Embarrassing Xbox Live Diamond card typo

by Vladimir Cole { Apr 5th 2006 at 11:30PM }

Xbox 360: $400

Lots of peripherals and some games: $300

Xbox Live service: $50 per year

Whipping out your Xbox Live Diamond Card on a hot date ("I got it babe. I get a discount on full meal deals on Tuesdays!") only to have the McDonald's employee behind the counter point out a typo? Priceless.

(More proof. Even more proof. Yet more proof.)

Tags: xbox live diamond card, XboxLiveDiamondCard

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Tomoki @ Apr 5th 2006 11:35PM

I may be blind but, whats the typo? If its "thru", regular credit cards do that too.

Dirk Dorkelson @ Apr 5th 2006 11:38PM

Someone should send a memo to the nation's bloggers and journalists that the MasterCard "priceless" parody cliche stopped being funny more than a year ago and has been retired.

pukgreenuniform @ Apr 5th 2006 11:43PM

They spelled "thru", this way "trhu". I hope they didnt do that on my card too.

Kindred @ Apr 5th 2006 11:44PM

But American's misspell through all the time. What's the big deal?

Huey2k2 @ Apr 5th 2006 11:46PM

Yea.. I was about to say, my Visa uses "Thru" instead of Through as well.... I am pretty sure every major credit card does. Not really a typo.

Uno @ Apr 5th 2006 11:47PM

It's TRHU, instead of THRU.

TME @ Apr 5th 2006 11:47PM

The typo isn't that it's typed thru instead of through, the typo is that it is spelled trhu instead of thru.

Jake @ Apr 5th 2006 11:49PM

Hey Huey2k2 - double check the spelling of it. It's tHRu *not* tRHu

Sklathill @ Apr 5th 2006 11:50PM

THRU. Not TRHU.

Jeff @ Apr 5th 2006 11:50PM

Well even if they were to shorten it, they would put "Thru" instead of "Trhu"

So how is that not a typo, Huey2k2??

murph @ Apr 5th 2006 11:50PM

looks like TRHU to me

akira @ Apr 5th 2006 11:51PM

So that's the reason why vista is delayed. Somebody transposed all the letters of the code. Man somebody is on monster right now.

Jeff @ Apr 5th 2006 11:52PM

Well, I guess he'll get the point. haha.

h2o.2006 @ Apr 5th 2006 11:54PM

You guys are either not looking hard enough or not thinking. The typo is in fact that they messed up the "THRU" and spelt it with "TRHU". This would be common if it is a 5 year old doing it, but grown-up, educated people? It is insane...

Ron Smith @ Apr 5th 2006 11:56PM

you should have socked that guy in the balls for being a grammar nazi.

boots @ Apr 6th 2006 12:05AM

h2o.2006 and everyone else:

It's easy to confuse "trhu" with "thru" when reading it (without putting much attention to detail).

It's said that if you write a word with the first and last letters in proper order, you read the word that was meant to:

Examples:

ioidt iiodt idoit

pzzia pziza

ahossle alssohe

dbumsas dubmass

TRHU THRU

Brandon @ Apr 6th 2006 12:07AM

Mine didnt even have my right gamertag. It was like a combination of letters and numbers in no conceivable pattern or order. Someone else's gamertag or computer glitch?

Fuzz @ Apr 6th 2006 12:08AM

It's because the Xbox 360 uses a PPC processor, as opposed to an Intel one. You see, a PPC use Big-endian byte order, wheras Intel uses Little-endian. When Mcirosoft updated the system for the 360, they neglected to change byte order, hence the flipped h and r. I can't explain why the t and u didn't flip as well, perhaps they were in seperate arrays. :P

piko @ Apr 6th 2006 12:26AM

ew, if you click on the "more proof" link, there's like a huge pubic hair on the card.

is it the poster's, or bill gate's?

scz @ Apr 6th 2006 12:39AM

at least you've gotten your card, and piko is right there is a huge pube there, ebay that billion dolla bill gates pube!

Derek @ Apr 6th 2006 1:14AM

LMFAO! (literally)
all cause the pubes...

allenu @ Apr 6th 2006 1:24AM

Very subtle typo that no one notices unless you point it out to them via a blog posting: worthless.

Scorpionwitch @ Apr 6th 2006 2:08AM

I think I'm truh reading comments on this site.

Sydney Carton @ Apr 6th 2006 2:09AM

Guess what? WHO CARES?! If they'd spelled "XBOX" wrong, that would be embarrasing. But "TRHU"...that's an honest and almost unnoticable mistake. I'm not a fan of Microsoft by any stretch, but this is dumb.

Steve519 @ Apr 6th 2006 2:30AM

as reported on the XBLRadio podcast 2, yes, 2 weeks ago by myself

Nmaster @ Apr 6th 2006 2:54AM

Thanks kinda funny...but I'll admit Microsoft's not the only one to screw up on spelling; Nintendo spelled my last name wrong when they gave me access to the Nintendo Press Site, and to this day I have to suffer with the "p" missing from "Campbell". Man that drives me nuts...but at least people don't see it on my ID or anything. :P

SuicidalMuskrat @ Apr 6th 2006 4:12AM

"Thanks kinda funny...but I'll admit Microsoft's not the only one to screw up on spelling; Nintendo spelled my last name wrong when they gave me access to the Nintendo Press Site, and to this day I have to suffer with the "p" missing from "Campbell". Man that drives me nuts...but at least people don't see it on my ID or anything. :P"

A company spelling one person's name wrong is nothing comparable to incorrectly spelling a word on a credit card. That typo went out to thousands of people, your typo just went to you. Oh, and you spelled "that's" wrong...

