Can't Access Xbox Live Silver - Help!

My xbox live gold just recently ended and I had it set to auto renew. The debit card I originally used to auto renew it was no longer valid so instead of renewing my xbox live gold it couldn't accept payment and has suspended my membership. Now, I don't
actually want xbox live gold anymore, I just want xbox live silver. I assumed if I just let this years worth of xbox live gold run out it work just automatically switch me to xbox live Silver when it couldn't accept the auto renewal payment, but this isn't
the case. Every time I turn on my xbox now I receive this message:

"Your membership is suspended until you update your payment option. We'll charge your payment option and reactivate your membership after you update your account, but there may be some delay"

Now if I actually wanted to spend more money on another year of gold that would be all well and good because I would just update my card details and pay it, but I don't. I now just want to switch to silver and not pay for another year, but how do I do this?
Every time I go onto my xbox I only get the option to update my payment or play offline completely (So no access to my friends list, netflix or the store)

Can someone please tell me how I switch to xbox live silver in this situation without updating my payment options, because I don't want to pay for another years worth of gold. Thanks.

:)

 

Xbox Live Confusion?

Xbox Live is free.

You can make a Gold account, or a Silver account.

The Gold account gives you access to access to play online, along with free monthly games and weekly deals. This has a fee.

The Silver account gives you access to Xbox Live and apps, but you just can't play online or get the free games. This is free.

 

Cloud Storage

You should be able to still access the cloud storage to move the saves off it onto your console, since you can't access the cloud for saves while you have a silver account.

support.xbox.com/.../help

 

If you don't turn off auto-renew before your subscription expires, they will attempt to charge your card. They usually try several attempts before suspending your account. At this point, you will now have a balance you owe on the new subscription they started
that they haven't been paid for.

You would have to contact support and speak to billing to sort out your suspension and cancel your subscription. 1-800-4my-xbox if you're in the US/Canada or
support.xbox.com/contact-us

 

I'm having the same problem. My Gold expired, and now I can't even connect to silver. I can press "Update payment option", back out, then I have about 15 minutes of silver, but that it. Anyone got a solution?

 

Ya pay off thenbalance

As stated above

 

I have been paying for xbox gold for a couple of years now and it hasnt been used for gaming for at least 12 months of this time as my son now uses his gaming computer. I kept the membership open as i use amazon prime instant video however i have heard taht
i do not need to pay for a gold membership to be able to access amazon prime instant video.

Is this true?

 

Gold is no longer needed in order to use apps.