Xbox Live Gold subscribers who miss renewing before their subscriptions expire face an onerous set of charges, according to Ryan Graves, lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit ^[1] against the tech giant.

Apparently, what happens is this: The service is set to automatically renew using whatever payment method (such as a credit card) was used to sign up originally. If that payment method hasn’t expired, all is well. If it has, Microsoft will terminate the subscription, requiring the user to create a new one with a new payment method. But then, once Microsoft has a new and legitimate payment method in hand, it will go back and charge the user for renewing the old subscription as well.

An easily rectified error, you might think? Graves thought so too, and called Microsoft customer service, only to be told that the two charges were not an error but represented payment for the two separate subscriptions he’d bought. With 23 million subscribers out there, things could get ugly.

Read more at Courthouse News Service ^[1].