Xbox Live Gold Membership: How to Disable Automatic Account Renewal

Otter
Otter, Yahoo! Contributor Network
Aug 6, 2009 "Share your voice on Yahoo! websites. Start Here."
Xbox Live is a premium service primarily used by Xbox 360 gamers. In order to play games online and have access to other features, you have to pay a monthly, quarterly or yearly fee to get access to the Xbox Live Gold membership. Xbox 360 users have several ways to pay: use their credit cards or purchase pre-paid cards with redemption codes. Linking your credit card to your Xbox Live Gold membership has proven to be cumbersome for many, however, since canceling the service takes a lot of work and can lead to plenty of frustration. Fortunately, Microsoft recently enabled an option to make it easier to cancel Xbox Live Gold. Take the following steps to disable Automatic Renewal and prevent your credit card from being charged once your Xbox Live Gold membership expire:

Step One: Signing into Your Xbox Live account
In order to access the page needed, you will first need to enter your email and password for your Xbox Live account in the following link:

https://live.xbox.com/en-US/accounts/MyAccount.aspx

If you forgot your Xbox Live password, the same page also contains a link to help you get a new password.

Step Two: Navigating to the Membership Level Page
Once you logged into you Xbox Live account, you will be on the page with your account summary. You can view your contact information, achievement points, Microsoft Points balance and membership level. Keep in mind that if you are currently an Xbox Live Silver member than you don't need to disable Automatic Renewal.

On the left side of the page, you will see a grey column with multiple categories. You should click on the "Membership Level" option to open a new page.

Step Three: Disabling Automatic Renewal
In this new page, you will see details regarding your Xbox Live Membership. Among them are "renews to," "renewal date" and "automatic renewal". If the latter is set to "on," you need to click on the accompanying link to disable the option.

Now in the Automatic Renewal page, you will see the option to turn it either off or on. Choose the "off" option and then click "next" to confirm your selection. Afterwards, you will be brought back to the Membership Level page, which will be updated with Automatic Renewal disabled.

Congratulations on disabling Automatic Renewal on your Xbox Live Gold account. Follow the same process again to enable the option if you changed your mind. Keep in mind that Microsoft will still keep your credit card number on file. To make them take it off of their files, you need to call customer service.

Published by Otter

Otter is a free lance writer currently residing in San Francisco. He loves to play and talk video games.  View profile

12 Comments

Post a Comment
  • box5821/2/2011

    This is not a business practice that should continue to spread.

    Please help others by reporting this act to your consumer protection agencies.
    Feel free to record the call for youtube.

    US citizens, I reported to the FTC. You don't need to give out any information, just let them know your experience with canceling.
    https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/

  • box5821/2/2011

    No longer can cancel online.
    Must call their "sales" staff at 1-800-4MY-XBOX or (800) 469-9269

    Have ready:
    GamerTag
    Last four digits of the credit card used (can be seen on the account page on your xbox)

    They will try to sell you renewal offers. After finding out how to cancel online, and already having what was needed, it was a 20 minute sales call. (The email I tried to cancel with lead to simply stated "I would like to turn to automatic renewal off." The return email stated, "Be advised that by cancelling the account, you will lose any remaining time on the service in addition to your gamertag and game rankings." Not true, but should they be threatening to delete services provided with the xBox Live Silver (free)?

    Canceling could be as easy as not having to auto-renew.
    Canceling could be as easy as turning off the auto-renew button on the xBox.
    Knowing the account info last time, I was able to cancel online in less than two minutes.
    This

  • Randy12/3/2010

    It looks like they removed it.

    I went there and it says i have to contact support to cancel auto-renew.

    Greedy xbox, finding ways to keep you subscribed..

  • Simon8/21/2010

    I dont have the link.. I've found where it says.. Automatic Renewal: but no link to turn it off!!!

  • JLithium6/26/2010

    Many, many thanks for this! The several 'please don't go' screens they cycle through before finally giving one the option to deactivate were particularly loathsome.

  • Con6/12/2010

    thank u so much, i spent forever trying to figure out how to turn it off!

  • Jake6/1/2010

    Thank you very much for this little step-by-step to disable the auto renewal function.

    Though it's really sad they make it so complicated in a last-ditch effort to keep people paying. I had to cycle through two pages of ads before it finally allowed me to toggle the option to "Off."

    Thanks again.

  • JM5/20/2010

    It doesn't work for me. I tried different browsers on my mac, none can change the automatic renewal from "enabled" to "disabled".

  • jason5/19/2010

    THANK YOU!!! XBOX makes it all so complicated!!

  • ray2/9/2010

    they are punks for that they banned me and still charged me

Displaying Comments
Next »

To comment, please sign in to your Yahoo! account, or sign up for a new account.