Unhappy Xbox Live users demand compensation

by Dustin Burg on Dec 31st 2007 1:00PM

Xbox Live is still borked (we're going on a week now) and It's getting to the point where we expect and accept the service to act unreliably wonky. But not everyone is willing to be so understanding, as a general cry of dissatisfaction is erupting all across the internets and some are demanding compensation.

Over on the Xbox.com forums, members started a thread about the Xbox Live downtime and are going as far to demand some sort of compensation for the week long disturbance. Compensation either in the form of free Xbox Live, Microsoft points or games. But, as with any civil movement that gains ground, Xbox.com moderators were quick to lock the thread and any others that bring up the subject of compensation (what ever happened to freedom of Xbox Live speech?) So far we've been able to remain level headed and patient about the whole thing, but if our Xbox Live isn't back on its feet soon we just might jump on the compensation bandwagon. We're getting our picket signs ready and have mapped a route to the Xbox Live offices. No payment without service ... or something like that.

Source

Tags: microsoft, xbox-live

Reader Comments (145)

It's like $7 a month if you divide it up. What would even the the amount? $2? I guess some MS Points wouldn't be so bad. It's definitely been annoying.

It is $.13 a day. Better grab the check book MS.

I think you mean Cheque Book.

You're an idiot if you're paying 7 dollars a month. You can get the 13 month cards from target for 35 dollars, from newegg for 39.99(with free shipping) and various other places for less than 30 dollars with shipping and no tax. That all averages out to a little more or less than 3 dollars a month. Even at the standard 50 dollars per year that only comes to about 4 dollars a month for 12 months.

Where the FUCK do you go to school you jackass. And don't tell me you pay month to month because if you do you have no reason to argue about the problems live is having because you're just a stupid consumer.

What the hell are you getting so pissed off about? I just picked some low number out of my head, the fact remaining that for a week it costs very little.

Christ, relax.

I'm just venting because my 4th 360 RROD'd on me. Getting really out of hand here. And I just went out and bought 3 new games. God damn Microsoft. That and they've been "processing" my replacement wireless headset since April because it died after just a few weeks of use. I'm probably just gonna buy a new Elite and if that one breaks on me I'll buy a gun and drive to Texas myself.

Well, that is frustrating. I am glad it's only happened to me once lol.

What mattclarkie said.

Here is the thing, it is 13 cents per user, per day on average that Microsoft collects for the Live service. If we play around with some numbers we find why most people are mad that it isn’t working. Lets take a very conservative guess at how many Gold subscribers there are. Just to use a smaller, round number, we will say that there are 300,000 gold subscribers. At 13 cents a day Microsoft earns $39,000, and for the entire week $273,000 in this scenario. That is an awful lot of money for a company to be making on a service that isn’t working as advertised. I wouldn’t hold my breath on Microsoft compensating anyone though. However, there are websites asking for those that would be interested in petitioning for class action lawsuits and telling Live customers how to file complaints with their state for fraudulent billing charges because of faulty service.

Tony's prices are just about spot on for Aussie 12month subscriptions.

Good point funky, I was thinking for U.S. subscriptions. How selfish of me. :)
Anywhoot I had no problems getting on last night.
Happy New Year!

This is getting out of hand. Are we really heading into the new year with bad Xbox Live? Is that the way Microsoft wants to enter 2008?

What about those that got a 360 for Christmas. Were they ready for them?

I'm still a 360 fanboy, don't get me wrong, but I'm with you guys. I'm still leveled headed and patient, but I think that Microsoft should get us some free content as compensation.

I'm annoyed, but patient about the whole things. My concern is how this looks to all the new Christmas 360 owners. They finally get a 360 and COD4 and they have to deal with this.

I feel that Xbox Live has been slow in general ever since the Fall Update. Sending messages is slower, comparing achievements to friends, etc.

I agree, this is a pretty sour welcoming to new 360 owners.
It's like when you tell your friends how awesome your favorite restaurant is to only have them fuck up your food for the first time ever when you go there with them.

Not only does this outage make XBL look bad, it makes all us fanboys who blow our horns about how great 360 is look like a crowd of assholes.

I was cool with the outtage until last night, seven days is long enough. Although they keep saying they're fixing it, problems still persist, with no obvious signs of improvement.

My Xbox Live works great the only problem I have is I can't login to live from the dashboard. Sometimes I have to hop in Halo 3 or whatever game I want to play in sign in...

The only thing thats been down for me is marketplace so I'm not effected at all...

Wow live is not working as it should Booo Hoo no reason to cry kids go gout side get some fresh air it will do you the world of good :D

Why dont you come out from under your bridge and get some fresh air

TROLL!!!!!

LMAO@DnewbzDAT1PWNZ!11

If it's not fixed for January 1st I will be DEMANDING compensation. Honestly, I don't care what it is, I just want to know Microsoft values its customers and gives back when they don't produce what they promise and what we pay for.

IMO either 500 MS points or a Month of Live would be sufficient.

