Up late talking games & writing? You're...

If you own a 360 and subscribe to the online Live service, you might have noticed that once you enter a credit card number, you can't remove it.

It's true everything but the last four digits for each entry are masked, but still... Anyone who's had even the most limited online transaction experience knows that a user's information and profile are almost universally able to be edited at will by said consumer.

I recently lost a debit card and had it replaced, so I had to enter new information in order to maintain my subscription. While I was fiddling with this, I noticed that my 360 had a log of my three previous debit/credit cards, all of which are now invalid. After fruitlessly searching through all available menus, I was amazed that there just wasn't any way to remove the old info.

Calling in to customer service (I'm sure you can guess where this is going) the not-helpful, not-friendly rep informed me that it was impossible to remove old data. I immediately called bullshit on this, and asked to speak to a supervisor. After doing so, the rep said "Oh, well, we can remove it for you but it takes 30 days and you need to provide the full account numbers for the cards you want to remove."

These accounts have been closed and inactive for months, the cards themselves cut up and trashed since I don't know when. I wasn't about to go diving through boxes of old papers and files looking for defunct account numbers, so I asked for a supervisor again.

"Oh, all right... we can do it without the account numbers..."

Of course you can, I thought to myself.

"But you'll still need to talk to a supervisor."

So, exactly what I'd just asked for twice, then?

...Over twenty minutes later, no supervisor had answered and I had given up my cause as lost in phone-hold hell. Surprised? Not really.

I'm not a Microsoft hater. I love my 360... it's by far my console of choice, and I happily buy extras and download new items to the hard drive every week. I'm a good customer, and I remained so even after the Red Rings struck my console, sidelining me from gaming for over a month -- but there's only so much I can stand, and the phone reps and overall customer service are driving me up a wall.

Microsoft... you're really getting a lot right with the 360 as far as I'm concerned, but (pardon my french) this subpar customer service shit's gotta go.