Free Gold weekend

Discuss the Virtual-On series.
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Porcupine
Virtual-On Positive
Posts: 594
Joined: 19 Jul 2012, 19:07

Re: Free Gold weekend

Post by Porcupine »

As has been the case for the last few years, there is a $1 for a month of gold offer in November. However this time it's a bit earlier than usual, so for just today we can still get the first free Gold game in November, which is Nights into Dreams. It's always been a good game each year but frustratingly timed to end just before the sale.

People who use this offer, don't forget to cancel your subscription immediately afterwards to avoid being charged extra later on.
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Porcupine
Virtual-On Positive
Posts: 594
Joined: 19 Jul 2012, 19:07

Re: Free Gold weekend

Post by Porcupine »

There's another $1 month of gold offer on the dashboard until January 4. There are no good games so I may not utilize it since I may be busy preparing for my Japan trip.

Microsoft has changed the way they bill monthly ($10 ripoff) subscriptions now. The bill now occurs on a set date and is no longer synchronized to your renewal dates. Depending on the desync, you may be able to get up to a few additional free weeks with each $1 month purchase.

I tried it and it works but is kind of difficult so I will probably not try it again. To do it, you must not cancel your subscription as usual, immediately after paying the $1. Or you can cancel it, but you must re-enable your subscription before the month ends. Then you check xbox.com to see what your billing date is (the xbox 360 will not report it correctly) and before it arrives, cancel your subscription.

However there is another problem. Attempting to cancel your subscription (at least on xbox.com, I did not try on the 360 itself) no longer works. It only lets you disable the auto-renew, and gives you a message saying that your subscription is continuing for another month and that you will eventually be charged. It directs you to Microsoft customer service if you really want to cancel.

So you must chat with Microsoft customer service to cancel. It doesn't take long, and you should be able to do this as many times as you want because you are not requesting anything unusual, like a refund. After they cancel it, xbox.com will allow you to remove your payment option if you want to.
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Porcupine
Virtual-On Positive
Posts: 594
Joined: 19 Jul 2012, 19:07

Re: Free Gold weekend

Post by Porcupine »

I haven't been keeping up with the free Gold weekend alerts, but another one is active from January 31 to February 3, 2019. Besides the usual VOOT, I'm hoping to play some Force, as we haven't played it in a long time. My Index skills haven't really been helping me in VOOT as much as I'd hoped, but at least I've recently been playing VOOT enough to be in shape.

Maybe we can see some other faces? Is Schooly D powered up from his Japan trip?
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Porcupine
Virtual-On Positive
Posts: 594
Joined: 19 Jul 2012, 19:07

Re: Free Gold weekend

Post by Porcupine »

Turned out the free gold weekend was fake, it only worked on Xbox One. Bad advertising from Microsoft, maybe there won't be any more free gold weekends for 360 ever again.
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