XBox Live Charged 70 Times For The Same Item!!!

[angeljs]

I'm not sure where I stand legally on this, but here goes:

 

A day or so ago, I logged into my Halifax online bank account. To cut a long story short, we noticed 70 payments over several days to XBox Live. My son had purchased an addon pack for one of his games. However, the pack wouldn't show on his console, so he kept clicking to download it, unaware that each time he did so, he was charged £1.99. We are over £130 down for just 1 item.

 

I contacted XBox Live via telephone and they told me there was nothing they could do and to go to my bank if I wanted a refund. However, the bank told me there was nothing they could do as each payment had a valid transaction number, so I would have to go back and contact XBox Live.

 

By this time I was seeing my money flying away, but I tried again to contact them, and the very nice man on the other end of the phone told me he would escalate the dispute and someone would contact me.

 

I received this email from them:

 

Greetings Angela,

 

My name is Blaine; I am with the Xbox Customer Care Advocacy Team. I would like to thank you for taking the time to contact us in regards to your unauthorized access claim.

 

I received your claim here at Xbox. After thoroughly investigating your account, I am reporting that I did not find any evidence of unauthorized access to your account.. Also, after reviewing your billing history there was no evidence of fraudulent purchases.

 

The activity in question originated from the console that has been verified as your own. If you have any more questions about charges that occurred on your account, please visit billing.microsoft.com. To further dispute the activity in question, please contact your financial institution .

 

We take your online security very seriously here at Xbox and we keep a record of all unauthorized access claims and their resolutions. During the investigation, I temporarily locked your account to protect it from any fraudulent activity. At this time your Xbox LIVE account has been unlocked and ready for use. I apologize for any inconvenience that may have caused.

 

I am happy to help resolve any problems with your Xbox LIVE account. If there are additional details that you think we should consider, please either reply to this email or call Xbox Support (800)-469-9269 and mention this Service Request Number: 1224068534. Please also see the helpful links below to assist you.

 

Thanks again for your understanding and patience while I investigated your account. We value you as customer and look forward to seeing you back on Xbox Live!

 

Sincerely,

 

Blaine

 

Xbox Customer Care Advocacy Team

 

Contact Support

 

My reply:

 

Okay, first of all, I have never claimed the access was fraudulent. My son, who has special needs, asked for permission to purchase a downloadable item on his XBox. I agreed, but when he tried to download it, he couldn't, so he kept trying, and each time he tried, the item was charged to our account, which appears to be a glitch at your end, not ours. How can you possibly believe we wanted to purchase the same item 70 times! It's ridiculous that we cannot receive a refund for the 69 purchases that I did not agree to, I only agreed to 1! And I have already stated that our 'financial institution' will not help, so we were hoping Microsoft would be reasonable and refund the 69 payments that I did not authorise. The bank did tell us, though, that they have had a LOT of refund requests from XBox Live due to errors, perhaps your system needs an overhaul? We are a family on benefit and the money you have taken from our account was to cover our food bill for this week.

 

 

We ask that you please reconsider or we will have no choice but to cancel all XBox Live Gold accounts. We will not let this matter rest as we need that money much more than Microsoft does!

 

 

Thank you

 

Their response:

 

Greetings Angela,

This is Blaine with the Xbox Customer Care Advocacy Team. I have reviewed your request, and unfortunately at this point in time we are unable to offer a refund for the purchase(s) in dispute as they were made from your console. If you wish to further pursue a refund for the disputed transaction(s), you will need to follow up with your payment provider to dispute the purchase(s).

We take your online security very seriously here at Xbox and we keep a record of all unauthorized access claims and their resolutions. During the investigation, I temporarily locked your account to protect it from any fraudulent activity. At this time your Xbox LIVE account has been unlocked and ready for use. I apologize for any inconvenience that may have caused.

I understand the frustration that can be involved with this specific issue, and wanted to provide you with resources that have been built into the Xbox LIVE service that can help prevent against accidental point purchases by family members or friends in the future:

 

• Xbox LIVE Family Packs
  
• Parental Controls/Child Accounts
  
• Prepaid Cards in Lieu of Adding Credit or Debit Cards
  
• Passcode Required on Login
  
• Payment Instrument Removal on Xbox.com and Xbox 360 Dashboard
  

In addition, I encourage you to review the Xbox LIVE Terms of Use, specifically Section 6 regarding payments to Xbox LIVE.

Helpful links:

 

• If you’ve forgotten your Microsoft Account ID password, please go to accounts.live.com and click Can’t Access your account?
  
• To check the charges on your Xbox LIVE account please see: Learn how to check your Xbox LIVE bill.
  
• To learn how to protect your Xbox LIVE account from unauthorized access, go to xbox.com/security. We strongly recommend that you follow these account security recommendations.
  

In the future, if you wish to prevent purchases from being made on the account you can remove payment methods by following the directions below:

 

• Go to ww.xbox.com and sign into your account.
  
• Click 'My Account' which is right below your avatar on the left hand side of your screen.
  
• Click 'Manage Payment Options' which is also below your avatar on the left hand side of your screen.
  
• Now you should see the payment methods you have on your account and you can remove them by clicking 'Remove' which is on the right side of your screen.
  

We apologize that Microsoft Support agents cannot further assist with this issue and we will be closing your service request which closes all email correspondence regarding the matter.

Contact Support

Kind Regards,

Blaine

Xbox Customer Care Advocacy Specialist

Customer Advocacy & Exceptions Management Team

[Surfer01]

A very condescending and patronising reply which would annoy me no end!

[renegadeimp]

Its not an accidental purchase. Xbox lice should be able to clearly see that they charged the account holder 70 times for the same item on one account.

[Nystagmite]

Its not an accidental purchase. Xbox lice should be able to clearly see that they charged the account holder 70 times for the same item on one account.

 

But they clicked 70 times. How could Xbox Live not know they wanted the item more than once?

[renegadeimp]

But they clicked 70 times. How could Xbox Live not know they wanted the item more than once?

 

It depends what that item was. THe bank can still perform a chargeback in full, but the OP would risk the xbox live account being banned, along with any game licence attached to it.

[Surfer01]

The sad part is that the OP should not have allowed the son free access to purchases or the bank account and Xbox should have prevented the download being performed more than once for the same machine. Generally if you try and download the same application to a PC, you will get a message that the app is already installed and do you want to continue? Surely downloading the same application 70 times must have taken at least 2 - 3 hours?

IMHO the only way for the OP is to ask for a complaints procedure and then to escalate it along the chain of command until someone in management sees some sense and does a refund. Probably the best attack is raising the issue about safeguards preventing the same app being downloaded onto the same Xbox more than once. A second download to the same box should be free anyway as there is a possibility that the Xbox had to have a format if that is possible!