Amazon.com is now selling various Xbox Live related things, mostly in the form of codes you can buy through them to redeem for various things. This includes Microsoft Points, Xbox Live Gold memberships, and even buying individual games. It’s a great system, and fixes a lot of the problems Xbox Live’s marketplace has. But it’s not perfect, and some people are having perfectly legitimate trouble. I’ll take you through some of the more common issues and how to deal with them.

The great thing about Amazon’s Xbox Live shop is that you can buy exactly what you want. If you want to get just points that you spend on certain things, you can do that. If you want to buy just a specific game, you can do that too. Likewise, membership codes can be bought, and in most places this will be tax-free. Even better, sometimes if you do comparison shopping you’ll find Amazon’s price for a game code is less than what Microsoft wants; it’s rare, but you’ll find it to be true for a few titles. It’s a simple process, you just file the order as you would if buying anything else on Amazon, then once you confirm the purchase you’re brought to a screen with a 25-character code to type in on your Xbox 360, which will give you the goods you just bought.

For most people, that’s an open-and-shut case, it works perfectly as advertised. But not everyone is getting that kind of result, and it’s not their fault. If any of the following are happening to you, take a look at these issues and see what you can do about it: