This is equal parts cautionary tale, soapbox rant and CSA.
But I am not alone in experiencing this frustrating predicament.
So firstly lets get a bit of context here, how did I first discover the issue?
While some keys, codes and games are very kindly provided by devs, publishers and PR, the majority of titles I still purchase for review.
As such its incredibly convenient to pre-order as soon as a title is announced then just forget about it until its release and time for reviews/first impressions.
I'm also a subscriber to the fantastic Game Pass Ultimate that gives access to a brilliant catalogue of titles and day one releases across both Xbox and PC.
Herein lays the problem. While we all know that first party content will be included with Game Pass, additional monthly releases are a surprise and source of anticipation for most, but above all, impossible to predict.
So it is inevitable that people who have pre ordered a title may further down the line come to finds it gets announced as a non-first party day one release. Recently this has happened to me twice, Outriders and this week, Dark Alliance.
Now, if you pre ordered within the last 10 days its a relatively painless process of just going to your account order history, locating your order and clicking a button to cancel and refund your pre order. However Game Pass releases are never announced within 10 days of a game being available for pre order, so that means we have to contact support.
Unfortunately Microsoft live support, either by phone or chat, while fantastically helpful, are unable to facilitate refunds, this is handled exclusively by an offline team via email, initiated via an online template.
This is the part where all these individual nuances combine to create a bit of a clusterfuck. According to the Microsoft "Digital Game Purchase Terms" only a limited amount of refunds are allowed on an account each year. Once that limit is reached, its an automatic rejection of the refund application.
This is the part I have Umbridge with. There have been many times in the past that I have bought an already released game from the store, only to find it appear on Game Pass the very next month, this is just bad luck and I don't expect to be able to refund this, you take your chances in this situation.
But refusing a refund for a game that is as yet unreleased and not even pre downloaded is unacceptable, particularly when you take into consideration that we are supporting Xbox by both using the pre orders AND subscribing to their premium service.
From the comfort of my chair its easy to throw out solutions without having to design and implement them across the platform, but my suggestion would appear to be common sense:
When a game is announce for Game Pass, an automated script would check against accounts to see which subscribers had pre ordered. It would then issue an email informing them of the imminent release and allowing them the option of clicking a button within the email to cancel the pre order should they wish.
This may result in some refunded revenue, but a majority would certainly be kept on the platform going back into the Microsoft Account balance.
It would also reduce admin for various teams having to deal with this issue over and over again for multiple subscribers and releases.
Above all its a huge tick for customer service relations and something ALL subscribers would really appreciate.
While I'm sure this is much easier said than done, it's a situation that is only going to increase as the cadence of Game Pass releases increases. Something needs to be done to start addressing the problem and in the interim, chat support and the refunds team need to be given more leeway when dealing with such requests.
As it stands, best case scenario Game Pass is going to damage sales as subscribers stop pre ordering completely and shy away from digital purchases as a whole.
Worst case scenario people just move away to alterative platforms with easier, more reasonable cancellation policies to place pre orders.
Anyone experiencing this issue can express their concerns, complain and escalate the issue by contacting Microsoft via the below channels:
Email: buscond@microsoft.com
Phone: 1-877-320-6738 or international collect +1-720-904-6844
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