The XBox Saga
Earlier this evening, I was off achievement hunting in Fallout New Vegas. As happens in that game from time to time, it locked up on a loading screen. No problem, I thought - I've had to do the unplug/reboot thing before with Bethesda games. However, when it came back, it wouldn't install an update, claiming a lack of space. Since I had 85 GB free, I figured that couldn't be right.
The bad news was, the drive apparently got corrupted. Reformatting it was harder than it should have been - the device tells you to look up the serial number on an info screen, which gives you a 16 digit number. Inputting that to format yielded... nothing. No error, no format, nothing. Turns out it wanted a 12 digit number on the box itself. Fine, that worked. Next up - download my gamer tag.
Well.
That failed with an error - the dreaded 8015D000. So, I went to the MS site, took the "change my password" option (since i had no idea what I had used as my password - the XBox does auto-login). Then the website took me to a "your account has been temporarily blocked" page. That's the point where I contacted support. Support was less than helpful. They couldn't unblock my account, and the best they could offer was that an "advocacy team" would contact me in 2-3 business days. My box is effectively a brick until then, because without my profile, I have no access to the DLC or downloaded games I've bought. Most of the disc games I've bought have DLC associated with them, so they're useless until this is dealt with.
To contrast this - a few years ago, I had a Macbook Pro die on a flight to London. I went to the Apple Store, and while I had lunch with friends, they replaced the motherboard - on a Saturday. Meanwhile, no one at XBox support can figure out how to help me unblock my account, or even explain to me why it's blocked.
Hey @majornelson - explain to me why I should get an XBox One later this year? Seems to me that a half decent PC with Steam would work a lot better at this point.
