MS banned my 7+ years old account (guile3md) permanently because i joined Xbox Live Community Ambassadors program and tried to help other XBL users ... they saw my chat with the other XBL users as "attempts to extract account information from other players" I tried everything to contact MS but they are not listening to me ... all i got from them is a call after a couple of months of trying to know the real reason for the ban ... I hope that other gamers will not fall for the same mistake and join Xbox Live Community Ambassadors program ...
MS banned my gamertag for trying to help other gamers!
- Thread starter guile_mrd
- Start date
I tried that of their forum 15 but they just sent a copy of the ban email without any additional info and when i tried to ask for more details i got the following response form them
"You have already received a response regarding this inquiry. Please do not continue to post about the subject. Failure to refrain from additional posts can result in further enforcement action. Thank you for your cooperation."
so they are saying that they will ban the other account that i'm using to contact them if i ask again about the ban reason .... i also opened a case at Xbox Live Support and after more than 2 months of following on that case and waiting i told them that i can't wait more and that i will sue them if they don't give me the real reason for the ban so they asked for my phone number and they called me and told me that the ban reason is the chat that i did with another xbox live user as an XBL ambassador ... it just doesn't make any since ... I did a lot of support for other XBL users on Skype but i never asked anyone for personal info...
I have this account for 7+ years, I have 74000+ game score on this account and a huge number or arcade game purchased using it and I also have 3000+ MS points on it, this account is my entire gaming experience for the past 7+ years ..... and MS took it all from me ...
I never bought any of Sony consoles ... I moved from Sega consoles (Mega Drive, Saturn, Dreamcast) to MS (Xbox, Xbox 360), but I might move to PS4 now ..
burritoman
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Well Sony likes to 
people, but they at least kiss you first.
Go for a PS4. Trash the shitbox.
people, but they at least kiss you first.Go for a PS4. Trash the shitbox.
I tried everything to contact them from posting on twitter and emailing Xbox support to emailing Major Nelson and posting on his blog ... I didn't get any response from Major Nelson and the response that i got from XBL support was that they don't have the authority to do anything when it comes to banned accounts, it's all controlled by Live Enforcement Team who's totally isolated without any phone numbers or emails to contact them, they only have "forum 15" where they just send a copy of the ban email as a response for anyone who ask about the ban reason and don't give any chance to discuss the ban after that ... it's just sad...
mitch079
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Did you ever do any of these?
- Ambassadors should NEVER request personal information, including but not limited to: Email address, billing information, personally identifiable information, and 5x5 codes for digital content on Xbox Live. Doing so will result in immediate removal from the program, and possible enforcement action.
WhipSmartBanky
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No good deed...
Does the program happen on Skype?
If I recall correctly it happens either on the forums or on their "Ambassabank" chat feature. If you were asking for people's Skype names and helping them there, then they probably considered that "asking for personal information" and banned you.
I did the ambassador thing to see what kinds of things people were asking, but I lost interest.
They add an Xbox Live Support chat option to your Skype account after you join the program now and you receive help requests on it, i never asked for any personal info while chatting with other XBL users .... I did a lot of support on XBL forums during the XBL outage last March and using Skype chat, the XP points that i collected were enough to get me past Ambassador level 6.. I reached rank 13th on the XBL Ambassadors leaderboards for the past 30 days before the ban ... and this is what i get in return... first the ban then i was removed from XBL Ambassadors program and lost everything i did there and then they cancelled my XBL Gold membership which was valid for another 6 months at the ban time ... all is gone.
no, i never asked for any personal info, that's why I can't understand this ban .... the only thing that I can remember that might made them upset and maybe caused the ban (although it's not related to ban reason they gave me) was a chat that i did with an XBL user who bought a third party Xbox 360 hard drive, backward compatibility doesn't work on those hard drives, i know that because i bought one and i faced the same issue and i know that the reason for this issue is a missing partition on the hard drive that contains the backward compatibility software, I told him the reason for this issue and that it can be resolved but i didn't tell him how, i just told him to search for a solution on the net ....
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DurbanBrown
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oh wow. sucks bad
we didn't talk about anything other than the third party hard drive backward compatibility issue ... Live Enforcement Team have access to all the chat log so they can see that ... I read the "Xbox Live Code Of Conduct" after they banned my account to see if i did anything wrong and i found out that they have unrestricted authority to ban anyone without giving a reason ! so now I don't think that they'll unban my account even if they think that the ban was a mistake ...
