Re: How MSFT Deliberately, Arrogantly, Egregiously, and Totally* Fails to Support their Products*

message from Chad Harris on 30 May 2004

Jupiter--

Sorry for any inconvenience to a dedictated MVP who provides a tremendous
amount of unselfish help or anyone else. I rarely cross post. I've done
it twice when I didn't get any answer to reasonable questions and it
produced answers--they just took a while and I understood people are busy
and was glad to get the help. This wasn't really a cross post. There were 4
or so and they were tailored to the group for the most part. One to BCM, one
to MSDE, one to Office and here.

There is an important point. For most people there *are no meaningful
channels to MSFT.* You'd have to think out of the box to contact them with
this problem, and I have. But I can't change this contract with these
jokers that makes support a terrible experience that was decided at the Sr.
VP level. Surely you don't mean MSFT Wish or the feedback box on the Office
website which has no of the basic tenants on the BCM site for using the MSDE
which BCM is.

1) The post wasn't a diatribe against MSFT--it was to alert people who
aren't in the context of IT Help Desks in Enterprises with large MSFT volume
licenses who don't have any channel to MSFT or have paid for high level
support with some kind of certified partner. In other words, what's
available because someone got a box is worthless much of the time. If the
software has systemic problems, and Convergys can't handle it you're out of
luck and that's by design.

2) If BCM is a very buggy flop and it is right now--some of the best OL MVPs
and most proflific OL authors can't make it work, MSFT is only going to hear
possibly from those MVPs who have multiple collateral channels and will be
listened to, or notice if a large customer makes the complaint about a
volume of workstations.

3) The small business has little or no connection with MSFT, and that's by
very deliberate design. MSFT hires out their support predominantly with
Convergys--and is expanding their support centers in Bangalore, New Delhi
and building a new center in another Indian city.

I wanted to make the point they have no control over their support and they
don't want to know what happens. They just want it away from them and they
have that.

I wanted to make the point that they contract it to Convergys the way a
large company contracts their trash pickup.

4) I understand that if 3 of the best and brightest Outlook MVPs who are
prolific authors and wear multiple hats say it's buggy and has systemic
problems, adding to Outlook, then trying to get help from Joe Six Pack
Convergys SP is going to produce zilch compared with what might be available
in these groups. Unfortunately that's all that is extended.

5) I'm willing to bet that if you were told to click a toolbar to produce
the same crash you had produced more than 200 times in all builds of XP you
would have considered it a waste of time as well as ten four hour window
appointments that weren't kept. Again there is no *normal* channel to
compalin to MSFT.

6) I have no idea what the public is supposed to do with error messages that
are all in hex including those in the Event Viewer. Convergys sure isn't
equipped to deal with them.

Thanks,

Chad Harris

______________________________________________________________
"Jupiter Jones [MVP]" <jones_jupiter@hotnomail.com> wrote in message
news:%234bgObfREHA.624@TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...

Archived message: Re: *How MSFT *Deliberately, Arrogantly, Egregiously, and Totally* Fails to Support their Products* (Microsoft Win XP)