This morning I got an email telling me that my 14-day free trial to Zune Music Pass is ending, and I will automatically be signed up for the monthly service at a cost of $9.99 per month, unless I cancel. It also handily provides a link for me to go online and confirm my account and payment details. I’ve never signed up, so figure that this is just a phishing attack, and am about to delete and ignore, but Zune is a Microsoft product an my eldest has an Xbox which is also Microsoft’s, so making a short mental leap, I go and ask him about it. “Oh yeah, I think did. But it said it was a free trial…” D’oh.
I march him to his Xbox and tell him to cancel the subscription immediately. He goes to the Zune app and tries to cancel the subscription, but there is no option to cancel. Instead, there is a handy note saying that you can only cancel by going to zune.net on the Internet. What?? Why??? If you can sign up for an account on the Xbox you should be able to cancel via the Xbox.
But I duly go to zune.net (directly, not via the link in the email that I received – basic phishing avoidance tactic) which then asks my son to log on. This he does via his Hotmail account, but because this is the first time he has logged on to his Zune account via the Internet, it wants him to confirm a bunch of details, like birthdate, etc.. It also wants confirmation of a parent or guardian (he’s a minor). Which would be me. So I have to confirm and/or enter all of my information too. This included confirmation of my birthdate, but not the ability to change it. My son was out by 18 years (in my favor…) so now as far as Microsoft knows, I was born in 1984. More worryingly, I had to enter my credit card details. This, it said, was purely to confirm that I was over 18 (I guess you need to be over 18 to get a credit card), but I don’t believe them. Besides, what would I do if I was fiscally responsible and didn’t actually have a credit card? I’d be screwed. This is looking more and more like phishing, but there were no other options available on the screen than to either provide my credit card details or cancel. And as the cancel would simply cancel my cancellation, that would then leave me with a Zune subscription that I don’t want, Â I had no choice but to (confirm that I was on a secure connection on a Microsoft domain and then) continue.
A few more confirmation clicks, and I was done. Well and truly done. I see a message: “Congratulations, Dirk Manuel. Your Zune account has now been created”. Eh? What? Whaaat?? So now I have a Zune account as well? Yup. Which means that I now have two Zune accounts that I’m trying to cancel. I’m scared to try again in case I end up with a third account. It’s like tribbles… The icing on the cake is a link under the confirmation message, saying “Click here to activate your free 14-day subscription to Zune Music Pass”. Seriously. They really know how to twist the knife, don’t they??
So I try unravelling whatever the hell I’ve managed to do, and try to cancel <u>my</u> Zune account. But when I eventually find a link that allows me to cancel an account (after hunting through several levels of nested menus and options, and a very unhelpful help system), I reach a page that seems to want to cancel my entire Windows Live ID (to which Microsoft handily linked my brand new Zune account). And I can’t do that because I have several other things linked to that, including some work-related stuff. I even had to have a Windows Live ID to download and install Microsoft SQL Server last week, which particularly burns my ass. Why do you have to have a Windows Live ID? And why do you have to link everything into that? I’m all for single-sign-on, or being able to access a bunch of related sites by logging on via Facebook, but I don’t particularly want my Windows Live ID – which I use primarily for work-related stuff like the aforementioned SQL Server installation – linked to my kid’s Xbox and Zune accounts. I don’t know what Microsoft will do with this information (“Hey, he likes Lil’ Wayne and SQL Server – Maybe we should make a SQL Server Bling Edition? Or a version of Saint’s Row where the big boss battle at the end is conducted entirely via SQL statements?”), but I don’t like it on principle. I guess I could have just created a second Windows Live ID, but then I would probably been tricked into creating a another Zune Live account for that one, too…
Luckily, the ‘cancel your Windows Live ID’ page also contains a bunch of other links for help on cancelling just about anything that you may have linked to your Windows Live ID (including such odd choices as MSN Direct for Smart Watches, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, which demonstrates Microsoft’s impressive reach, if nothing else). Handily, there is a link for Zune Music Pass, so I click on that, figuring that I must be getting closer. But nooooo…. That just pushes me back into the screens for Zune that I was at ten minutes earlier, with no “Cancel my account” option. Well, there is one, but it just sends you back to the ‘cancel your Windows Live ID” page again, and I’m in ever decreasing circles.
I figure that maybe I can just force them to cancel it for me by removing my credit card details, thereby defaulting on the payment, and go to the billing options page. At this stage I can’t figure out whether this is for my account or my son’s account, or for his Xbox account or Zune account, but I do recognize the last four digits of my credit card under Payment Methods. Great. I’ll just delete that. I select it and click on the “Remove” button. I get a message: “You cannot delete a payment method that is linked to a Zune Music Pass account”. Oh, FFS! Seriously!??
At this stage I’m a little irate (difficult to believe, I know – I usually seem so laid back, don’t I) so I figure that maybe I could just cancel the whole Xbox Live account that it is linked to. True, my son would lose all of his accesses and achievements to date (he’s one kill off reaching Prestige on Modern Warfare 3) but screw him. That’s the price he pays for signing up for a monthly service when I have repeatedly told him not to. So on the ‘cancel your Windows Live ID’ page I click on the link for Xbox. This redirects me to the Xbox Live website, where No. 1 Son has to log on again. We’re at least dropped at the Account Management screen, where there’s a link for subscriptions. And lo and behold! this takes me (via another couple of jumps) to a screen where, finally, I have the option to cancel my son’s Zune Music Pass subscription (not on zune.net, as the initial email had claimed, but on xbox.com). Which I duly do, passing through a couple of confirmations and cautions about what a great service I’ll be losing, along the way. Hurrah! Well that was an easy 45 minutes…
Now I’m feeling pretty confident, so I go back to the Zune website, to delete the credit card now that it is no longer linked to the subscription that I just cancelled. But I get the same message: “You cannot delete a payment method that is linked to a Zune Music Pass account”. No! It’s NOT! I Don’t have a subscription to Zune Music Pass. That’s what I’ve just wasted the best part of an hour deleting!! But apparently deleting the subscription does not delete the account. And no matter how hard I try I can’t find a way of deleting that. The message goes on: “Click here to manage your Zune Music Pass subscription”. I click on that, hoping for something I can work with, or a number I can call and shout at, but the link takes me to a page where my only options are to (1) sign up for Zune Music Pass at $9.99 a month, or (2) sign up for Zune Music Pass at $99.99 a year (“Best value!”). Gaaaahh!
However, when the red mist clears from my eyes, I figure that at least if it is giving me an option to subscribe, it must think that I am currently not subscribed, so I claim victory. Of course it also proves that the credit card is not linked to a Zune Music Pass subscription (because there is no subscription), so I should be able to remove the credit card information. I just can’t. So as a phishing activity this whole exercise has been entirely successful. Microsoft have what they want, which is my credit card details. No, Microsoft may not be some Balkan-based scam artist, but they’re really no more respectable. And they’re a lot more difficult to outwit.
So at the end of an hour online, I have my own Zune account, without any subscriptions (so I’m not sure what use it is…), and my son still has his ‘trial’ Zune account, which is also subscribed to nothing (ditto), and an XBOX Live account that I think is still valid (but we’ll only find out when he tries to renew his Xbox Live Gold membership on his birthday). The only loose end is that Microsoft still have my credit card details, and there’s nothing to stop my idiot son from going in and signing up for Zune (or anything else – probably even Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online) himself again, and if he does that I’ll be back to square one. I guess I could go and cancel the bank account the card is linked to, but the way things are going, I’ll no doubt only come away with a new savings account, as well…
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