Both Guild Wars and all Xbox “card” items (Microsoft Points to buy XBLA games, subscription cards, etc) use this scratch-off method. Guild Wars hides the cdkey with one, and Microsoft hides their long number strings which are essentially cdkeys for a different purpose.

You might have bought Guild Wars, or an Xbox Live 12+ month subscription card.
I bought one of the Xbox 12+ month subscription cards some time ago, and was stuck with it and no refund/exchange when the numbers turned out to be illegible after scratching off the coating hiding the numbers.

I realize there aren’t too many good ways to sell people alphanumeric strings and have something tangible end up in their hands (for the retail market, which is still huge), while still protecting these numbers from malicious thieves who would deny the actual buyer their end product.

I suspect it is something that is fairly easy for corporate entities to understand, too.

However, just because there are thieves, and this method is available, doesn’t make it the best method. It annoys the hell out of me that there are expensive purchases you can make, which are totally worthless if you scratch off the silver crap and two or more of those numbers or letters are illegible.

For my part, when I tried to get Microsoft to help me out, I went through the steps, I faxed them the card and infromation when they asked, to the number they asked, and they eventually did verify that they have a fax machine when I called back asking about the status of my replacement.

In the end though, Microsoft’s support was unable, or unwilling, to replace the card, I gave up in frustration. The five hours I had spent on hold and another hour or two discussing the problem didn’t net anything.

Surely there is a better method for valuables to be transferred while still purchasing them in stores.

Permanent Link. This entry was posted on Saturday, September 9th, 2006, authored by zachary, and is filed under actualresult, microsoft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.