How Canadians Can Use Cheaper US Xbox Live Points

During my visit to FRYS Electronics, while shopping down south last week, I discovered how much cheaper Xbox Live subscription and points cards were. For example, the Xbox Live 12+1 month subscription was $49.99 US vs $59.99 CAD. The 1600 point card I bought doesn’t exist in Canada, but to put it into perspective, the 1600 point card only cost me $19.99 US while the Canadian 1000 point card cost $14.99 while the 2000 point card costs $29.99 here. So in other words, we really get shafted North of the border. If you go down further to Oregon, you pay no tax at all for these cards, further lowering the price.

Eager to take advantage of my score, I promptly ripped open the finger ripping blister packaging and attempted to load them up. Unfortunately, I ran into some snags. Although the Xbox Live 12+1 month Subscription card activated and credited itself properly to my account, the results with the 1600 point card weren’t so easy peasy. When I went to activate the card on my Xbox 360, it would keep giving me an error, saying that the code could not be redeemed and to try again. Now I know the cards are case sensitive so I checked and double checked and it still wouldn’t activate. I even tried logging on to Xbox Live from a regular PC and doing it online. Without much success, I placed a call to the Xbox Help Line to figure things out.

I Expected To Be Connected to India

I’ve never called the Xbox Live Hotline before so I totally expected to be connected to someone in a certain Asian Country that is not Hong Kong or Taipei. Well, my fears were alleviated when I got connected to someone that seemed to speak perfect English, although with a bit of a…can’t put my finger on it…accent. Nonetheless, our two way communication was one hundred percent flawless and we proceeded to talk about the situation with my points card. Unfortunately, I got disconnected and had to call back.

On the second call, I got through to a really nice lady that told me that although the Xbox Live Subscription cards worked fine for Canadian Xbox Live accounts (like I had discovered), the points cards are not coded to work on Canadian accounts as they are regionalized. I guess this is how they try to discourage folks from picking up cheaper cards across the border. However, it’s kind of weird that the subscription cards work, being that it’s all Xbox Live to begin with. I had never heard of this regionalization before (I mean, points are points right?), since I really don’t buy the points cards often. I totally thought I was going to be out of luck till I got a hot tip that would make this all work out.

After making friends with the rep on the other end, she told me about a way to use my US points cards, even though I’m in Canada. There were actually two ways to get my points to work, but this method would prove to be much easier to administer since the alternative was to fax a copy of the receipt (who keeps receipts coming across the border anyway?) along with both sides of the card to them so they could do a manual activation. She told me the fax method was a pain in the ass and that the secondary method was easier for both them and me. It would also take less time as a manual activation (if you’ve got the receipt) takes about 5 - 10 business days.

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