The Xbox Live service is just pathetic

I really don't know who to trust now. But anyway, the reasons behind this just don't interest me AT ALL. I'm definitely not gonna buy XO now, there are still many games on X360 that I haven't played.

You're hurting yourself, Microsoft.

I have been experiencing outages since Wednesday night and have gotten nothing from Microsoft. I've lived chatted with them and even spoken to reps over the phone. No explanation is given as to the outages. I had to find that information out from other sources.
When asked about a refund or extension of days from being unable to use the service, I was told that since I purchased a prepaid card at a store for 3 months of service, no refund would be available since there was no payment method on file for the purchase
with them. I asked about just having the money deposited into my Microsoft account for credit towards future purchases and was informed that that would not be possible either.

So I ask this.... What is possible for Microsoft to do to not lose customers to other gaming systems? Why is it only 360 that's affected and not ONE as well? Are they purposely dragging their feet on fixing 360 so as to push more ONE sales? A lot of people
are curious to the answers to questions such as these. And per usual, generic responses and unsympathetic apologies are handed out. I get better support from Comcast Cable than I do from Microsoft...

But that does NOT justify Microsoft's attitude to these problems. We're in 21st century, for God's sake, companies providing online services must know there are people called HACKERS. Not only know about them, they should PROTECT their services from them.
If Microsoft isn't able to do it (for whatever reason, I don't think customers care), then online play should be made free. Very simple logic. But as I said, I'm really glad I got this trial for free. If these types of outages like this are common and people
don't mind, then we can't be really wondering about Microsoft's unwillingness to prevent these situations from happening.

I know this wasn't meant to insult, but... seriously? I don't give a *** about some hackers. That's why players pay 40 EUROS (or more) a year. And that's the reason why they do it. So Microsoft has enough money to protect servers from the internet attacks
caused by hackers. If a paid service doesn't work, nothing can justify it. I don't care about the reasons why it doesn't work... and so don't other players. Because it's none of my (and their) business. It would be different if the online play were for free,
but if it costs money (and not exactly little money, mind you) it just isn't acceptable. And this was just free trial... I was thinking about buying the membership, but now I really can't decide. This is a typical example of how paid online service is NOT
meant to work.

I still can't connect to Xbox Live. Looks like Microsoft is really taking the players' complaints to heart.