Microsoft Has No Answer For Their Broken XBOX Live DRM

[Shrygue]

via Kotaku


Reader Kevin's XBOX 360 suffered the usual Red Ring of Death, so he sent it in to be repaired. He got back a different XBOX 360 with a different serial number. That would be no big deal, except Kevin has purchased a bunch of content through XBOX Live... content that is no longer fully functional due to Microsoft's broken DRM.

Here's a quick summary:

• November 2007: Kevin's XBOX 360 is replaced, causing his content to lose full functionality. He calls Microsoft.
• Microsoft keeps Kevin on the phone for an hour trying different methods of restoring functionality to his content. Nothing works. They say they will call him back in two weeks.
• They do not call him back, so he calls them. Microsoft makes him repeat the steps he tried the first time he called. They tell him they will call him back in two weeks.
• This cycle repeats twice more before Kevin gets a call from Frank at XBOX escalations. It's now the second week of January.
• Kevin periodically speaks to Frank. Frank has no answers for him.
• February 7, 2008: Frank tells Kevin that there's nothing more he can do and, when Kevin asks when he can expect a resolution, Frank says "hopefully sometime in 2008."

We suggested that Kevin escalate his complaint. He did. This resulted in another call from Frank confirming that there was nothing Microsoft can do.


More details for this arcticle here

[Solidsnake3000]

Wow thats some really messed up S**t.

[BrooksyX]

M$ needs to get its act together. I also have games that cannot be played because I had a 360 fail on me. I don't even try to get M$ to fix this problem because I know it will just be a waste of my time.

[Ewan]

I'd say this is a case where you are accepting "no" for an answer from someone who isn't authorized (or willing) to say "yes".

There are people above this person inside of Microsoft, and even inside of their 360 division itself.

This is honestly much more worthy of a class action suit than the XBL outage last month. This is actually taking fair use away from the customer. Most DRM-ladden crap you can remove one device easily in lieu of another.. it's a database update for the DRM. In this case, it's even easier because the device in question is marked as obviously being returned and replaced with a new unit by the manufacturer.

The fact is probably that the process is painfully manual, it sounds like it has to be done per title per box by a human - so they are backlogged. They just don't want to tell anyone it's that difficult.

I'd keep up the good fight, and just keep calling in about it. If you are just patient, they'll just keep pushing it off hoping that you give up, since they'll have louder folks complaining.

For all the good that is the 360, it's definitely not a perfect product.