Why Xbox Live Doesn't Take Exact Change

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.

Re:What a load of crap!

[CatPieMan]

If you've ever bought a couple songs for 2-3 days in a row, you've noticed that you only get 1 charge on the credit card. Apple will hold off charging you for a couple days to try to lump a couple purchases together to save on the CC transaction charges.

It's called breakage

[Evro]

... getting people to pay for stuff they won't use. There are entire industries centered on exploiting this concept, most notably the prepaid calling card market. You pay for $20 and get $17 worth of product, and you can't use the remaining $3 for anything, so the company makes extra money on you. You see it everywhere... reward points on credit cards, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakage_(accounting) [wikipedia.org]

Re:Translation

[plague3106]

Did your card have Visa or MC on it? If its Visa, I believe they are not allowed to put minimum purchase amounts before you can use the card. So if you want to spend $1 and you insist (they can REQUEST you use cash) and they still refuse, you can turn them in. Typically they will be fined.

Also, I know someone that takes debit / credit cards; he prefer I use debit over credit because there are less fees to take debit vs. credit.

Re:Translation

[MBraynard]

No, no, not really.

The problem is that there is a transaction FEE and a transaction PERCENTAGE on the transaction. The percentage isn't an issue, it's the same whether you buy 800 points of 80 points eight times.

But if you buy the 80 points x 8 the fixed fee is MORE than the 800 points. So MS avoids this by making you buy a minimum number of points, else they loose more money.

really, I think this is a lot about nothing. Eventually the points get spent.

Re:Translation

[king-manic]

Doesn't work that way, I'm afraid; if you want to accept Visa, Mastercard... any cards that exist, basically, they'll want a cut and will take fees. Then there's the infrastructure cost of setting up a whole damn bank... no, makes far more sense than selling points in blocks of 500. ;)

Anyway, banks are bad enough without Microsoft running one... :P

Actually Visa/MC take a percentage, and with the small family Chinese food place we owned there was no min charge. Thus $4.00 = $0.20 fee. $400.00 = $20.00 fee. The rounding might affect things since they tend to round up but the % taken is off of our total monthly and not individual transaction. So MS is talking out there ass unless they signed a really retarded deal with Visa/MC.

E-commerce does vary and does have many per transaction set ups but I fail to believe MS would not have a more preferable contract.

Sadly Similiar in Nintendo's Case...

[morari]

While I love the Virtual Console, the bulk points system is broken. It's deliberately setup so that you always either have too few or too many points. For example, I bought 1,000 points. I grabbed the Opera Browser for 500 and then was going to get Super Mario Bros. - The Lost Levels with the other 500. It turns out that The Lost Levels cost 600, as opposed to the 500 that every other NES game does. This is probably due to it kinda-sorta being an import, but still ridiculous. So I think, "no problem, I'll just get 1,000 more points and then grab an N64 game as well". That was before I realized that Pokemon Snap is 1,000 points in itself. This puts me in an awkward spot. I have 500 points sitting around right now and would like to get The Lost Levels. To do so I need only 100 more points. I can only get a minimum of 1,000 at a time however, so I'd be left with 900 points at best. Unless I spend that on some crappy NeoGeo game, I'll be left with spare points forever! I'd much rather just buy the titles themselves, not bulk points that will hopefully even out in a purchase.

Re:Translation

[rgbscan]

I work at a bank and we get this complaint all the time. Check out the bottom of page 14: http://www.usa.visa.com/download/merchants/rules_for_visa_merchants.pdf [visa.com]. This is clearly against visa's terms, and if you report it to both Visa (800-VISA-911) and your bank, chances are the merchant will get a stern talking to by a visa rep.