February 24, 2010

I've emerged victorious, but not without some battle wounds...

I'm chronicling this as it happens, because it's just too ridiculous...

1. I received two packages in the mail today: one containing my new (although used from Amazon) Xbox 360 A/B/G & N Network Wireless Adapter, and the other containing the two xbox headsets I purchased from Overstock.com - Yay! But it turns out that the two headsets arrived in pristine packaging - COMPLETELY DESTROYED! Way to go Overstock, not only did you misroute my package to CA (earlier this week), but now I need to return two broken headsets. Good thing the wireless adapter looked complete...

2. I went over to my Xbox and read the instruction manual that was sent with my wireless adapter. It said, in a few words as possible, to insert the CD, then plug in the adapter and go! "Sweet," I think, "this'll be easy..." My xbox doesn't read the disc at all, and I spend the next 30 minutes looking over the support forums on xbox.com to help me. Little known fact that the instruction manual doesn't say - put the disc in, shut off the machine, then turn it back on and THEN the automatic instructions will start....thanks, instructional manual writers.

3. I set up my wireless adapter without a hitch after that (thankfully), and since it's working so well all of a sudden, I decide to try and have my xbox communicate with my laptop (brand new Asus gaming laptop running Windows 7 and Windows Media Center...why wouldn't this work?). After another half hour of trying to get them to communicate, I give up - my xbox claims it continues to have a connection failure, and my laptop just keeps trying to search for the xbox extender. Whatever.

4. Now, here's the kicker. So I set up the wireless adapter and have it connected properly, and I'm all set to redeem my pre-paid 12 month Xbox Live Gold subscription - peachy, right? For some reason, the xbox has two ways to sign into Xbox Live: the first (and more obvious) way is to select the BIG ICON/BOX that says "Join Xbox Live" - this is what I did. The second (and infinitely better) option is to select your gamer profile on your xbox and select "Sign THIS profile up for Xbox Live" - essentially, I accidentally redeemed my Xbox Live Gold code on an EMPTY profile. So now when I'm signed in, no one can see the 4852 gamer points I've collected over the years, or see the many achievements I've earned, or what games I've played. My profile on Xbox Live literally says "0" and "None" for everything. And I must ask...why does Xbox Live let you do this?! Why wouldn't it only prompt you to sign up on Xbox Live under a specific profile that you've already created? WHY?!

Well, I thought that perhaps if I called xbox live customer support they could help me solve this dilemma. Surely they can revoke my registration for that code and let me re-sign up for the correct profile? Or maybe just transfer all my stats over to the new, empty profile on Xbox Live? Nope - they practically told me I was S.O.L.

I'm pretty upset about the whole thing, but perhaps I shouldn't be. Technically it was my fault for redeeming the code and then creating a profile (I thought it was weird that they were asking me to create an Avatar when I already had one..) instead of selecting the profile I wanted to sign up for Xbox Live. But, like how someone very near and dear to me always says - "Console setups and interfaces, especially xbox, suck."

5 comments:

  1. Bummer.

    That's already happened to like 3 of my other Xbox 360 pals. And in one case he lost some save data for Fallout 3, after he dumped like...maybe 50 hours into the poor game.

    Communication with your PC is hit or miss. It depends on more factors then there are people in China. And China is like....a lot of people.

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  2. Thanks Dirune. I'm sad to hear that your other Xbox friends have encountered the same problem (although glad that I'm not the only one). I have two choices now: Keep calling Xbox Live support until someone fixes it, or buy a new year subscription. We'll see if the first option doesn't work soon...

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  3. Sorry to hear about allll those issues. I guess the only bright side is: at least it's working?

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  4. Your issue with the hookup is probably the wireless. I've noticed that the connection is extremely finicky if both systems are wireless. And Windows 7 certainly doesn't help. =( Sad days.

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  5. Ah, good to know, thanks for the tip on the wireless! Perhaps I'll try again sometime this week, but I guess it's no big deal. Just would have been cool to watch videos from my computer on my big screen :D

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