Zune Marketplace

Pros: Good selection. Nice UI.

Cons: Song credit instructions are blatantly false. Customer service people have no knowledge of the service, beyond how to cancel your account, which they will happily do.

Summary: Unfortunately, Microsoft is working real hard on losing Zune Marketplace customers. The recent addition of the ability to keep 10 songs downloaded through Marketplace subscriptions is hampered by confusing and possibly illegal policies/instructions on which songs or albums can be kept and how they are paid for. I recently ran into a problem where I thought that the song credits would be applied and instead $10 worth of points were taken from my account. The instructions clearly state that song credits will be applied to songs or albums. Microsoft has posted completely false and confusing policies and then refuses to refund points when the customer's points have been wrongly taken. About the only thing the customer support people seem to be able to do well is cancel the customer's account.

Updated on May 2, 2009

When I canceled my Zune Marketplace account, I was billed for another month's Zune Pass. I was told this was for "the month before." That's funny, since you can ONLY purchase Zune Passes in ADVANCE. They have refused to refund the money and I am taking legal action. These people are criminals. You have been warned.

Updated on Jul 1, 2009

Finally got my money back after turning them in to the state attorney general. They changed the way the song credits work so that it is less likely to just take money instead of credit. However, when a song did not properly download, customer service denied that the problem occurred, or ever had occurred, in spite of a forum full of people experiencing the same thing. They told me I could not get a "refund" even though I only asked to be given the ONE song that did not download. This is Microsoft's outsourced Mafia, so beware.