On XBox, the only way you can purchase things is via the Marketplace. I never had an issue on XBox.
I’ve since moved to PC. For 2 of the last 3 purchases, I have had this happen. I go and look at an item. It shows me all the info, and all the images perfectly fine. I then go to purchase. It pulls up a list of my credit cards, asks me to select which one, and then authorizes. And IMMEDIATELY after it authorizes, the screen clears, you go back to the main menu, and you get an announcement that you are offline. And you have to wait a few minutes until you come “back online”. And once you do, then it keeps trying to reauthorize again, and gets stuck in a loop.
The only way to clear this is file a zendesk ticket. You fill in all the information into the ticket, but the text for the incident doesn’t have most of that information you entered. So then you will get an email back stating you need to supply a bunch of other information (which you did when you filled out the ticket). And then you wait for resolution.
The sad thing is, I’m stuck with a transaction, and that is blocking me from even getting the World Update, because even though it is free, you have to “purchase” it in order for it to become something you can download. And of course with a stuck purchase, I can’t “purchase” the world update.
Just a note, this isn’t related to the slow download incident. People have determined the slow download is happening on the east coast users because of a bad Bell router in the IP route. So I always set through VPN now my location to Chicago when I am using MSFS.
Microsoft gets 30% of the sale through the store. I figure that helps with keeping the sim going. But seriously, if 66% of the time it is going to fail and I am going to have to fill out tickets and spend days getting this cleared up, I’m likely to only use the store for MS exclusives like Carenado, the Asobo DLC, and World Updates.