Adam B are you kidding you want a month of live for losing a week?..your nuts like its a week you cant play online..do the campaigns or something to fill your tiime

So, 1 month of xbox live for 6 days of problems, 6 days in which they have been working their asses off to fix the problem. We dont need compensation because they are working day and night to fix it, which shows that they care about their customers.

Many new 360 owners may be pissed....
but they can now atleast make an account
(i made a new 1 an our ago)
and i just downloaded the Kuf:cod demo
so marketplace is working not fine but working

If I didn't have to work this week and last then I would be very upset with MS for not getting XBL working in a timely fashion. My wife has been playing GHII (yes, that would be a 2) since I gave it to her for Xmas, which doesn't really use XBL, but if I was playing I would not be happy with the lack of CoD4 matchmaking.

NO HALO NO PEACE!

IF THE XBL DON"T PROPAGATE YOU MUST COMPENSATE!

heheh Jessie Jackson weighs in :)

Yeah, Can't live without Halo!! (;

i might be done bitching; this morning i was able to play halo 3 online. once in the game it ran pretty smoothly and the matchmaking didnt take that long to do but still connecting to xbox live and then once i went to the matchmaking screen it said cannot obtain information from xbox live or something like that

Exactly. a few days of down time only comes out to a few bucks.. big whoop.. It was fine 95% of the year and now they're having a hissy fit over some down time? Get some sun people!

i understand what you mean but that 5% is probably the time people really wanted to play the 360 because of a little thing called Christmas break

Still the fact is this has been ongoing for a week and its been swinging back and forth from working to not working and everywhere in between which is annoying people. Also the fact that this happened right after Xmas and a lot of people were off this week due to school or took the week off so many more people got affected by this 24/7. Personaly I feel we should get some MS Points 400-500max or a very very thourgough explination through inside Xbox and a video explination at that.

Don't get me wrong, it is annoying not being able to play..but the service has been fine throughout the year for the most part.. why get all riled up about it over a week or so of being iffy? Now if it's still acting up a week or so from now then there should be cause for alarm.. It's just annoying to see everyone cry foul and demand free stuff or demand compensation or want to boycott or my favorite "I wonder if we could sue over this" every time something goes wrong or you get charged more than you wanted to pay for something.

In response to #10

It doesn't matter how much it costs, it matters that we're paying for a service and it isn't being served. Also, the time that this is taking place is during the time that most people have off work and have time to play their games.

Exactly, dude -- we're paying for something that doesn't even work!

I'm super pissed I cant play online but the argument of paying for something that isnt working is valid if the service was down for a good portion of the year its only been messed up for 7 days out of 356.

Sure thats a higher downtime than my current ISP, however most larger ISPs have issues and they dont have 8 Million users paying a fraction of what they pay. I pay my ISP about 15X what I pay for LIVE.

As far as getting MS points for a compensation, what would a weeks worth of points equate to 80 - 100 points? Great I could get a free theme.

Lots of people are already upset because they have to pay for XBL in the first place. But when that service they grudgingly pay for is completely FUBAR, especially during a period when lots of people have time off to spend playing online, I can see where all the anger comes from.

I can be fairly forgiving for network issues (I've played a lot of MMORPGs) but a week of this BS is on XBL is completely unacceptable.

I used to play WoW way back when it started, and at least back then (I don't know how it is now) when there was a problem with the servers that lasted like 24 hours or more, they just gave everyone an extra 24 hours on your account. That was enough to keep me happy.

500 MS points is fair considering people that just got a 360 for Christmas are probably super pissed that they can't play on XBL.

People need to chill out, a little downtime never hurt anyone. Gives me sometime to get into the single player portions of games. You just have to be patient, I'm sure Live has high priority status to be fixed. If MS decides to actually compensate anything it will most likely be some old unpopular arcade game.

heh, the post is now locked

hmm, this is funny. I have had no problems playing motorstorm for the past week.

How's Halo working for you? :-P

halo 1 (the only good halo) works great on my original xbox, and xlink kai still hasn't gone down either.

What about Halo 3? I heard the ps3 version kicks ass!

I think the problem is that lots of users value this time over most other time. Lots of teens have school, sports, homework, and jobs, so when they aren't doing those things over Christmas break they do want to get in some gaming.

$50 divided by 52 weeks in a year is 96 cents per week.

I'm almost happy now my 360 RROD'd last week :)

I was wondering the same thing about the RROD, shouldn't I get a free month of XboxLive since my console is in an unplayable state?

When you recieve your 360 back it should have a one month card in it for xbl.

Ha! Agreed!

People may recall I had problems recovering my XBL GamerTag yesterday. Since then I played like 8 flawless continuous games of Halo today, in addition to purchasing the new maps. I'm not trying to rub it in anyone's face or anything because I imagine so many people are still having problems. I just thought I'd let you know that it seems there is SOME improvement because yesterday it took 4 hours to recover my GT!

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Unhappy Xbox Live users demand compensation

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