Is "Support" worse for techies than average people?
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Over the holiday I installed Visual Studio.NET 2008 Professional from MSDN Subscriber Downloads to my personal machine running Windows Vista Ultimate... mostly because I'm interested in some of the functionality LINQ brings to the table and thought it would be neat to try and build some samples and play with them on various databases. Anyway, post installation everything seemed ok and I did a final reboot before heading to bed. The next morning I logged in, or tried to, but was greeted with a message from Vista telling me, essentially, that I was locked out. It gave me an option to either close the dialog (which kicks me out of the OS back to the login window - same for all logins) or to open IE and go to Microsoft's "Genuine" checker page, which I was failing all of a sudden. Now, all the software on my PC is 100% purchased and legal, including the OS and had been running Vista perfectly (well... it's Vista... so as perfectly as it's able) for months. The IE page only managed to tell me that my copy of Office was "genuine" but my OS kept failing and there was no real help for me except to submit a ticket. There wasn't even a phone number to call or anything. Ultimately I dug around around found Microsoft support and after an hour and a half of being forwarded 13 TIMES to different departments, they still couldn't help me. I finally gave up, went into Safe Mode and did a System Restore to about a week back and now my machine seems happy again. I manually deleted Visual Studio 2008 since a restoration "restores" OS files and the registry back to a previous date but otherwise leaves files alone. I don't think I'll try to install it again until I do a full system re-install but this really freaked me out. Microsoft put enough thought into Vista to lock me out entirely but then had no mechanism in place to help me when it got screwed up! Support was a nightmare and so upsetting I could barely even stay civil on the phone by the end. No one knew anything or would take any responsibility, instead only trying to find any reason possible to kick me over to the next support number and even the transfers failed far more often than they succeeded with me constantly having to write down and dial yet another 800 number. I realize that Microsoft is not the only company out there that has completely lost sight of customer support... but, wow, this was my worst experience so far with any company.
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Over the holiday I installed Visual Studio.NET 2008 Professional from MSDN Subscriber Downloads to my personal machine running Windows Vista Ultimate... mostly because I'm interested in some of the functionality LINQ brings to the table and thought it would be neat to try and build some samples and play with them on various databases. Anyway, post installation everything seemed ok and I did a final reboot before heading to bed. The next morning I logged in, or tried to, but was greeted with a message from Vista telling me, essentially, that I was locked out. It gave me an option to either close the dialog (which kicks me out of the OS back to the login window - same for all logins) or to open IE and go to Microsoft's "Genuine" checker page, which I was failing all of a sudden. Now, all the software on my PC is 100% purchased and legal, including the OS and had been running Vista perfectly (well... it's Vista... so as perfectly as it's able) for months. The IE page only managed to tell me that my copy of Office was "genuine" but my OS kept failing and there was no real help for me except to submit a ticket. There wasn't even a phone number to call or anything. Ultimately I dug around around found Microsoft support and after an hour and a half of being forwarded 13 TIMES to different departments, they still couldn't help me. I finally gave up, went into Safe Mode and did a System Restore to about a week back and now my machine seems happy again. I manually deleted Visual Studio 2008 since a restoration "restores" OS files and the registry back to a previous date but otherwise leaves files alone. I don't think I'll try to install it again until I do a full system re-install but this really freaked me out. Microsoft put enough thought into Vista to lock me out entirely but then had no mechanism in place to help me when it got screwed up! Support was a nightmare and so upsetting I could barely even stay civil on the phone by the end. No one knew anything or would take any responsibility, instead only trying to find any reason possible to kick me over to the next support number and even the transfers failed far more often than they succeeded with me constantly having to write down and dial yet another 800 number. I realize that Microsoft is not the only company out there that has completely lost sight of customer support... but, wow, this was my worst experience so far with any company.
Yeah, we have bigger cohones, so support is definitely an issue. Marc
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Over the holiday I installed Visual Studio.NET 2008 Professional from MSDN Subscriber Downloads to my personal machine running Windows Vista Ultimate... mostly because I'm interested in some of the functionality LINQ brings to the table and thought it would be neat to try and build some samples and play with them on various databases. Anyway, post installation everything seemed ok and I did a final reboot before heading to bed. The next morning I logged in, or tried to, but was greeted with a message from Vista telling me, essentially, that I was locked out. It gave me an option to either close the dialog (which kicks me out of the OS back to the login window - same for all logins) or to open IE and go to Microsoft's "Genuine" checker page, which I was failing all of a sudden. Now, all the software on my PC is 100% purchased and legal, including the OS and had been running Vista perfectly (well... it's Vista... so as perfectly as it's able) for months. The IE page only managed to tell me that my copy of Office was "genuine" but my OS kept failing and there was no real help for me except to submit a ticket. There wasn't even a phone number to call or anything. Ultimately I dug around around found Microsoft support and after an hour and a half of being forwarded 13 TIMES to different departments, they still couldn't help me. I finally gave up, went into Safe Mode and did a System Restore to about a week back and now my machine seems happy again. I manually deleted Visual Studio 2008 since a restoration "restores" OS files and the registry back to a previous date but otherwise leaves files alone. I don't think I'll try to install it again until I do a full system re-install but this really freaked me out. Microsoft put enough thought into Vista to lock me out entirely but then had no mechanism in place to help me when it got screwed up! Support was a nightmare and so upsetting I could barely even stay civil on the phone by the end. No one knew anything or would take any responsibility, instead only trying to find any reason possible to kick me over to the next support number and even the transfers failed far more often than they succeeded with me constantly having to write down and dial yet another 800 number. I realize that Microsoft is not the only company out there that has completely lost sight of customer support... but, wow, this was my worst experience so far with any company.
