A little over a month ago, my house was broken into.
I stopped on the way home to pick up a copy of Devil May Cry 4 to play on my brand new PS3. I walked into my house at nearly 6PM on the dot. I put down my bag, took off my coat and put in two pieces of bread into the toaster. Then I moved to my room.
It was not so much what I saw as much as what I should have.
I stood there looking at the bareness of what used to be my entertainment center/office/bedroom. A corner desk that was once a podium for what I would learn was roughly $9,000 worth of gaming equipment, software and other items, was nearly empty.
It took the sound of the toast popping up to jar me from my staring and to get me to pick my jaw up off the floor.
This is not a story about my problems. Things are just things and they can be replaced. More, it is a few things. It is a parable about how powerless you are when your things are stolen. It is worship at the alter that is comprehensive insurance. But most importantly, it is a warning about certain behaviors undertaken by company you trust.
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I made three calls right off the bat.
The first was to my roommate. He didn’t answer, and instead walked in the door minutes after I hung up on his voicemail. He found that his laptop was stolen. It was the only thing stolen that was not mine.
The second call was to the Vancouver Police Department. They said they would send someone over before midnight.
The third was to my insurance company.
When you are robbed, it takes quite awhile to take inventory about all the things that are stolen. Even now I will notice little things missing. Bigger things too. It took me about an hour to remember I had spare keys to my truck in my nightstand. Truck was gone too.
The truck put the tab up to $24,000. I was told by a lawyer friend of mine not to even bother calling in the RCMP under 25k. I didn’t really want to get another organization involved anyway.
The cops never showed up that night. They didn’t show up the next day until almost 5PM. When they (read: he, as in, one officer) did, he came in, took a cursory look around, flashed a flashlight in a couple of places, and deemed the case nigh unsolvable. These here criminals were smart.
He said he took a look around the outside, looking for where they might have tried to get in. It took us to find the bright blue crowbar they had left behind.
Insurance is a good thing to have here. I got all my stuff replaced, including my truck. Everything was cool there. I suggest everyone get insurance if you have a lot tied up in current generation gaming. They overlooked my Wii, but left a PS2, all my Wii and GC games, all my DS games (but took my DS) and left a 1 year old iMac. But they sure wanted those current gen systems.
This is where things take an unexpected turn.
The day after, I realized that I had used my credit card to buy Microsoft Points. As you all likely know, when you use a credit card on your Xbox, it is stored on your Gamertag for later use. Useful, for the most part, but I thought it would be best to get it off there while strangers physically had it.
I call Xbox support, and I have to assume that they now automatically have the machine tell you your system has been received, repaired and will require a few days to get back to you, as they said (every, single, time) that I had an open repair ticket from mid January, which I did not. So. After giving my name, address, rank, serial number and Gamertag (which I would do over and over and over and over…) I got in touch with a supervisor that could remove my Visa information.
He said that would be fine. He said he did it. I said awesome, thanks.
A few days later, upon checking my Hotmail account, it said I was the new, proud owner of 5000 Microsoft Points at the cost of $81. Something to celebrate to be sure, but I had not purchased those points. I could not have.
At this point a few things ran through my mind. First, was credit card fraud, which was bad. The other was that someone had my Xbox and was playing games I had never owned and downloading and buying content, including every single piece of downloadable content for NHL 08. Oh Canada.
Needless to say, I was a little miffed. That day had also brought the information that my insurance adjuster had just gone on a little mid-….February...vacation, so any claim would be delayed another week. Sweet. Add that on top of vehicle insurance that would not pay for 30 days and an inert police force and you can probably feel my frustration. I know what you are thinking: get the police to subpoena Microsoft for the IP used to access Live, subpoena the ISP for the address attached to the IP’s account and walk up to their front door, right?
All well and good if the officer assigned to your case is not on vacation too. Even better if anyone gives enough of a damn to get another person on your case.
This is about the point where the original Evil Avatar thread disappeared. It was an idea to use a bit of social engineering, try to get the guy to send Evil his name and address in response to a prize he won. No luck there. He changed his bio information to Victoria, and his nickname to Clenton, which I think was just a play on my name (Clinton). If we are to believe that, in just a few days, my Xbox had made it across the Georgia Strait for some lucky soul to play Fight Night on. Bully for him.
In the meantime they bought 10,000 more points. Everyone told me to cancel my credit card. I thought this was good advice. So I called my Visa card company (CIBC. Also now on my blacklist) and was confronted with an ornery and quite likely stoned individual who served me with the following anecdote: a woman pre-approved payments, not unlike me with my Xbox, to her local city hall for tax and fee payments. She cancels her card. 8 months after the card is canceled, she gets a bill for the pre-authorized payments she forgot to change at the city hall. Thus, it would be pointless to cancel your card. Being somewhat green in this area, I went against my better judgement and the advice of my peers and decide to side with the person that actually worked for the company. He should know about these things, right? I would pay for that trust.
So I get on the horn again to Microsoft, jump through a ton of hoops and spend enough time on hold to fill out a BBB complaint. When I finally get to someone not working off a script, I am told that
it can take up to 30 days to remove credit card information from your account, and up to 5 years for that information to be purged from Microsoft servers.
This is clearly unacceptable.
From here on I would go to talk to 3 other supervisors and multiple tiers of customer service. Someone called about the BBB complaint, but I have not heard back. Finally, I got in touch with someone for them to investigate the fraudulent charges. She told me that
because they had bought Microsoft Points, they could not give me a refund because they, quite simply, did not do refunds for points, and told met to refute the claims with my credit card company, who would then in turn file a report with them. A polite way to say sod off if I have ever heard one.
The insurance adjuster got back from vacation. All was well there.
I got paid out for my car. All was well there.
The constable assigned to my case returned from her vacation. She said she passed my case up to their property crime unit who would call me within the week. It has been a month, no call. No IP. No subpoena. No justice. Probably for the best though. Multiple Microsoft employees said they probably don’t log that information anyway, and wouldn’t give it out without a badge being flashed. Sweet.
But the fact of the matter is. If you want to own your credit card information. If you want control of it if anything like this should happen to you. I would call Microsoft right now and tell them to take your information off your Xbox. It might take a month for results, but at least if someone steals your Xbox next month, they cant spend 30 days buying non-refundable points.
Microsoft has proven their incompetence with our private information and should be ashamed. 30 days to make a deletion from their records is an abomination. If we request our information purged, we should get it.
So please. Lock your doors. Buy insurance.
And keep your credit card number off your Xbox.
