I went back through best I could through all my old purchase emails, I have no idea how I got my Gold's end date out that far. It should technically be running out sometime in early 2019.

edit: yep, double checked again, and I have an email proving they auto-renewed me this January for 12 months.. which should put me to January 2019 at best, and proves I had no stacked Live. wtf? I mean, I'll take the free year-and-couple-of-months...

To anyone else who picked up this deal, you'll want to be aware that you sign up for a subscription during checkout. That was the only option I could see. In my case I already had a credit card on file. After signing up for this deal I simply cancelled the auto-pay.

Definitely sneaky, and new for MS; you USED to be able to buy just the year, without having to cancel recurring billing after the fact.

This disappoints me.

It's a subscription:

What it's saying is that you have enough in your account to pay for the first year (which is being sold at $39.99), but you're also agreeing to subscribe by doing so - and it wants a payment method on file to use for the subsequent renewals, when they happen.

That's fine - except the deal ($40 for a year of Gold) is NOT dependent on accepting the subscription, and there's no way to specify which way you want it from that web page. (The person who helped me online signed me up for one more year, non-recurring. Same price.)

They've ALWAYS written it that way for recurring costs, and I've ALWAYS asked for non-auto-renew; this is the first time it turned out to be impossible. (They haven't had a credit card associated with my account since 2006.)

It's a subscription:

What it's saying is that you have enough in your account to pay for the first year (which is being sold at $39.99), but you're also agreeing to subscribe by doing so - and it wants a payment method on file to use for the subsequent renewals, when they happen.

Not saying it's super clear, but it was immediately obvious to me.

Game Pass is great.
There's hundreds of games available, and you can download as many as your hard drive can hold at one time, with full access to things like Achievements and online play.
The game selection is great as well, with recent additions like Vermintide, Rocket League, The Division, Fallout 4, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and State of Decay 2 being a tiny sample of what's on offer (and that's without mentioning BC classics like Ninja Gaiden Black, Oblivion, Fable, and KotOR).
It only took one 14-day trial to sell me as a subscriber, even though I hadn't had Xbox Live Gold since 2013.

What it's saying is that you have enough in your account to pay for the first year (which is being sold at $39.99), but you're also agreeing to subscribe by doing so - and it wants a payment method on file to use for the subsequent renewals, when they happen.

I give up.

Ya know what's funny is that when I saw the deal and planned to post about it, for a moment I asked myself "How will this one go wrong for Claude?" until I saw that it was a Microsoft store sale, which, verification annoyance aside, are super straightforward.

I've got to hand it to ya, man. I'm impressed!

My working hypothesis is that I'm flagged in the MS system, due to the bizarro "we're routing all Bungie support questions to your home line" problem I dealt with for a decade. It's possible that the flag is harmless (that is, that all of these failures are an unintended side effect of some sort of block put on my account for my own benefit 5 or 10 years ago), or it's possible that it's intentional and malicious, someone's idea of "fuck you for tying up so many resources when you could have just changed your phone number and saved us all a lot of headaches". I wouldn't bet against either of those. :)

hahaha look at you thinking Microsoft makes things easy and logical.

I'll never forget:

http://forums.bungie.org/halo/archive39.pl?read=1155049

Yeah, that was bullshit. Easier, now, because chargebacks can be initiated on your credit card's website. No need to let your blood pressure go up talking to those people.

(I went to MS Support just now, and via chat got the deal charged to my account. Took about 15 minutes, but I only had to pay attention about 3 of those minutes. She couldn't explain what had happened - she could only fix the problem.)

I give up.

Ya know what's funny is that when I saw the deal and planned to post about it, for a moment I asked myself "How will this one go wrong for Claude?" until I saw that it was a Microsoft store sale, which, verification annoyance aside, are super straightforward.

I've got to hand it to ya, man. I'm impressed!

hahaha look at you thinking Microsoft makes things easy and logical.

I'll never forget:

http://forums.bungie.org/halo/archive39.pl?read=1155049

So this seems like a good deal. I look at my Xbox account, there's 80-someodd dollars in it. Cool - plenty for a $40 purchase.

I hit 'Buy', and am faced with this screen:

WHAT 'rest'? (Clicking 'Next' gives me an option of adding a credit or debit card account, or a Paypal account, or redeeming a gift card. WHY THE FUCK DO I NEED TO SPECIFY ANYTHING? I HAVE TWICE AS MUCH AS I NEED FOR THIS PURCHASE!)

I give up.

hahaha look at you thinking Microsoft makes things easy and logical.

WHAT 'rest'? (Clicking 'Next' gives me an option of adding a credit or debit card account, or a Paypal account, or redeeming a gift card. WHY THE FUCK DO I NEED TO SPECIFY ANYTHING? I HAVE TWICE AS MUCH AS I NEED FOR THIS PURCHASE!)

I give up.

Good, come back to PSN :-p

I hit 'Buy', and am faced with this screen:

WHAT 'rest'? (Clicking 'Next' gives me an option of adding a credit or debit card account, or a Paypal account, or redeeming a gift card. WHY THE FUCK DO I NEED TO SPECIFY ANYTHING? I HAVE TWICE AS MUCH AS I NEED FOR THIS PURCHASE!)

I give up.

But like I said, I didn't want to seem like Avateur 2.0, so I haven't made that post.

But you just did…

Kek

Fun fax, I was originally going to reply to Speed with a Wahlberg gif myself, but decided to explain my thoughts with words instead.

But like I said, I didn't want to seem like Avateur 2.0, so I haven't made that post.

But you just did…

Courtesy of Microsoft, likely as a preemptive apology for Crackdown 3. :P

Get it!

Seriously though... I am starting to wonder if you are capable of ever posting something without adding a snarky little shitpost to the end of it.(?)

Hey, man, you'd be surprised at what I don't post, since I know it hurts certain folks' feewings if I'm not praising Bungie for their constant screwups. In this case, I think you're overreacting. It was my way of knocking out two birds with one stone, since the deal is great, and the recent Crackdown article was some great insight into a game in development hell. If that triggered you, I'm sorry. I just really liked that article and wanted to share it.

I mean, I totally get a little snark now and then for humor sake and enjoy it myself from time to time. I come to your defense more often than you're aware of; but it gets kinda hard when your last several posts have all had a wholly unnecessary snarky jab added at the end. ;-/

Hoo boy. Then you should be glad that I didn't post my essay-length thoughts on the eyeroll-inducing "hey, we're fun unscripted people!" bit that Bungie released as their last "Developer Insights" video, down to flat-out ripping off Rebecca Ford almost word for word with the ten second quote starting at 3:35. It's at the point where I'm just waiting for the David Samuel piece that they release to pacify the easily-amused crowd.

But like I said, I didn't want to seem like Avateur 2.0, so I haven't made that post.

Courtesy of Microsoft, likely as a preemptive apology for Crackdown 3. :P

Get it!

Seriously though... I am starting to wonder if you are capable of ever posting something without adding a snarky little shitpost to the end of it.(?)

I mean, I totally get a little snark now and then for humor sake and enjoy it myself from time to time. I come to your defense more often than you're aware of; but it gets kinda hard when your last several posts have all had a wholly unnecessary snarky jab added at the end. ;-/