Lost My Promotional Balance

HeadlessWeezle · Apr 13, 2016

I lost my promotional balance due to the email being sent to the wrong email address. I have tried fixing this in the past and removing the wrong email address and putting mine in, and yet all my billing/promotional offers keep getting sent to the wrong
email. The wrong email is my parents for when I was 15 and started my Live account, but once I was older we switched it over to me. Well for some reason the parents email address kept getting the emails even though my account profile had mine. So I had a good
Promotional balance I wanted to use on renewing my live subscription but lost track of time due to buying a house and moving. And Microsoft sent the email saying my balance was expiring soon to the parents email and went to they're spam box. It expired the
7th of April and my parents dont check the email very often and found it yesterday the 10th in the spam folder. I contacted customer service yesterday to try and get this all figured out, so they were able to change everything in my account to my most current
information. They did see what I was talking about that I had changed my email address yet the parents email address was still there for some reason. They were unable to help me with this Promotional balance though and directed me to here. I was hoping that
due to the mix up of the emails on the Microsoft end, I could use this Balance to renew my Live subscription? If I had the email sent to me, I would have gotten it back on March 8th and would not have had this problem as I would have used it then and not waited
til now. I am not looking to extend the balance for 90 days or anything, I will use it today if I can get it. Thank you for your time.

Jordan -

:)

King0fAmerica · Apr 13, 2016

Account balance query

Hi

On 26th October 2016 I got a deposit of £48.60 via the Xbox Live Rewards promotion, with a further deposit of £4.80 on 9th November 2016 via the same route.

I bought a game for £2.24 on 1st November 2016. I then bought some further games on November 9, 10, 13 & 15 totalling £39.80.

However, looking at the balance on my account, it states the following:

£46.36 expires on 24/10/2017

£4.80 expires on 07/11/2017

It seems that the game purchase on November 1 came off the Xbox Live Rewards promotional balance but all the other purchases came off my normal (non-promotional) balance. This is contrary behaviour to what has been done in the past; that is, any balance
gained from Xbox Live Rewards promotions has been used first, and then my normal (non-promotional) balance has been used.

Further, in your billing FAQ, it states that this recent behaviour should not be happening, as, I quote:

“When using your Microsoft account to make a purchase at a participating Microsoft store, Microsoft automatically uses any promotional balance in your account before any other amount stored in your account, and does so in the order of the promotional balance
that is scheduled to expire first.”

This quote is taken from https://commerce.microsoft.com/PaymentHub/Help?lang=en-gb

Therefore, can you advise why my normal (non-promotional) balance is being used before my promotional balance?

Thanks

The Viral Cyrix · Apr 13, 2016

Xbl account question

Promotional balance is always taken 1st

Smwutches · Apr 13, 2016

Gold can only be purchased via credit card/Paypal or by purchasing a prepaid gold card from a store. It is not possible to use currency from your Microsoft account balance to renew gold So even if the finds are reinstated, you would not be able to use them
for gold.

Generally once funds are expired, yhere is no way to get them back, but you would have to contact support and again and speak to billing to see if there is anything they can do. No one on the forums would be able to do that.

HeadlessWeezle · Nov 3, 2018

Thank you for the quick response. When I talked with support yesterday to get all the account info 100% changed into my name this is where I was directed too to ask about the balance(attached a link that brought me directly here). I will try and contact
the billing department to see if I can get it resolved. Again, thank you for pointing me in the correct direction. As for using the balance, if I get it back I will just have to buy a game then.... which I cant complain haha I will still reinstate the Gold
Membership either way though. Was unaware I couldn't use the balance, but that is okay.

Smwutches

Gold can only be purchased via credit card/Paypal or by purchasing a prepaid gold card from a store. It is not possible to use currency from your Microsoft account balance to renew gold So even if the finds are reinstated, you would not be able to use them
for gold.

Generally once funds are expired, yhere is no way to get them back, but you would have to contact support and again and speak to billing to see if there is anything they can do. No one on the forums would be able to do that.

HeadlessWeezle

Thank you for the quick response. When I talked with support yesterday to get all the account info 100% changed into my name this is where I was directed too to ask about the balance(attached a link that brought me directly here). I will try and contact
the billing department to see if I can get it resolved. Again, thank you for pointing me in the correct direction. As for using the balance, if I get it back I will just have to buy a game then.... which I cant complain haha I will still reinstate the Gold
Membership either way though. Was unaware I couldn't use the balance, but that is okay.

XBF Steven R

Hey there NightShade Q,

Thanks for reaching out to the Community for information on how to take advantage of your promotion.

I can understand how being in that situation can be confusing.

Your available balance should show in the payment options section of your Microsoft account. Does it look like your balance has changed since you got that email?

As put forth by @ArminatorX, it's best to make sure that you read all the email and be aware that sometimes scammers can send things to
people's email in an attempt to obtain their info.

I would say it'd be best for you to contact customer support
directly to see if they have any record of anything being credited to your account or anything that could be getting in the way of you using the balance.

When you get a chance, get with them and let us know if they were able to clarify things.

Thanks for reading!

NightShade Q

Thank you for the replies.

It's listed as a refund. Shouldn't be any currency conversions or anything.

ArminatorX

Can you go to https://account.microsoft.com/billing/orders/ and check what was added to your account?

Also: depending on your Xbox One console's language setting, it might be that you are accessing the marketplace in a different country (e.g. you are in India, but set your console to US English, so you are buying from the US American store with US Dollars,
but the promotional balance was added to your account in your native currency).

Since Microsoft doesn't do currency conversion, your account won't show the added funds unless you change your locale to the country of which your promotional money was added.

Also make sure that this is really a genuine email about getting a promotional balance! Sometimes criminals and scammers send fake emails promising free Gold memberships or money for your account, if you sign in on a specific page.

However, that page is just there, so you enter your login credentials, which the criminals then store and try to get into your account with your provided login information.

So to be safe, go to
https://account.live.com/Proofs/Manage and make sure you have Two Step Verification enabled and set up the free Authenticator App on your smartphone!

Lost My Promotional Balance