May have been mentioned before, but I saw a repeat of "The IT Crowd" over the break. The IT support office had a large Reel to Reel tape recorder connected to the phone. As People rang in it just said, "Have you turned it off and on again? ... Is it Definately Plugged In?... OK I will be up in a while" I thought that this was a) Hilarious and b) damned accurate.
------------------------------------ I try to appear cooler, by calling him Euler.
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Over the holiday I installed Visual Studio.NET 2008 Professional from MSDN Subscriber Downloads to my personal machine running Windows Vista Ultimate... mostly because I'm interested in some of the functionality LINQ brings to the table and thought it would be neat to try and build some samples and play with them on various databases. Anyway, post installation everything seemed ok and I did a final reboot before heading to bed. The next morning I logged in, or tried to, but was greeted with a message from Vista telling me, essentially, that I was locked out. It gave me an option to either close the dialog (which kicks me out of the OS back to the login window - same for all logins) or to open IE and go to Microsoft's "Genuine" checker page, which I was failing all of a sudden. Now, all the software on my PC is 100% purchased and legal, including the OS and had been running Vista perfectly (well... it's Vista... so as perfectly as it's able) for months. The IE page only managed to tell me that my copy of Office was "genuine" but my OS kept failing and there was no real help for me except to submit a ticket. There wasn't even a phone number to call or anything. Ultimately I dug around around found Microsoft support and after an hour and a half of being forwarded 13 TIMES to different departments, they still couldn't help me. I finally gave up, went into Safe Mode and did a System Restore to about a week back and now my machine seems happy again. I manually deleted Visual Studio 2008 since a restoration "restores" OS files and the registry back to a previous date but otherwise leaves files alone. I don't think I'll try to install it again until I do a full system re-install but this really freaked me out. Microsoft put enough thought into Vista to lock me out entirely but then had no mechanism in place to help me when it got screwed up! Support was a nightmare and so upsetting I could barely even stay civil on the phone by the end. No one knew anything or would take any responsibility, instead only trying to find any reason possible to kick me over to the next support number and even the transfers failed far more often than they succeeded with me constantly having to write down and dial yet another 800 number. I realize that Microsoft is not the only company out there that has completely lost sight of customer support... but, wow, this was my worst experience so far with any company.
The problem with support for us is that many of us, on our own, do all of the routine troubleshooting and only call when there is a real problem. Thus, oftentimes, there is not a tech capable of addressing the issue without research. It is a pain, I know.
Need a C# Consultant? I'm available.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. -- Ernest Hemingway -
Over the holiday I installed Visual Studio.NET 2008 Professional from MSDN Subscriber Downloads to my personal machine running Windows Vista Ultimate... mostly because I'm interested in some of the functionality LINQ brings to the table and thought it would be neat to try and build some samples and play with them on various databases. Anyway, post installation everything seemed ok and I did a final reboot before heading to bed. The next morning I logged in, or tried to, but was greeted with a message from Vista telling me, essentially, that I was locked out. It gave me an option to either close the dialog (which kicks me out of the OS back to the login window - same for all logins) or to open IE and go to Microsoft's "Genuine" checker page, which I was failing all of a sudden. Now, all the software on my PC is 100% purchased and legal, including the OS and had been running Vista perfectly (well... it's Vista... so as perfectly as it's able) for months. The IE page only managed to tell me that my copy of Office was "genuine" but my OS kept failing and there was no real help for me except to submit a ticket. There wasn't even a phone number to call or anything. Ultimately I dug around around found Microsoft support and after an hour and a half of being forwarded 13 TIMES to different departments, they still couldn't help me. I finally gave up, went into Safe Mode and did a System Restore to about a week back and now my machine seems happy again. I manually deleted Visual Studio 2008 since a restoration "restores" OS files and the registry back to a previous date but otherwise leaves files alone. I don't think I'll try to install it again until I do a full system re-install but this really freaked me out. Microsoft put enough thought into Vista to lock me out entirely but then had no mechanism in place to help me when it got screwed up! Support was a nightmare and so upsetting I could barely even stay civil on the phone by the end. No one knew anything or would take any responsibility, instead only trying to find any reason possible to kick me over to the next support number and even the transfers failed far more often than they succeeded with me constantly having to write down and dial yet another 800 number. I realize that Microsoft is not the only company out there that has completely lost sight of customer support... but, wow, this was my worst experience so far with any company.
The only plus from the support desk side is that, unlike 99% of the people contacting them, we actually know how to write a good trouble report. This doesn't make up for that fact that we only ask hard questions and aren't succeptable to baffling by BS. The net result is that they can't answer most of our problems off a standard script and their standard techniques for blowing off troublesome customers won't work.
Otherwise [Microsoft is] toast in the long term no matter how much money they've got. They would be already if the Linux community didn't have it's head so firmly up it's own command line buffer that it looks like taking 15 years to find the desktop. -- Matthew Faithfull