After two recent incidents with two Microsoft services, I can’t defend this company anymore.
It all started a good while back with Outlook.com. I decided to use Outlook.com for my professional / projects email account to get an idea of how the service worked. But I kept having an issue in which Outlook.com would junk legitimate messages but kept allowing spam through no problem. I made Outlook.com aware of this on Twitter only for them to tell me I should add each contact that’s being spammed to a Safe Sender list. Um… no. I’m not adding each and every person that keeps getting tossed into the spam folder illegitimately.
I thought the issue went away and complained about it happening again on Twitter. Their response? Same damn thing from before. Hey! Microsoft! Here’s a better idea! How about when I mark a message as “Not Junk”, YOU START LEARNING IT’S NOT JUNK! Between that and the lack of IMAP support, I gave up on Outlook.com and moved back to Gmail. (Microsoft would introduce IMAP support soon after I moved back to Gmail but it was too late.)
Today is what took it over the edge for me. I wanted to move my Xbox LIVE account from my professional account to my personal account. (It’s another long story as to why my Xbox LIVE account was attached to my professional account.) It sounds fairly simple. Using the account management feature on the Xbox, choose the Change Microsoft Account option, log in with your new account. Tada! Simple, right? Normally. Except when you run into Error 80154013.
Microsoft claimed that my personal account already had a gamer tag associated with it. I believed that wasn’t true as my personal account had laid idle waiting for me to do this transfer. I tried again thinking it was a mistake. Same error. That’s odd. Why would it think that? And then it dawned on me.
The day before, I had logged into Xbox Music with my personal account to see how the service worked. Upon logging in, Microsoft automatically created a Xbox LIVE Gamer Tag for me. I wasn’t warned this would happened nor did they give me the option to create on myself. It just did it. Needless to say, this pissed me off.
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The Gamer Tag Microsoft automatically created.
So what was I to do? I couldn’t transfer my Gamer Tag from my professional account to my personal account. What was I to do? No worries! Microsoft has a workaround! A very convoluted workaround. So I log into the Xbox with my personal account, go to the account management tool, choose to change my Microsoft account, and log in with a dormant Microsoft account I’ve had: nope! Supposedly THAT email address has a Microsoft account attached to it. Okay… Fine. I’ll sign in with an @outlook.com email address I have lying around. HA! I wished! I received another error message saying “Sorry, we can’t change your Microsoft account right now” and nothing else. UGH!
At this point, I just created a new Microsoft account from scratch just so I can get this damn thing done. But even that process proved to be a pain in the ass. Part of the reason being I don’t think Microsoft enjoys the User ID of [email protected]. (That or someone already had that ID.) After that, the captcha gave me trouble too. I’m getting more and more furious.
It took a while, but I finally created the new ID, go back to the Xbox and try to transfer the Gamer Tag again: error. Not just any error, the vague “Sorry, we can’t change your Microsoft account right now“ again! I search to figure out what the hell that means. Turns out can’t change your Gamer Tag for 30 days. The Gamer Tag Microsoft created without my permission. Bullshit. Pure fucking bullshit.
It took me a hour and 15 minutes just to get through this ridiculous process. What makes the process even MORE ridiculous is you can only do it on the Xbox 360. You can’t do it on Windows 8 (which has an Xbox Games app. You can’t do it on the web site. It HAS to be done on the Xbox 360. Forget it. I quit.
Of course, I ranted about this on Twitter and Microsoft’s response to it just made me more angry with each response. First, I get a response from the @Xbox account saying the @XboxSupport account could probably help me. I knew exactly what would happen if I did: we would learn that Twitter isn’t the best way to communicate and I would be thrown into email hell. I wasn’t too far off. @XboxSupport2 suggested I go into phone support hell. Great.
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Needless to say, I sure as hell wasn’t going to deal with phone support. I’m already fed up with the situation. What makes this even more bizarre is they assume I’m trying to transfer purchases between Gamer Tags. What the hell!? Not once did I mention ANYTHING about moving purchases. Are they even reading the complete conversation? The second response answered that.
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At this point, they’re STILL trying to assist me. Microsoft doesn’t seem to understand that’s not making the situation better. It’s only pissing me off more and more. Leave me the hell alone! When I said I’m done, that means I’M DONE!
I can’t deal with this company anymore. I tried to be supportive. I told people give things like Windows 8 time. But I can’t deal with this anymore. It’s over. This company is a mess and I’m not going to stick around anymore. To me, the Xbox brand is dead to me as is Microsoft itself.
(The downside to all of this is I STILL have to use Windows as I have to support it for some people I help from time to time. It’s also still the best platform for PC gaming, which my friends want to play from time to time. That doesn’t mean I have to use their web services still.)