That's bizarre. It seems like everyone is getting a slightly different experience
This is, what we call in the customer service industry, known as poor training and bad management...
Also known colloquially as "a call centre atmosphere".
So here's my question:
I can't access many of the Xbox Live Arcade titles I downloaded unless I am signed into the account that got hacked. Even if I could, all the settings and saves are tied to that account. What good is it to create a new Gamertag and not have access to the stuff you spent countless hours playing?
Follow up:
What happens if they have to nuke my account? I better damn well be able to get access to the things I purchased.
Second Follow Up:
What about EA Sports and their stupid online pass? Is it tied to my Gamertag or my Xbox?
I found this very odd. I do have access to about half of my XBL games, but not all of them. I didn't figure I would have access to any of them as I thought they were tied to the account, not the machine. And why half? I'm glad to have the ones I do, but wish Geometry Wars 2 was one of them!
I can kind of live with the region being locked for a year, that's not really a deal breaker as I can download demos on my other account if I want. But those points better be there! Quite frankly, if Microsoft doesn't refund them I am going to look at them as if they are stealing them. That loses my business immediately.
Only been a few days, but I can't wait and see how this plays out.
I assume it's because some of the XBLA games were purchased on a different Xbox. As I understand it, they are tied to the XBOX itself and if you don't transfer the rights to them to a new system due to RROD or something similar, then you need to be logged in to access the content. I am on my 4th system and the one I have now is only a few weeks old and I didn't get around to transferring the XBLA content to the new system.
It's funny how this generation, the XBOX 360 has become my default gaming system even though I own a PS3 and a Wii. I am willing to put up with a lot of crap because of that, but it only goes so far.
Flying_Norseman wrote:So here's my question:
I can't access many of the Xbox Live Arcade titles I downloaded unless I am signed into the account that got hacked. Even if I could, all the settings and saves are tied to that account. What good is it to create a new Gamertag and not have access to the stuff you spent countless hours playing?
Follow up:
What happens if they have to nuke my account? I better damn well be able to get access to the things I purchased.
Second Follow Up:
What about EA Sports and their stupid online pass? Is it tied to my Gamertag or my Xbox?
I found this very odd. I do have access to about half of my XBL games, but not all of them. I didn't figure I would have access to any of them as I thought they were tied to the account, not the machine. And why half? I'm glad to have the ones I do, but wish Geometry Wars 2 was one of them!
I can kind of live with the region being locked for a year, that's not really a deal breaker as I can download demos on my other account if I want. But those points better be there! Quite frankly, if Microsoft doesn't refund them I am going to look at them as if they are stealing them. That loses my business immediately.
Only been a few days, but I can't wait and see how this plays out.
And of course I have seen activity on my XBL account every day over the past few days.
So much for the account being locked...
Entering week 10 of this debacle...
An update from me:
My account was finally returned to me care of a new windows live ID. Apparently the guy who stole my account spent 200 MS points on something in BF:BC2, but I'm getting refunded for it. I also got two months of free Xbox Live Gold, which I think means I'm good on that until late March.
All in all, it was a painless process that at least lit a fire under my ass to change some passwords. I'm just glad to be connected to Xbox Live again. It's the full experience I suppose.
Why do you need a new windows live ID? I mean, isn't that your hotmail/msn.com/.co.uk email account? Or are the two separate?
I'm pretty sure my windows live ID is my email account and i wouldn't be very pleased if they made me change it.
Not to mention i would not be pleased at losing "Duoae".
The hacker switched the Windows Live account associated with my Gamer ID. I assume that it was a precaution on their part to simply assign me a new Windows Live ID rather than revert the ID back to the old Windows Live account. I can switch my Windows Live account every 30 days apparently, so when I get the opportunity, I will switch it back. It'll be like this never happened.
The hacker switched the Windows Live account associated with my Gamer ID. I assume that it was a precaution on their part to simply assign me a new Windows Live ID rather than revert the ID back to the old Windows Live account. I can switch my Windows Live account every 30 days apparently, so when I get the opportunity, I will switch it back. It'll be like this never happened.
Ah, cool then!
Ars Technica has a post on hacked accounts. If nothing else, maybe they can get MS to evaluate it's internal process of restoring the accounts enough that things will speed up.
I somehow picked up a bot the other day on one of my machines (family room), and I immediately changed critical passwords. First time I've been infected in years, but then I'm not the only one using this computer anymore.
I'm entering week 3. The fact that TheWalt is now in week 10 scares me that there is no end in sight...
Yeah, I'm not too happy with Microsoft's speed in resolving this. I went ahead and signed up for a 1 month free gold account as TheWalt3, but that will run out in about 2 more weeks.
I hate to be That Guy but if you're unsatisfied with their service why are you giving them more money?
I received an email from Microsoft that my credit card failed when trying to buy 6000 spacebucks. Yes, it did... that number doesn't work any more. But I didn't try to buy spacebucks. I changed my account password but haven't seen any weird activity or anything aside from that failure. I'm quite glad that my credit card number is no longer valid... though somehow it did work for my gold renewal, damn it.
I received an email from Microsoft that my credit card failed when trying to buy 6000 spacebucks. Yes, it did... that number doesn't work any more. But I didn't try to buy spacebucks. I changed my account password but haven't seen any weird activity or anything aside from that failure. I'm quite glad that my credit card number is no longer valid... though somehow it did work for my gold renewal, damn it.
If you changed your password then you should be solid. As long as a keylogger isn't on your machine of course.
