks the most about it is when I sit down to program in xna now, it is always in the back of my head I won't be able to deploy to my xbox until this problem is solved. This has caused signifigant stagnation in my xna programming.

I will try contacting my bank based on the information you provided above. You are saying they would have information about each time I clicked buy and recieved that status code?

Re: Can't purchase the membership!

Coatl Studios — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 19:53:01 GMT

yeah.. im thinking my problem its fault of my bank.. because i just experienced another website which gives me the same problem as xbla..first when i saw that others sites accepted my card and this dont.. i thought it was xbla fault.. but right now i have experienced other site which rejects my card again and again ..

i also tried with my brother's card which is from the same bank.. but sadly it was rejected too on both sites, so im thinking that the fault its the bank..

its a shame it used to work surprisingly well in the past but not anymore.. so im going to talk to people of this bank and if its not fixed.. im considering changing the bank i use.. not because of xbla only..but if in the future they start banning more and more things it will suck