Thousands of Banned XBox consoles show up on Ebay
November 12, 2009
Today Microsoft has banned roughly 1 million Xbox consoles from the Microsoft Live network, and many of those banned consoles are showing up on Ebay, with unsuspecting bidders not being aware that the console they are buying or bidding on has been banned.
Some people have complained to Microsoft that their banned console wasn’t their doing as they just purchased it on Ebay a few days ago… Microsoft has refused to activate their XBox… in other words, they bought a brick. This is turning out to be a public relations disaster that not even the best PR / Ad Agency can handle.
Many of these X-Boxes found on Ebay have ZERO disclaimers that they are banned, in fact we were able to reach one of the sellers and asked them if they knew they were selling a brick. The response “It wasn’t banned when I sent it” ..
Hot stuff… the sellers are saying they didn’t know as the ban took place today, and the buyers don’t know because it’s not labelled as a banned product on the Microsoft Live Network on the E-bay profile.
So what about these thousands of banned Xbox units being shipped though Ebay? This problem isn’t going away, a million Xbox owners just got the shaft this morning, and it’s a safe bet to say that tens of thousands of them (if not more) are going to show up on Ebay within days.
This is bad, and the interesting thing is that the one going to catch the slack for this isn’t Microsoft, it’s Ebay… When the first reports of this hit our desk, one of the e-mails to us stated “Why doesn’t Ebay have some sort of check option there that asks the people to list if it’s banned or not” — good point.
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patrick_w
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