Polerand

So I got an email from Xbox Live last week saying my account would be billed November 25th as per my agreement with them, blah blah blah. What was significant about that email? I had thought, for some reason (a vague email I didn’t read completely), they canceled my Live account.

After the arduous task of setting up a wireless router my father gave me, I was up and running (albeit, the Xbox was wired — pricey wireless adapter). But then we get to the hurdle — recovering my gamertag. At one point, I had set it up online to be tied to an email address … but that was at least 2 years earlier and I had only a foggy memory of doing it. So I tried, and failed, to remember the password.

Aha! But I knew what email address it should be because they emailed me, right? Right. So I checked my email accounts and recovered the password on that email address and I was ready! NOT. “We have no record of this gamertag being associated with the email address you provided.” Bite it hard. I gave up and went to bed. But not before sending off a support email!

The next morning, I check my email and, amazingly enough, they have already replied! Call Xbox Support. Shitty response. So I took Mrs. P to work and then decided to do what they suggested — call India. I had a very helpful agent and everything worked smoothly until I reconnected the cable from the router to the Xbox and nothing happened. So I tried fiddling with the connection for five minutes while my dear friend from Punjab was on the line until I finally asked him if I needed anything from him after this point or if it should all be working (we had already gone through confirming that I indeed was the rightful owner of Polerand and all his glory) and, after telling me yet again what all I needed to do, we parted ways.

I still don’t know what was up with the cable connections — I simply turned the cable around and plugged in the Xbox end to the router and vice versa and it worked. I go to the recover gamertag portion and it’s there that I realize if I had simply looked at the screen it says “Confirm with billing information” for the Y button. Doh. I could have done that the night before! So I start filling in the information with the lovely on-screen keyboard and I select the “Next” button with great anticipation.

FAILURE! It seems I have failed to provide sufficient or correct information about my own life. I try playing with the phone numbers (with/out area code, with/out spaces, different numbers +with/out area code +with/out spaces) and I am repeatedly assaulted with the failure message on the right hand portion of the screen — a nice little pop-up disappointment. So, in defeat, I call Xbox Support yet again (which is automated, if you’ve never had the pleasure — “Next. Next. Next. Next. No. Agent. AGENT. Next. Next. Next. Next. No. AGENT.”)

This time I receive a A) Less than helpful customer service technician or; B) Less than knowledgeable customer service technician. I was simply asking the guy what was wrong, if I needed to put in spaces, area code, what. After some pauses, and confirming my identity, he starts to reroute me to billing. OK, that’s fine. Maybe they can tell me what I need to be putting into the fields — afterall, I am confirming my billing information. I thought he had already routed me to billing but 3 minutes later he tells me he’s about to do so — which is why I believe he was new as he must have been looking up the extension. In the silence, however, I kept plugging away at my information.

I decided to go back to the name and try with/out middle initial and with/out th period next to the middle initial (which I’d done earlier, mind you) and I noticed I had two spaces between my middle initial and my last name. “Well, that’s dumb,” I thought. After deleting the space I try again and it all clicks. Meanwhile, the phone’s still ringing as I’m being transferred to the billing department. I hang up so I don’t have to say, “I figured it out. Sorry.”

All that for one measly little space.