If you've got promotional, contest, or giveaway points from Microsoft for doing something or other, you should check out their billing site because they expire.

Purchased points do not but this is still bs.

http://gizmodo.com/5021928/psa-promotional-xbox-360zune-points-expire

Thats typical of the industry.

The company I work for, which offers free promotional tokens to users that signed up to their website (www.instantaction.com), just expired tokens of users that had signed friends up. So it's part of life.

Heck, even gift cards expire points after awhile - the ones you PAY for!

Yep, Best Buy makes hundreds of millions of dollars each year on expired gift cards. And those are things that you actually have to pay to get. So they are just getting money for nothing but a slice of plastic.

Yeah, free points and promotional things a long those lines (like free gift cards for X amount at certain stores for buying certain products) have almost always expired eventually. What pisses me off is when you pay for a gift card and it expires. Seems to me like that sort of practice should be illegal...why do you have to spend what basically amounts to cold hard cash on their terms? Bullshit practice that won't stop anytime soon.

Well there are some states that have laws that say "gift cards" and stuff like that never expire, for example my home state of California :D

edit: I'm not sure if this applies to MS free points and promotional points though.

http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/cc/20060127a1.asp

There are basically three models of escheat laws.

1. No expiration or escheat model. This is a very consumer-friendly model used in several states including California, Washington and Massachusetts. This model never gives up the money to the state. The gift card is good from now until eternity. In this model, there is a reserve fund specifically for redemptions set up by the retailer. By setting up this reserve fund, the retailer recognizes that the consumer can eventually redeem the gift card for merchandise. Retailers in these states are not required to have the money escheat to the state.

2. 60/40 model. This is a more traditional model stating that gift certificates can come with expiration dates and when they do expire (usually between three and five years) retailers are responsible for having 60 percent of the value of the card escheat to the state. The retailers are allowed to keep the other 40 percent. The state acknowledges that retailers have costs that come with gift cards and allows them to keep a portion of the leftover money. Indiana and Iowa use this law.

3. No gift-card expiration dates, escheat laws apply. This model is somewhat confusing since the states involved, such as Connecticut, have eliminated expiration dates on gift card and certificates. However, even though consumers will not find expiration dates on their gift cards, they are expected to use their gift cards within three years. Otherwise the state views the gift card as abandoned and the money escheats to the state. However, if a customer comes in after three years and obtains merchandise from the store using their unexpired gift card, the retailers can apply to get the money back from the state.

.......

Dan Horne, professor of marketing at Providence College, says consumers ultimately benefit from state escheat laws because the unused money that is not claimed goes into the state Treasury.

With 50 states, there is no easy, uniform answer to questions of escheat. If you are wondering about how your state handles gift cards, the Incentive Gift Card Council offers a link to check your state's escheat laws.