If you've ever had worse luck than I sympathise with you! here's how mine went!

My luck ran our sadly on the day I left work last year! I got home plugged in my xbox, bought an extra gig of cap, cause I was going to sit and play COD4 all day and night, turn on my box only to find that my profile won't log into live?? so I fiddle and fiddle and figure that I've forgotten to change the accounts over for the extra gig I just bought, fine done!

back to step one turn on XBOX! ready for COD4 .... signing in..... still signing in.... 2min later the blade (that I presume says could not connect) now says "Your account has been suspended due to a failure in billing" what this means of course is that MS have sent me a mail to a mail box I don't read anymore, what it normally states is that your account is due to expire if you wish to continue with the service we will bill your credit card, should you wish to cancel your service please reply to this e-mail.

Of course I didn't get the chance to read the e-mail so they went ahead and billed the credit card, which of course has expired! so after attempting numerous amounts of times to try and get my live account cancelled I could not, MS seem to be stubborn about this kind of thing! it's NO! we don't want you to cancel, we want to charge your credit card this one! no unfortunately for me I cannot get hold of MS (overseas) to cancel my account but fortunately for me one of my live buddies was able to help!

In the end he managed to resolve the situation with much debate over the phone (as he was pretending to be me!) we managed to get the account changed/cancelled and moved onto a prepaid voucher. in this matter I'm not committing "Fraud".

I bet you thought this is where the story ends? after thankfully getting put back onto live! and coming home at 2 in the morning after a good time with my mates I decided to get in some long awaited COD4 Action (this is now Jan, a month after) YAY! I get into a match! I celebrate by being completely slaughter by everyone! :( wow I'm out of practice! anyway's we continue, and everyone' now tired not me I just got back onto live! so I pipe up, let's play Gears of War! yeah why not I hear!

So I plug it in and there's an update! well that's no problem I can update my games again now cause I'm back online! update done setup the match get into the lobby the machine freezes!.... wha? dammit, restart... R.O.D  0_0  no... not the R.O.D! nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!! now to understand my despair you must understand that my machine is the a pre-launch (in SA machine) so it's one of the longest standing XBOX's in the country, my trooper has thrown in the towel and give up the ghost! :( so no gears for me ... so I sleep.

Next morning I make a plan, fortunately I have Xbox's at the office :) so I pick up one of the core units and plug in! wooo hooo! plug in Naruto to collect on the exclusive content, and play a match with a mate... I get the update required! no problem! ..60% ... 75% .... 80% (wow the updates' are cruising!) 98% ... *woosh* blade comes in "Cannot complete download" huh? try again and again something happened to me in the market place as well 99% = can't complete download.... What's going on!!!! and apparantly MS Live was having another bad day.... which added to my bad month :(

and that's my story I have a temporary console for now going to get my new console soon. but at least I'm online again and working :)

on a side note I'd hate any of you to get caught out on this billing act. so go to www.billing.microsoft.com if you are on a Credit Card get off of it. cause they're clamping down big time on this. get yourself a pre-paid card you can get them from www.take2.co.za or www.gamepointsnow.com