I once signed up to XBox Live with my credit card. Soon afterwards, I realized that the online gaming "community" left much to be desired and that they didn't even provide dedicated servers for my games. So I decided to quit. But they purposefully do not provide an unsubscribe path through their user interface, you have to call them, wait on hold, and provide your whole credit card number + CCV to unsubscribe.
I have no doubt some MBA at Microsoft thought they could shave a couple percentage points off their attrition rates with this tactic. I sure as hell will think twice before I subscribe for any other Microsoft service again.
I just went through the whole xbox live cancel thing too. No place on the site or in the console to quit. Tech support e-mail would always say call them. The person on the phone was able to take care of everything and even mentioned billing.microsoft.com would allow you to stop the auto renew. I didn't try that out since I was already on the phone. I don't know why the e-mail support responses left that out. If that site works for someone, it would be nice to know.
I did this and subsequently resubscribed, but only using the purchasable cards (which can often be bought at a discount). Not giving them my credit card again...
I have no doubt some MBA at Microsoft thought they could shave a couple percentage points off their attrition rates with this tactic. I sure as hell will think twice before I subscribe for any other Microsoft service again.