If you're a regular reader of my blog, you'll know that I recently purchased a Xbox 360 Elite. During the process of setting up my GamerTag on the 360 I noticed that the country code was locked to the US and it wouldn’t allow me to change this. I continued along entering my Canadian information as best as possible. But I couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t let me select Canada. I later learned that the country information is pulled from your Live ID (Passport). I don’t know why my passport account was set to the US, but it was and I’ve now changed it. However Xbox Live does not see that the information has changed. The country field is greyed out in every place I look. So I can’t change it, and it won’t see that the passport account has changed. It’s locked with US.
Now, the real problem starts. I purchased a Microsoft Points card so I can download some of the arcade games that I think my kids might be interested in. On the back of the points card it says “Points cards valid for Canadian accounts only”. And you guessed it, when I try and enter the points code it tells me that the card is invalid.
I’ve phone Xbox support (2 times) to see if they can change my account to Canada from US. The answer I got was that there is no way to change this information. Once it’s setup its locked in and can never be changed, despite the fact that I can change the original source. The only way to correct this issue, according to support, is to create a new GamerTag, which requires a new Live (Passport) ID since my existing passport can only ever be used on one GamerTag.
Now I’m left holding a points card I can’t return because the retailer has no way of knowing if it’s been used or not (I had to scratch off the back to see the number before I found out I can’t use it). Or, I can create a whole new account and passport which would cause me to lose all my existing gamer scores and force me to have all my messenger friends re-add me to their MSNM.
What was the Xbox Live team thinking? What’s the usage scenario that lead them to decide that this information should NEVER be allowed to change? Did they not realize that people do move between countries and that they might not want to lose all their accomplishments? And why don’t they pull the updated information from Passport? After all, your Passport account is meant to act like a passport and store all the personal information in one central spot. 