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Take it to the blogs (Kotaku, Joystiq, Destructoid, maybe even the Consumerist) and other gaming sites if you really believe you didn't violate any rules. Just be sure you have as much evidence/documentation as possible so your story is pretty infallible.
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anotherpoorgamer
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DestroVega
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Get a ps4 cause Sony has no online community anyway. You won't have the same problems.
Is it possible that the Enforcement Team maybe thinks you told the person to tamper with their system...?
I didn't tell him that! i just told him to search on the net for how to add the missing partition to the third party hard drive ... anyone can get this info with a simple search, my understanding for XBL live ambassadors program is that they are not MS employees ... so they are not obligated to promote MS products...
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the partition is where the "backward compatibility" update that you download on Xbox 360 is installed ... it doesn't have any additional software.
Yeah, I just did some research and the Xbox will not put those files on there for you. You need to use various unofficial tools to copy the files off of another drive and onto the new drive. Or maybe you can download them from somewhere. The former might be legal, but I'm not sure. At the least you got yourself into a sketchy area and that is probably why you got banned. But, as I said, I think they should have issued you a warning first. This is like one strike and you're out.
I did a lot of support as an XBL Ambassador ... if Live Enforcement Team check everything I did there they will know for sure that I was only trying to help others based on my own experience as a gamer, if they are going to permanently ban every XBL Ambassadors who chat once about what they consider illegal without a warning then I think that no one should join XBL Ambassadors program .. it's just too risky ... I hope that other XBL users will take note and not fall for the same miserable situation that I'm in now ...
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I don't understand why they banned my gamertag permanently without a warning even if what we talked about is illegal ... why they didn't remove me from the XBL Ambassadors program without banning my gamertag? I used this gamertag for more than 7 years before joining the XBL Ambassadors program and it's really important to me as it has everything linked to it ...
burritoman
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I would agree with this. One way or another they accused you of some sort of piracy. I'm not saying you did, but in their eyes you did. It's probably some sort of zero tolerance thing they have. Who knows what the person you were trying to help said as well.
I didn't give him the tool to fix the third party hard drive backward compatibility issue, I just told him it's fixable and he can find how to fix it if he search for it on the net ... the info that i told him is not a big secret ... just do a simple search on google on this issue and you'll find a lot of forums explaining how to fix it ...
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My understanding to the way the fix works is that there's a missing partition that is needed to install the backward computability update that you download on Xbox 360 to play Xbox games, I didn't say anything about any files that need to copy to that partition.
what makes XBL Ambassadors program a real nightmare is that Live Enforcement Team could permanently ban your account without any warning the way they banned my account ... so it's a big risk and not worth it at all
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Malik112099
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This smells fishy. Reading through this, OP stated the hard drive issue wasn't why they banned him but everyone is harping on it. What was the contents of the email they sent you? What was their exact reason? Sounds like if you had a case someone would have replied or taken notice. Did they quote your chat in the ban email? I'm not convinced you are 100% innocent.
I like how you put it so simple that they would reply or listen if I'm innocent ....it seams that you trust MS so much ...
the ban email didn't say anything about the chat ... here's a copy of the ban email:
"This Xbox LIVE account has been permanently suspended due to attempts to extract account information from other players and/or attempts to use the Xbox LIVE service for commercial purposes. This conduct was discovered in your profile, your activities, and/or your communications.
The conduct that caused this suspension may include, but is not limited to:
- Asking for another player's login, password, or personally-identifiable information
- Unauthorized Gamertag recovery
- Offering to trade Xbox LIVE or in-game services for Microsoft Points or money"
I"m 100% that I didn't do any of the reasons they listed in the email, I contacted them on Live Enforcement Team forum 15 and all got from them was a copy of that email and a warning not to post there about my case or they will take more enforcement actions against me, after that i tried everything to contact anyone who could help me and explain why i was banned, i didn't get any response from Major Nelson and all the Official Xbox Live Support could do is open a case for me with "[SIZE=11pt]Xbox Customer Care Advocacy Team" , the outcome of that case after more than 2 months of follow up and waiting was that they have verified that no one other than me have used my Xbox 360! although that has nothing to do with the ban since according to them the ban happened because of a chat that I did as an XBL Ambassador ... after that I told them that I want to know the exact reason for the ban or I will sue them for banning me for no reason .. at that point I received a response from them asking for my phone number to call me, a person from [/SIZE]"[SIZE=11pt]Xbox Customer Care Advocacy Team" c[/SIZE][SIZE=11pt]alled me after that and told me that the real reason for the ban was that I have asked [/SIZE]another XBL user for private info during a chat as an XBL Ambassador ...
