Is it ok if I semi-Hijack? My issue involves XBOX Live as well, though I'm beyond the point of asking for help, just sort of moping and curious if anyone else has encountered this problem.
Let's start in the Summer, say May, or June. I bought a 13 month card of XBOX live, and activated it, so my live subscription will logically run out sometime next summer. I move my gamertag around on different XBOXes a lot, usually via my harddrive or a memory card, though I've found just recovering my GT is pretty nice as well. For those who don't know, gamertag recovery is used to 1.) Get your tag back if you accidentally baleete it, or 2.) Download your tag onto an XBOX (could be your own, or somebody elses). Well it turns out there's issues with manually transferring your gamertag via a harddrive or memory card... It usually corrupts the data. Leaves the actual game data alone from my experience, but ruins the gamertag. No problem if you can recover your gamertag, which I do all the time.
But I tried to recover my GT again about a month ago, in mid August, and I got this error prompt. "Signup for XBOX Live is unavailable at this time, please try again later." I was kind of mad, though it didn't really matter; I could just try again later, right? Well I tried again about 2 weeks ago, and got the same error. On a different XBOX, with a different internet connection, with a different game... etc. I called Microsoft and they basically told me that they don't know jack about shit, so I might be boned out of a 13 month subscription.
Anyone else experience this?