Originally Posted by the_13th_redneck

Was it like a trial membership?

To be honest i can't remember but from memory there is a section during the signup where it asks if you want to pay for a membership or you can continue on with the signup without choosing a payment, which is what I did which is why i was calling it a free account.
I didn't pay for a membership the last time nor this time either so am guessing that I filled out the form the same way this time round

It is kinda crappy that you have to pay to play but I think you're getting the impression that your gamertag is tied to your xbox. That isn't true. Your gamertag is seperate from your Xbox. You can use it on any xbox anywhere. Which is kind of a nice feature. If you go to a friends house to game, you just enter your email and password and it retrieves your gamertag. Then you have all your achievemnets right there. Microsoft actually did that part pretty well.

Yes you're right, wasn't really thinking it through about the gametag

However, and I probably should have mentioned this earlier, when I created my current gametag I also created a new e-mail account so the tag was exclusive to that e-mail account and I have no other gametags on that e-mail account. Theoretically XBL should only recognise this as one gametag on this new e-mail account rather than the several I may have made on my main e-mail account. Since I haven't recieved a dirty e-mail on this new e-mail account I'm guessing I'm not banned but it still leaves me back at square one

EDIT
Sorry have been writing this from work, just got home and checked my XBL account and its the Silver membership so I guess that means I can't play online thanks for everyones help though

Oh, so it was a trial membership. Explains a fair bit, also the silver membership stuff.

Well seems like your question is solved! Told you that link was reliable lol.