Welcome to my new Gamespot account, with a new gamertag, all because Microsoft don´t let their customers update their personal details (which is surely against the data protection laws, right?).

For those of you who like XBOX LIVE and feel proud of your hard earned awards (like me) a word of warning - DO NOT GO AND LIVE IN A DIFFERENT COUNTRY!! If you do, you won´t be able to use XBOX LIVE or buy more Points without a whole heap of problems...

Take me for example... I opened my hotmail account when I lived in good ol´ Blighty (or the UK as it´s also known). All was fine until I made the mistake of moving to Spain, falling in love and making my home here! Recently I´ve changed job, have cash at last and naturally want to take up an Xbox Gold subscription... but CAN¨T! My "billing address" is the UK but, naturally, my credit card is from SPAIN.

I sent a message to Microsoft on a Sunday and to be fair with them they did respond quickly, but only to tell me that I can´t do anything other than set up a new account, loose all my hard work, and start from scratch...

So I have... Bitter, twisted and angry, but I´ve done it... facing the joys of once more achieving awards such as finding all the diamonds in Far Cry 2; playing through FALLOUT 3 again and finishing the Mile Hile Club in COD:MW...

So I probably won´t be online anymore until I manage to recover all that I had before...

This whole experience has left me both angry and shocked in disbelief that a company which has brought us something so technically advanced as XBOX 360 can commit such a stupid and basic error as not letting people update their PERSONAL DETAILS and change country... In today´s world people go where the work is, and this means in some cases changing country...

The message is simple kids... MICROSOFT DOESN´T WANT YOU TO CHANGE COUNTRY!!!