A really strange question about Customer Preview Program

[Guest]

When the Vista Beta 2 was released to the public, I paid about US$20 for the
Beta 2 and RC1 (I live in Europe; that is why it is so high). But in the
meanwhile I became a Beta tester for Windows Vista (a connect user). So is it
somehow possible not to receive RC1 although I paid for it. I don't care
about losing 20$. The primary reason is additional expenses. For the Beta 2 I
paid additional US $70 for tax and stuff like that when I received the discs.

So can anyone help me? I don't know who to contact about this strange request.

Thanks

 

[Chad Harris]

I sure don't understand this Mr. or Ms. Mishad

1) You're a TBT and there are 66 million messages to you on Connect and in
the groups as to which alias to contact and you have a house mommy who is
all over the newsgroups who monitors that alias. Email your house mommy and
tell her you want to change your order.

2) If you're a Vista BT you should be savvy enough to drop the stupid
completely screwed up html web interface for these groups maintained by the
most eggregiously lazy bottom feeders known to man at MSFT and just open Win
Mail and click MSFT Help Groups and avoid the duplicate post bug they are
too dumb to fix for years.

CH

 

[Guest]

No, not like that. I am talking about physical DVDs. I paid 20$ for them on
CPP. Then I became beta tester. Then I got those DVDs and had to pay extra
70$ for tax. 90$ in total!!! And since RC1 is on the way, I don't want
another 70$ wasted. So how can I tell Microsoft not to send RC1 DVDs to me??

 

[Jane C]

Are you sure that you have access to the Vista Beta program on Connect? Did
you receive an invitation?

Just signing up at Connect does not give access to the Vista Beta program.

 

[Chad Harris]

Mishad--

1) You can activate the Beta Vista by calling MSFT. I would see if they
will help you. Give that a shot.
2) It's my understanding that the House Mommy on the TBT that frequently
pops up on the Vista Beta groups tries to cater to the TBTs to some extent.
That's a significant amount of money. I'm sure that if you email her at the
alias you were given, she can forward your request to stop the order to the
appropriate place. Give it a shot.
3) Here are number that can sometimes be helpful in straightening out orders
from MSFT at Redmond. I have no idea who handles those--often a company
called One Plus handles MSFT mailings but there are a number of them:

Monday through Friday, between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m. ET toll-free in the United
States and Canada.

1) 1-800-630-6740
2) 1-800 360-7561

Good luck. You should have enough time to stop your order because the RC1
CPP (lol whatever branch of a branch they make it in the stuff they're
throwing together to shove out the door with a Windows logo on it) is not
going to happen within hours or a day.

Best of luck,

CH

 

[Chad Harris]

They've added people for all kinds of reasons during the course of several
months since Beta 1 started. There were softies posting on their blogs to
add people. They've added people for MCE testing reasons months after the
TBT for Vista and Longhorn server started from different countries and
solicited for it.

But I have a hard time telling what OPs mean much of the time. When an
invite or an email comes from that Beta the alias for questions is on every
one of them.

CH

 

[Guest]

May I ask how you got in the Vista beta on connect after the Beta 2 was
released?

What exactly did you have to do?

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

I was added for a second time just a couple of months ago in a special
program. Currently there are 28k plus registered TB testers. Obviously, it
could include dups, but I assume MS knows how to filter.

The 28k has nothing to do with the numbers active testers, of course. Those
numbers vary widely from release to release as some testers reach the ends
of their scopes of interest and other testers become more active. Media
Center has seen a lot of variation due to problems in some builds in even
getting MC up and running. Drivers for things like tuner cards have been
the biggest pain point. There now seems to be quite a lot of interest
building in MC as the thing comes together.

Probably Longhorn Server (aka Windows Server 2007/8) has the most dedicated
testers.

 

[Chad Harris]

If you take that 28K number the percentage who participate in groups is very
low. But of course, that doesn't necessarily correllate to their filing
quality bugs, etc although I believe keeping up with all their activities
might. There are probably a lot of ways people get added. I know that I've
received invites to a slew of programs I don't have the remotest interest
in, nor even the possible way to test that are for midlevel enterprise and
while I know the names of a lot of those programs and the servers for that
venue that's about all I know so why they put those on Connect I have no
idea.

If you sign in your dog to Connect, many of them apear. I'm especially
appreciative of my invitation to Vista Italiano and the Italian groups since
I speak about 10 words of Italian.

These are the people running around like chickens with their heads cut off
in concealed chaos who now know they can't possibly put out a decent OS on
their current time table and have the best known author of their best known
bookwith nearly a million copies pre-sold (Ed Bott) telling them that:

"If management insists on hitting an arbitrary January ship date, the
results will be disappointing at best, and potentially nightmarish"

CH

 

[Guest]

Thanks, I'll try

Mishad--

1) You can activate the Beta Vista by calling MSFT. I would see if they
will help you. Give that a shot.
2) It's my understanding that the House Mommy on the TBT that frequently
pops up on the Vista Beta groups tries to cater to the TBTs to some extent.
That's a significant amount of money. I'm sure that if you email her at the
alias you were given, she can forward your request to stop the order to the
appropriate place. Give it a shot.
3) Here are number that can sometimes be helpful in straightening out orders
from MSFT at Redmond. I have no idea who handles those--often a company
called One Plus handles MSFT mailings but there are a number of them:

Monday through Friday, between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m. ET toll-free in the United
States and Canada.

1) 1-800-630-6740
2) 1-800 360-7561

Good luck. You should have enough time to stop your order because the RC1
CPP (lol whatever branch of a branch they make it in the stuff they're
throwing together to shove out the door with a Windows logo on it) is not
going to happen within hours or a day.

Best of luck,

CH

 

[Guest]

Well not straight to Vista. I applied to become a Beta Tester for XBox 360
Extender. Since it requires Vista Beta 2, I also got an invitation for it.

But I finished the survey for potential beta tester for extender week or two
before Beta 2 was made public. So after about a month of waiting, I got
accepted.

 

[Guest]

No no, I am a beta tester for Longhorn/Vista. I got an invitation.

 

[michael e dziatkowicz]

28000 and I haven't received an invite? Go figure! Instead I have to shell
out $700 to get vista through MSDN.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

You don't have to do any such thing. Sometime before the end of September
you will have an opportunity to participate in the RC1 release, either
through CPP or another program when enrollments open again.