Tue, 11 Dec 2007

Why Xbox Live Doesn't Take Exact Change

Saving customers money on transaction fees my ass!

For the uninitiated, it's called breakage. The concept took on a life of it's own with prepaid phone cards, and has become the latest and greatest corporate rip-off going. You will always end up with odd cents with these things, and that's money that goes straight out of your pocket and into corporate coffers, with nothing else changing hands at all.

When I was a kid, we called it "theft". How times have changed.

With ever-more tempting content on Xbox Live (like the awesome Exit), it's really frustrating to have to 'overpay' and buy Points in bulk. 1up got an official response from Xbox 360 group product manager Aaron Greenberg on that issue, explaining why the service always leaves you with a little bit left over: "The reason why we do that, the core reason, is around credit card transaction fees ... If we do this in bulk, we don't have to burden the consumer with the transaction fees, or ourselves or publishers. It's about keeping infrastructure costs down and I know sometimes it's frustrating because you end up with odd points, but we don't have any plans to change that." Greenberg also addressed why the service limits you to 100 friends on your friends list.

(link) [Slashdot]

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