And it looks like I may have my account back. I got an email from Microsoft on the steps I need to go through to reclaim my account. I'll know when I get home this evening. I'm sure hoping my $40 or so of points that I had are still there!
If this is legit, total time for this was about 3 1/2 weeks.
Crossing fingers...
Got home and everything worked great. I even got my points back which I was a bit nervous about. So even though I was without my system for about 3 1/2 weeks, I'll take it as a win and now enjoy some Forza 4 on my real account.
So is everyone getting violated due to a trojan on your pc?
So yeah: same problem, two reps. One saw something not right worth investigating and immediately acted on it. The other saw nothing and could/would do nothing.
Having worked in callcentres and never pulled this stunt myself... The first guy could have been talking bullsh*t.... and then let you hang before dropping your call to help his stats. When i worked for MBNA (BoA), one technique people used to help them maintain their stats for whatever (i forget the technical term now), they would let someone hang "on hold" for a while and whilst they were supposed to be talking to another department. This allowed them to finish their writing and also have a short break from the constant barrage of unsatisfied customers. Sometimes they would actually put them through, if there was actually a real reason for them (sometimes dropping the call by mistake, i certainly did this a few times because the whole system is complicated for both reps and customers) and other times they would just drop the call when they ended their break/finished their write-up.
In this situation, i'm inclined to believe the second rep. I've never known a rep to lie about account history.
So is everyone getting violated due to a trojan on your pc?
No one knows because no one is talking.... If there was a trojan involved i'd expect at least one of the major anti-malware/virus companies to pipe up... thus hopefully increasing their userbase.
Gravey wrote:So yeah: same problem, two reps. One saw something not right worth investigating and immediately acted on it. The other saw nothing and could/would do nothing.
Having worked in callcentres and never pulled this stunt myself... The first guy could have been talking bullsh*t.... and then let you hang before dropping your call to help his stats. When i worked for MBNA (BoA), one technique people used to help them maintain their stats for whatever (i forget the technical term now), they would let someone hang "on hold" for a while and whilst they were supposed to be talking to another department. This allowed them to finish their writing and also have a short break from the constant barrage of unsatisfied customers. Sometimes they would actually put them through, if there was actually a real reason for them (sometimes dropping the call by mistake, i certainly did this a few times because the whole system is complicated for both reps and customers) and other times they would just drop the call when they ended their break/finished their write-up.
I work indirectly with a large bank call center myself, and eventually you'd get caught in our group doing that with either live monitoring or recording reviews. You might sneak by on occasion, but if you made a habit of it, you'd get in trouble eventually.
Add me to the hacked list.
I was checking my bank account over the weekend, when I noticed two Xbox purchases totaling $125. Immediately tried logging into Live, to see what was up, and my gamertag didn't work. It was no longer associated with my console. I then went to check my email, and sure enough, there were two separate emails saying I had purchased a total of 10,000 Xbox points. I also noticed I had an email from EA saying the email address tied to that account had been changed to an address that ended in live.co.uk.
Contacted both Microsoft and EA, and received the same response from Microsoft as everyone else. They will do an investigation, and I should have my account back within 25 days. After seeing everyone's experiences though, especially TheWalt's, I am not very optimistic about a quick resolution. I was also told to recover my gamertag, which worked, but a fat lot of good that does me, since I can't login to Live. At least getting the email attached to the EA account changed back was rather painless. The customer rep simply changed it while I was on the line with him.
Besides the hit to the wallet, what pisses me off most is that I don't even have access to my Rock Band music catalog. Apparently, I can't play any of the songs I have previously bought and downloaded. This now has me wondering. If at some point I decide to cancel my Live account, will I be SOL on the +$200 of music I have purchased? Will I not be allowed to access that content, even though I have paid for it?
I don't believe you need to maintain a gold account to play games or dlc you have previously purchased. If that is not the case it would be amazingly crappy of Microsoft, but that would hardly be surprising.
Having said that, my experience might give you a little hope. My turn-around time was about 3 1/2 weeks. Still well within the suckage range, but it's doable. I didn't get any financial hit as the cc on my account had long since expired and wasn't even a bank that I still do business with. I'm all about the points and subscription cards now baby! No cc on consoles for me as both major companies have shown their ineptness at managing my security.
Anyway, I hope you end up on the shorter end timewise and not the ridiculous end like TheWalt. That's just craziness!
So I haven't officially heard back from Microsoft yet, but I did get an email today saying that my account has been moved back to the united states, so maybe some progress is being made... *fingers crossed*
So thanks to Gravey, I'll add my voice to the chorus in here. I'm still a bit mystified as to how my account got compromised. I'm fairly security savvy, and this is the first time I've had a compromised account in nearly 20 years of online activities dating back to the BBS days! I suspect that I must have lapsed somewhere. Suffice it to say that I'm running deep scans now on my systems to see if there are any trojans/loggers hanging out.
I'm a little bummed about the whole thing, but my recently built PC promised to ease the pain.
For the record, my initial impression with MS was very positive. The rep was helpful and thorough. We'll see how it all pans out, but I'm hopeful for the moment.
I heard something this weekend on The Final Score podcast that said that somehow you can sell FIFA DLC stuff of some kind for real money, and that is what's going on?
There was a lot of other misinformation, so I don't know if that's true or not.
My question in all of this is, how are you guys getting hacked? I have a xbox account and am curious how this is happening. I usually don't go to questionable sites or anything but I know most of the community here is the same way as well so it can't just be that.
I'm wondering if it's in any way related to the Sony data breach earlier this year. I'm pretty sure I did have a Sony account, and if I did, it would have had the same password as my XBL account... What about all of you?
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