It's up to you if you want to believe that I'm innocent or not .. all i want is to let others know the risks that they are taking when they join XBL Ambassadors program and what to expect if they ever need to contact Live Enforcement Team ....
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Malik112099
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They didn't tell you exactly which chat? Private info can be a wide variety of things like age, name or where someone lives. You didn't ask any question to anyone about anything ?
no .. never, I'm an IT Consultant and I know how these things work .. I would never do that ....
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I've been waiting for the Games on Demand version of Max Payne 3 to download and saw this topic wondering the same thing myself because if Microsoft ever bans you, it must be for a legitimate reason for doing something you weren't suppose to and I have never heard of it being a "mistake". So I took a quick look at the gamertag he has in his profile, guile3mrd (looking up 'guile3md' shows it doesn't exist), and it says the same thing in his bio that he's saying now including his email so after a quick google search of his username and email (which is currently in his bio on Xbox Live)...
https://live.xbox.com/en-US/Profile?gamertag=guile3mrd
and
http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=143208 (the email he tells you to contact him at in the bio of his gamertag guile3mrd, shows up on his personal webpage, which is linked from the signature of the OP on that forum which coincidently happens to be guile_mrd).
Long story short, OP you're a pirate and you got caught.
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Grrr! Thanks for taking the time to do all this search on my profile and email
, I like how you trust MS so much and believe that they would never ban anyone by mistake .... read the ban email ... the ban has nothing to do with pirated games! I remember reading about the banning of Xbox 360 consoles after an update that MS did to check for anyone who's using pirated games but even in that case they didn't ban the accounts ....you're saying that I'm using pirated games on my Xbox 360 because i have an account on Xbox-scene ??? that's a joke .. I never used a pirated game on Xbox 360 .. all the games that i have are legit, the mod was on my old Xbox to run XBMC and Emulators on it and has nothing to do with my Xbox 360 ...
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You've never heard of MS banning someone by mistake or for no reason? You haven't been paying attention. Usually, it's not permanent, but it happens all the time. They rarely reverse it. Even with proof. They just don't care. That's why I'm very concerned about the new rep system on XB1. I see major abuse potential.
Macheezmo
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Did you even look at the date on those posts? They're from 2003, and they're talking about the original Xbox. If MS is banning people because they modded their original Xboxes 10 years ago, that would just be ridiculous.
Thekrakrabbit
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You got caught up in a bad situation where the power hungry commanders of the banhammer jumped you and got you knocked off for seemingly no reason. There's little you can do here, except for feel bitter about being wrongfully banned. I used to be big into the forums and such and constantly helped people and, sadly, saw countless "why was I banned?" threads a day. Of the many posted everyday, at least a few of them were legitimately perplexing bans that got dropped on these people.
You just got screwed, plain and simple. That's what you get for trying to help people, silly you.
You just got screwed, plain and simple. That's what you get for trying to help people, silly you.
Yeah silly me ... lesson learned... never chat with anyone on XBL to avoid getting your account permanently banned, I hope that everyone else will learn the lesson without having to try for themselves ....
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Thekrakrabbit
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It's a shame but it happens a lot. Doing good things in situations like that can be fun and all, but when you get emails from Microsoft or all of a sudden you're suspended for questionable reasons, it really starts to take the fun out of doing anything for anybody random.
Yeah .. the worst part that they have banned my account permanently without any warring ... they took away everything that I have linked to that account that I used for more than 7 years ...
Monsta Mack
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At least It's your live account and not xbox so you can play all your games still I'd assume
Blaster man
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Are you going to create a new gamer tag and buy an Xbox One or are you going to just play offline and abandon the Xbox platform going forward?
bread's done