Ok first up I'm going to call bull:bou::bou::bou::bou: here for several reasons:Quote:
Originally Posted by DMKA
XBL is charged at £39.99 for 12 months, £14.99 for 3 months and at £5.99 per month (obviously this means buying it at 12 months is much better value for the consumer, ironically last time I checked in the USA it was $39.99, $14.99 and $5.99 respectively) therefore your claim of they've taken $9.99 out per month for the last 5 years or so for XBL is bull:bou::bou::bou::bou:. Also of note, XBL has only been purchasable by the individual month since this year prior to this it was purchased only in 3 or 12 month time frames. Automatic renewal is a bitch yes, however your email account registered for your XBL Gamertag will receive numerous warnings that the XBL Gold membership is running out. These emails considering they must be received by a Microsoft email address they are never junked by the filter so you would have noticed this prior to the time when you claim you found out.
Secondly, you have never ever been forced by Microsoft to register your credit/debit card details on the signing up for XBL membership, especially not trial membership. If you wish to purchase something either directly over the xbox.com webpage or xbox dashboard then sure, your credit or debit card details will be asked for and more importantly stored by the console (these are simple to delete in system settings meaning no access would be made possible) or you will be offered the choice of inserting a redemption key allowing you to get the goods be it points or membership without having to give over card details, points and xbl membership can be purchased in many locations throughout the globe such as gamestop or even walmart. As I pointed out, you've never been forced to give over your card details, I've been signed up for XBL for a good few years and for the first 2 or so I never once put any credit/debit card details on the account, namely because for that period of time I didn't own a credit or debit card.
Thirdly, how credit taking from your account works is essentially one of 3 ways:
1) Direct debit, this involves them sending through a contract you sign and send back to them, this allows them to contact your bank and request that they send them the allotted amount each and every month. You would know if you had done this. Once the contract is up the Direct Debit would be suspended a simple phone call asking your bank to cancel the direct debit at any time would prevent any money leaving your account.
2) A standing order, these are similar to a direct debit except to set one up you've gotta do so yourself there is no contract per-se except that you've told your bank that this money needs to go to this account on this day, most people if renting accommodation use a standing order for this. To cancel the standing order you would probably have to visit a branch to do so since 90% of the time you need to provide a signature to do so or cancel it through online banking. However, you could find out that there was one of these on any accounts you hold easily, either calling the bank, logging in to online banking or reading your bank statement would definitely show the money going out. You'd definitely remember setting this up.
3) Repeat ordering, whereby you give permission to the company to repeatedly purchase an item for you based the same way you do any other online transaction. I would probably avoid letting any company do this even if you trust them. However a simple setting the option to allow automatic renewal to no will be fine, also this would have happened from 2007 not 2009. You'd have noticed it, checking a bank statement or an online banking report would have shown this up.
If you are this ignorant of your finances that you cannot be bothered to check your bank report/statement then frankly you cannot claim a company willfully stole from you because you're lying, you were just too damn ignorant to actually check what you were spending cash on. It's not like Microsoft decided to say "hmm this customer hasn't logged in for over 2 years, lets see how much cash we can make before he notices mwhahahahaha" No, sorry but stupid claim to make. Microsoft makes more cash in an hour than I care to figure out, they're not going to miss you paying $9.99 a month or based on an average of 30 days a month $0.013875 an hour. Your ignorance and stupidity not to see something coming out of your account over the course of the last 24 months doesn't make it theft, thats one of the most retarded claims I have ever heard.
So yeah sorry DMKA I'm calling bull:bou::bou::bou::bou: on you for multiple reasons, Microsoft definitely didn't steal from you but if you're stupid or ignorant enough to leave a renewal order leaving your account for 2 years and claim you have had now knowledge of the debit from your account then frankly I'm not going to lie, you probably deserve it. On the plus side for you; whilst you continuously forgive Sony for yet more smurf ups and for losing your personal details and putting you at risk of serious identity fraud (which, even without the credit card details is enough) at least if the story you've spun in the above quote isn't a complete fabrication you can bring your 360 out of the closet and play online games on it.
For the benefit of Loony BoB, I have also seen reports and such which claim Sony stored details in plain text unencrypted on their servers. Of course this is all rumour there may be no truth to this in the slightest. I will say however that this is definitely a result of incompetence on the behalf of Sony, the trade of between security and usability does have to be made but I feel that if Sony had spent more money on developing the PSN rather than making as much money from it to recoup losses of building their consoles they wouldn't be in such a mess. This is why I don't complain about the payment for XBL, Microsoft rightfully imho channel the majority of the proceeds of XBL membership payments back in to the development, update and maintenance and security of XBL. They mostly make profit on XBL through the sale of points used to purchase films, avatar items and DLC. If Sony had been bold enough to follow suit maybe the PSN wouldn't now be such a weak link in Sony's marketing (even a fool must see the loss of 77million users data is going to look bad and hurt Sony) I feel especially sorry for anyone who owns the PSP Go console, they cannot get any new titles for their console during this fiasco.