No, it's not a big deal, but it's certainly not acceptable from a company standpoint.

VADERMAGGOT @ Apr 6th 2006 5:47AM

I got my card and its wrong too, no big deal though. it still works. mmmm toasty!!

Don Jose @ Apr 6th 2006 5:58AM

I think the embarrassing thing would be whipping out a card for a discount...on cheeseburgers. :)

blah @ Apr 6th 2006 6:03AM

I thought the typo was with the nickname.
Nobody's going to impress the ladies with
"I got it babe. I get a discount on full meal deals on Tuesdays!" and then whip out a xbox live card that says "shorty".

VB @ Apr 6th 2006 6:06AM

4. But American's misspell through all the time. What's the big deal?

Posted at 11:44PM on Apr 5th 2006 by Kindred 0 stars

You Schmuck, stop generalizing and open your eyes!

CuddleFish @ Apr 6th 2006 8:00AM

I bet trhu becomes the next word everyone mispells on purpose like taht, teh, pwned etc.

ByeLaw @ Apr 6th 2006 8:33AM

Sydney Carton, you cared enough to comment..otherwise you would not have commented!

Personnely, I don't care that you didn't care, but I wanted everyone to know I don't care because you set a precedent in telling everyone you don't care.

Pointless... I'll let you decided, but remember, I don't care so there!

james @ Apr 6th 2006 8:53AM

Where can i get a FULL list of the retialers for this program? On the website there's only like two.

directhex @ Apr 6th 2006 9:06AM

not unprecedented - http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~jms501/warnerbos.jpg

Matt @ Apr 6th 2006 9:06AM

Re: "Where can I get a full list of the RETIALERS for this program?"

MWAHAHAHA! (lol)

John Porcaro @ Apr 6th 2006 10:14AM

There are literally dozens of offers, including a bunch of local ones, depending on where you live. You can find them listed at http://xboxlivediamond.com. Brandon, you can contact the company that's running the program by emailing support@xboxlivediamond.com.

BTW, even my card had the typo. I like to think of it as a collector edition!

John Porcaro
Xbox Global Mktg
http://gamerscoreblog.com

THL @ Apr 6th 2006 10:58AM

#4 Kindred: I assume that was your attempt at sarcasm.

"American's" implies the singular possessive noun. You want the plural noun "Americans."

If you're going to attempt subtle sarcasm, you may want to find a new venue for your wit. It will not be picked up here. Either that, or you need to brush up on your own grammar and punctuation before generalizing about an entire nation's population.

Oh and by the way, you are correct. Even "educated" (everyone laugh here) adult Americans rarely exhibit the ability to write beyond a fifth-grade level of competency.

Razer @ Apr 6th 2006 12:29PM

THL = Great on grammer, not so good on his social skills. You tried to come off as Mr. Educated but your closing word's speak volumes about your true intelligence. Loser.

Anon - I - mousse @ Apr 6th 2006 1:06PM

Whisky - Tango - Foxtrot ?

Stop being so 'touchy-feely' people, like someone here said, think of it as a collector's edition.

fixed

Wien @ Apr 6th 2006 1:12PM

I think what is more emberrasing than TRHU is the fact that this person's name is "X SHORTY X". I'm certain that retailers would point that out before they ever see TRHU if they even see it at all.

GT @ Apr 6th 2006 1:46PM

It's not a typo, it's just MS's attempt to connect with the hip-hop community.

American THL @ Apr 6th 2006 1:46PM

Razer: Come on, now. Don't feel so bad about yourself. I was actually being sarcastic myself. I chastised Kindred for generalizing about Americans, and then did the exact same thing myself. I'm sorry you didn't pick up on that. You should really check for carbon monoxide leaks in or around your computer.

Regarding the VALID TRHU error, who cares? It's a first batch issue. Reprogram the press, and there you go. No longer a problem. This is almost as big a drama as those typos in the DS game manuals. It is a bit fun watching people get worked up over it though.

Sydney Carton @ Apr 6th 2006 2:31PM

What I meant is, obviously, Joystiq likes to pay out Microsoft. Otherwise, this would be a non-issue. And it *IS* a non-issue. Thus, the "Who cares." Seriously. Someone just put the letters in backwards in the stamper.
If you need to dig this deep to come up with something to whale on Microsoft about, you need an imagination transplant.

Cameron Clayton @ Apr 6th 2006 5:49PM

It's not an entirely obvious typo because remember we only need to see all the letters in the word and the first and last letters to understand and read the word. I had to read the comments to figures it out, (note: I didn't check the links.)

bluebren @ Apr 6th 2006 8:32PM

The point is not whether the word is legible in spite of the typo, or that it's fairly common for people to misspell things, or any of that.

It's that there are barely more than 10 words on that entire card. Ten. And they couldn't be bothered to check them over. You think the guy who originated this little expos?as deliberately scouring the card for typos or something? Yet he succeeded where the design team and QC and who knows who all else-- people who are actually paid to do exactly that-- failed.

Sure, one person can make a mistake, but that's why you hire more than one person. Someone else should have caught this. And, more to the point, WOULD have, if they thought it was important. What we have in this story is a corporation that doesn't bother to do with all its resources and committees what one random dude can do *accidentally.*

Now that we know they can't fill a few square inches of plastic without screwing something up (and *leaving it* that way), it's a miracle certain projects involving squillions of lines of code are as error-free as they are.