

Windows Store dev account: getting rid of it is as hard as signing up  - Macha
http://weblogs.asp.net/fbouma/archive/2013/08/13/windows-store-account-getting-rid-of-it-is-as-hard-as-signing-up.aspx

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epaulson
I had nearly the same experience with Azure a few years ago. I signed up for a
trial account to try their database service, but ultimately didn't do much
with it and wasn't storing any data there.

A few months later Microsoft wanted to start billing me, but when I went to
try to cancel my account, there was no way to do it online. Some friends in
Microsoft (not in the Azure world) looked into it and told me they thought it
was that Microsoft wanted to do it over the phone to get a better sense of why
I was leaving. Needless to say, this is not how the cloud should work.

Looking back in my email, the first email from Microsoft opening the issue
tracker for 'cancel account' was on Oct 21 2011. The last email I have for it,
and when the account finally seemed dead, was July 23rd 2012.

Now, the credit card I used when I signed up for my trial expired before
Microsoft ever tried to actually charge it, so thankfully I was never out of
any money. But I've been bummed - Azure is a lot more interesting now than it
was in the summer of 2011 and I'd like to use it, but after my last experience
I don't dare give them a working credit card every again.

~~~
varunkho
At least in 2013, you can cancel it (my client did) and Azure has a default
spending limit for trial accounts which, unless you remove, never gets you
charged if you consume the trial usage and simply suspends your account. On
the other hand, AWS doesn't have a spending limit concept for even free, one-
year micro instance trial last I checked.

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CodeCube
Hah ... I'm glad he posted this and it subsequently made it onto HN. I got the
same email last night and have been dreading trying to log on to figure out
how in the heck to cancel the account. I had a similar confusing problem
canceling an azure subcription, xbox live indie games subscription, windows
phone store subscription, and zune music subscription in the past.

edit: it gets worse, unfortunately. I followed Frans' steps and tried to chat
with a support tech. I didn't notice when they came on after a while and so
they closed the chat session. Fine, my fault. So I went with the "call me"
option. After a while, I get the call, and the first lady was really nice, but
informed me that she couldn't help me. So she forwarded me to another number
which ended up being MSDN subscription support. After I got on with someone
there, they informed me that they couldn't help me and that I had to do it
online at orders.microsoft.com/history (the http version is a 404, so I had to
figure out to put in https). He was clueless otherwise, so I hung up and just
tried to go back and initiate another chat conversation. That is unfortunately
erroring out with a 500 server error. What a CF :(

~~~
CodeCube
Finally got it resolved ... I ended up requesting for support to call me. Same
as before, the guy said he had to transfer me to another place for them to
help me. I asked him to stay on the line and talk to the other agent to make
sure it was the right place (which to his credit he did), and he discovered
that they would in fact not help me. So then he put me on hold for a while,
and came back trying to suggest that I should just post on the forums, or try
the chat option, or request a callback. After informing him that requesting a
callback is what brought me to him, he was further flummoxed. So I asked to
speak to his supervisor. I made sure to tell the supervisor that the agent was
nothing but nice, so it wasn't a complaint on him ... I just wanted it handled
without posting on a forum. Eventually he told me that he was going to do it,
but that "things don't go well when we do this". He suggested that having
consumer support make a change on a developer account might lock the developer
account ... or something, and that I'd have to call back to have it unlocked
if I had problems signing up in the future.

So although I appreciate that they were eventually able to help me; wow, what
a complete and utter nightmare. I'm kind of bummed because although I was
disabling the auto-renew, I was considering whether I would pick things back
up in 6 months to a year and maybe release another windows 8 app. Going to
really think twice about it now ... heck, it might not even let me sign up
again!

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frou_dh
Some Xbox Live nonsense stops me from closing a Microsoft Account despite
having zero MS Points and the paid subscription expiring years ago.

I suspect most sprawling multi-product account systems are a complete mess
behind the scenes.

~~~
harrytuttle
Same problem here with a couple of separate accounts.

It's easy to work around if you know how. Log in to your account and then hit
this link:

[http://mail.live.com/mail/CloseAccountConfirmation.aspx](http://mail.live.com/mail/CloseAccountConfirmation.aspx)

That took me 8 fucking hours on the phone to Microsoft support to get out of
them. Asshats.

~~~
frou_dh
Thanks, but that seems to be just deactivating the email part. I want to close
the entire MS account and it still won't let me.

~~~
harrytuttle
It will close the whole account down after 30 days. If you log in during that
time it will reactivate it.

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hamidpalo
Is there a way to cancel an account w/o an angry blog post and then waiting
for a call from PR?

I created a Windows Store account when I was a MSFT employee and it's straight
up impossible to cancel it. There are circular links but no actual way to get
in touch with someone.

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chris_wot
More interesting than deregistering was his views on WinRT. It's looking like
Microsoft have pissed off a few folks. Anyone know the backstory around this?

~~~
hrvbr
WinRT is supposed to be a modernized version of .Net built with lightweight
asychronous programming in mind. I haven't yet checked if this promise is
bullshit.

In my experience with Windows Azure, Microsoft seems to be moving deliberately
slowly. They build a small solid foundation and add more features when they're
ready. Azure didn't have AutoScale until recently. I'm sure WinRT will keep
growing.

~~~
taopao
Maybe you should spend a few minutes on Google (or Bing) assessing the state
of WinRT before making prognostications.

Spoiler alert: WinRT is completely DOA.

~~~
CodeCube
Just to be clear, you probably mean that Windows RT is DOA. They're not
necessarily the same thing (you can call WinRT libraries from regular desktop
code).

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ChuckMcM
I don't know if it is always the case, but it is _often_ the case that when
the billing and payments system is this screwed up it reflects on a very
distracted (sometimes quite painfully so) company. And the recent re-alignment
at the top can leave tectonic fault lines where entire subdivisions become
weirdly autonomic like this.

What I find most amazing though are large organizations which can continue to
operate tolerating these sorts of things. It seems the P/L statements coming
from the people who tally up the "Developer Store" for each quarter are so far
in the noise that its rounding error, and yet there they are, doing their
thing, checking in changes, turning the crank, but clearly without oversight.

