Microsoft Taken £450 & won't return it

Seagull1980

My 11 year old son saved for nearly 2 years to buy himself the Xbox Series X.  Finally on his birthday in November, he'd saved enough to purchase one.  We found a deal on Black Friday where CDKeys were selling Microsoft Store vouchers for slightly under the retail value.  We also converted Microsoft Reward points.  Combining the 2, we had exactly £450 in my Microsoft Account.  We then tried to purchase the item and were faced with an error to say we had reached the limit (1) of Xbox Series X per household.  We've never bought one before, so called MS help line.  After around 3 or 4 days of back and forth calls, the MS Agent was able to clear the error and order the item on our behalf.
As he was placing the order, we ensured he was aware that we wanted to pay with the MS Balance (he even initially commented that we didn't have enough to cover the purchase, but then realised he was looking at the wrong section).  Immediately after placing the order for us, I noticed that the payment appeared to have come from my bank and not from my MS account.  For the next 2 or 3 days we had calls with Microsoft, where they claimed on multiple occasions that the money had not come from our bank and was just a "holding fee" until the item was shipped.  We checked with our bank who confirmed that £499.98 (they took 1p from my MS balance....) had been taken from our bank, this was also confirmed once the item was shipped.

We've since had multiple calls with so many departments in MS (over 8 hours of calls so far) and continue to be cut off, passed between departments and told lies (a manager called us today to tell us the maximum voucher value able to be redeemed is £180, but even their website says its $1,000).  We are no further forward now to them returning the money or converting the payment from bank to MS account.

My current situation is that I now have £499.98 sitting in an MS account, that is non transferable, not withdrawable and am £450 down (we've actually had to borrow from my own parents to cover some bills) due to a Microsoft error.

I don't know what to do next as MS continue to close any cases raised to them and appear to have no obvious complaints process.

Any advise would be so welcome

WhiskersTheWonderCat

Surely you can return the X-Box for a refund? Then try to order again using the points. 

Aylesbury_Duck

Exactly.  Return it for a refund and order again.

Seagull1980

WhiskersTheWonderCat said:

Surely you can return the X-Box for a refund? Then try to order again using the points. 

Unfortunately not, then I'm back to the point where you can only order one per household and I'm back to having no Xbox and them still having my sons money

Aylesbury_Duck

Seagull1980 said:

WhiskersTheWonderCat said:

Surely you can return the X-Box for a refund? Then try to order again using the points. 

Unfortunately not, then I'm back to the point where you can only order one per household and I'm back to having no Xbox and them still having my sons money

The only way I can see of resolving it is for the transaction to be reversed.  They're not responsive to your other approaches, so returning it forces them to refund you.  Since the money is critical, get that back and sort out how you get a new Xbox later.

I assume you haven't used the console whilst all this is up in the air?  If you've been using it, registered it online, etc. then I think you're going to be stuck.

MattMattMattUK

Seagull1980 said:

WhiskersTheWonderCat said:

Surely you can return the X-Box for a refund? Then try to order again using the points. 

Unfortunately not, then I'm back to the point where you can only order one per household and I'm back to having no Xbox and them still having my sons money

If you want the money back then you need to return it and get a refund, speak to them and find a way to get them to order it, the easiest way would be to remove your credit card from the account before reordering. 

Mutton_Geoff

Stick something on their FB chat or Twitter, that seems to be the fastest way to get Big Corp to listen to you these days.

Olinda99

Since you specifically denied permission for them to.use your card when you ordered, is thete any mileage in the chargeback route ?

born_again

Olinda99 said:

Since you specifically denied permission for them to.use your card when you ordered, is thete any mileage in the chargeback route ?

On what basis?

As there is no chargeback, given Op has got x-box & we assume it works.
Chargebacks do not cover this issue 👍

WhiskersTheWonderCat

Seagull1980 said:

WhiskersTheWonderCat said:

Surely you can return the X-Box for a refund? Then try to order again using the points. 

Unfortunately not, then I'm back to the point where you can only order one per household and I'm back to having no Xbox and them still having my sons money

Why can you not return it? That is your easiest route to getting back to where you were. You either want the money back, or you don't. 

Also, on their website, it states that you can redeem a 1000 USD worth of points "per day", but doesn't say whether there's a limit per transaction. I can't seem to find any information about that. 

pinkshoes

Seagull1980 said:

WhiskersTheWonderCat said:

Surely you can return the X-Box for a refund? Then try to order again using the points. 

Unfortunately not, then I'm back to the point where you can only order one per household and I'm back to having no Xbox and them still having my sons money

But returning it means they can cancel the transaction, so you will then have NO X-box, and can then re-order it. They were able to clear it last time, so should be able to this time.