It’s not good when a paid service experiences issues during the whole holiday break. We’ve seen a bunch of updates from Major Nelson reassuring us that “the service was never completely offline.” The problem with that statement is that while it’s great for people who where not affected, it’s sort of a smack in the face for the rest of us. Everyone that I know that uses the service has experienced some sort of issue during these last 10 days, including myself. Most of us have had problems quite a few times during the last week, and it’s damn frustrating.

I don’t doubt for a second that when Major Nelson said “The entire LIVE team has been working day and night to ensure that you can have a great LIVE experience,” he was not exaggerating. The LIVE team understand they need to provide exceptional service, especially since it’s paid.

All that being said, I honestly believe that Microsoft needs to offer some compensation to all the LIVE users for these very frustrating problematic times. A free week or two of Live? Maybe 800 MS points? I have no idea what, but it would certainly be a shame not to take responsibility and make this right.