Some people get the red ring of death on the Xbox 360.
Me? For ages I have been unable to add new points to my Xbox live account – I invariably get the error Please try again later. Status code: 80169d94.
I keep emailing and calling Microsoft, who invariably tell me to try again later or update my address information, but nothing ever changes.
Googling for it reveals that I am not the only one.
At least WiiWare works, and I can still buy games in physical packages (so retro).
I recently had this problem (same error message though perhaps that is just a generic) when trying to add points since here in the U.S. to my Live account that had Sweden as the country. Neither a U.S. credit card nor points card bought in the GameStop here work. (I say the notation about this on the game card after I bought it. Weirdly though the “upgrade to gold” card did work.) Sadly I resorted to making a U.S. Live account for while I am here :P
Oh, and from what I could tell from googling, apparently you can’t ever change your country. Bah, this regionality stuff is crazy. (If anyone has actually managed to change the country on their gamertag I’d love to know, and how.)
Thanks TL – I guess we are the regionally challenged minority here! I just don’t understand what they get out of all this crazy region locking.
Weirdly, I also experienced the problem on occasion while living in Denmark. Grr.
I just phoned MS support today on 0800 5871102 (from UK) and selected Accounts and Billing option. The problem seems to be due to incorrect address/phone number infomation associated with the Gamertag. So even if you have entered the name and address correctly where you add a new credit card, you need to type this all in again in a separate screen associated with that Gamertag.
They gave me a website where you can do this easier than doing it on the Xbox – it is http://www.billing.microsoft.com. Login here using the e-mail you have associated with the problematic gamertag. then hit “Go to personal information” and correct the address/phone number.
I have not checked this has actually worked yet, but the MS support person seemed confident that it would work…why they couldn’t post this fix on the FAQ page heaven knows!
Radiohead, thanks a lot.
Unfortunately, I have already gone through the steps you describe.
Furthermore, Microsoft happily charges me for my XBox Live membership every month using the same credit card and address details, so …
im kind of new to this thread, but still, microsoft is seriously pissing me off! I have the exact problem you guys have, i keep trying to buy some ms points , after adding my credit card information, i press continue, from there on, the error comes up telling me to try again later. wtf M$ ? !
Hey, I’m getting the same error code as you guys (80169d94).
I contacted the billing department of Xbox LIVE support (1-800-4MY-XBOX) and they said they will contact me via email in 3-5 business days after the problem has been fixed. I tried updating the information on billing.microsoft.com with no luck. I’m fairly confident the problem will be fixed when they contact me, but until then there is nothing to do but wait.
Regards,
Paul
Hey, I had the same problem yesterday and it pissed me off so much that there are no clear and easy solutions, so I rang microsoft up and a very helpful foreigner asked me the credit card info as well as my address and gamertag, he then said that my gamertag was locked because it had been flagged as fraudulent because the name on the credit card was not the same as the name on the gamertag, he asked me to change them, so I did and said that a supervisor would call me in up to 3 days to unblock it and sort this shit out, so that’s all you need to do really, I’ll post again to say if it has worked
I finally managed to get Microsoft to make my account work again. I had made this request many times, but for some reason it finally came through. Now I can add money with my credit card.
I still cannot, however, add money using prepaid cards. Go figure.
I have this problem too. No point in holding for an obscene amount of time on the phone (I have better things to do) so I asked them to call me back. Here are my findings so far;
* Pre-paid code does not work.
* Credit Card (Visa Debit) does not work.
Which leads me to believe that it is a ‘block’, and not how your card details are entered. My card details are exactly the same as the last time (besides the expiry date).
People are saying MS can sort it in 3-5 days? The reason we can’t resolve this stupid code is mainly down to MS safeguarding ppls accounts.
They unblock you, you can play… keep it simple.