I Paid $35 for help! They never got back with me.. now I cant reach them

[George J Malvar]

I had a serious loss of data from a system crash. Over
one year's work! I contacted Microsoft and gave my credit
card and they quickly collected $35. Not until then was I
was allowed to speak with someone regarding my problem.
When I call now, they want a number which I never got!
When I first called they person did not speak hardly a
word of english and said someone would get back with me
that I could understand. It's been a couple of weeks...
I've hear nothing but my $35 charge was paid. Now I
cannot find a way to call without paying another $35.. or
possibly $99 and I find no way of getting an email to
Micrsoft support from anywhere. Does anyone hava a magic
wand or know of a way to reach them? I have NET and even
that doesn't help. High tech is causing real people to
become less and less accessible.... Imagine that? Could
someobe pleeeeze help me. I don't know if I'm suposed to
enter my email... maybe I shouldn't? George J Malvar

 

[R. McCarty]

You would have been given an Incident number. Email would
have been sent to help you track the problem to resolution.
Not only should you have been contacted, but MS will send
email from a evaluation department to follow up on the results.

If you haven't received any email, could your email client or ISP
be filtering for Spam and have diverted any Microsoft mail to your
junk folder.

You can probably get the Billing code from your credit card
company and use that to locate your Incident #.
Here is the contact page for Windows XP product support.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;en-us;prodoffer33a&sd=GN

 

[Tumbleweed]

I had a serious loss of data from a system crash. Over
one year's work! I contacted Microsoft and gave my credit
card and they quickly collected $35. Not until then was I
was allowed to speak with someone regarding my problem.
When I call now, they want a number which I never got!
When I first called they person did not speak hardly a
word of english and said someone would get back with me
that I could understand. It's been a couple of weeks...
I've hear nothing but my $35 charge was paid. Now I
cannot find a way to call without paying another $35.. or
possibly $99 and I find no way of getting an email to
Micrsoft support from anywhere. Does anyone hava a magic
wand or know of a way to reach them? I have NET and even
that doesn't help. High tech is causing real people to
become less and less accessible.... Imagine that? Could
someobe pleeeeze help me. I don't know if I'm suposed to
enter my email... maybe I shouldn't? George J Malvar

re the data....backups?

re the $35, call your credit card company and ask for a refund as you didnt
get what was paid for (if that is appropriate in your country) , or contact
your local trading organisation that deals with such problems.

 

[*Vanguard*]

George J Malvar said in news:[email protected]:

I had a serious loss of data from a system crash. Over
one year's work! I contacted Microsoft and gave my credit
card and they quickly collected $35. Not until then was I
was allowed to speak with someone regarding my problem.
When I call now, they want a number which I never got!
When I first called they person did not speak hardly a
word of english and said someone would get back with me
that I could understand. It's been a couple of weeks...
I've hear nothing but my $35 charge was paid. Now I
cannot find a way to call without paying another $35.. or
possibly $99 and I find no way of getting an email to
Micrsoft support from anywhere. Does anyone hava a magic
wand or know of a way to reach them? I have NET and even
that doesn't help. High tech is causing real people to
become less and less accessible.... Imagine that? Could
someobe pleeeeze help me. I don't know if I'm suposed to
enter my email... maybe I shouldn't? George J Malvar

Authorizing a charge is not the same as getting charged for it. Call in
again, give your credit card number, and when speaking to the next tech
rep explain that you have an incident number already but that they will
have to look it up by your name - and they should NOT charge you again
since you are still discussing the same incident.

 

[Phil]

I would call your credit card and dispute the charges. Maybe you'll get your
35 back.
I say this because there is nothing ms can do or will do to get your data
back. They may help you get windows back up and running, but most likely
they'll tell you to format to get it back up and this will wipe all your
data. The best thing to do is post back here with all the details you can
think of about the problem, what happens, error messgaes, system specs, how
did you lose data, does system boot, etc.... Hopefully someone in here can
help you. BTW - this is a perfect reason why it is very important to always
do regular backups of your important data. If you can't get xp running
because of a drive failure then most likely the data is lost, unless you
spend thousands for a recovery company to bring it back. If its just a
windows problem stopping windows from loading, then try here and maybe we
can help.

 

[Guest]

Hello to all of you who helped me!

If you can help, I'll pay!

I found that the best thing to do with Microsoft, when
they screw up, is to call the number where you have to
pay the $35 and you can get a real person.... I did it by
not pressihg any numbers making them assume I had a
rotary phone

Once I got the operatot, and gave her my credit card
charge, she asked me for a case number, which was not
given to me. I did give her the SKU number from the
billing receipt that was the only thing sent and voila, I
was then re-issued a case number. (by the way this was
originally started on the phone and not via email) Please
read on;

As far as my problem, as a novice, I think it seems too
complex... Allow me to explain; I did a system scan and
defrag. When done, I cleared my cache and cookies. Then
when I rebooted, when I got back online, my machine
barely moved at all! (BTW; I have cable moden, an 1800
Mhz capcity w/ 384 Ram) I then went back to "Computer
Management and to Defrag to se what may have happened and
saw nothing but RED! I saw that 18 Gigabytes had been
fragmented into three files! I could do nothing to remove
it at all. I called Microsoft and the agent (who spoke
no english) asked me to go to DOS and do a chkdsk (which,
I know, as an old DOS user that it would not help the
situation) I did the chkdsk and rebotted like he asked
and he promised to call me and/or send me an email. He
did neither. In any case, now I aslo see that this has
also wiped out at least 500 or more desktop shortcuts,
pdf files and downloads... they're all gone! The icons
that remain (very few) show zero KB and clicking on them
does nothing. I lost everything onmy desktop and who
knows wjhere else, including software that I purchased
that was downloaded but not installed. (like a fool I did
not wtitedown URL's etc) basically, mydesktop and a chuck
of Outlook Express emails have vanished into thin air. As
a habit, I keep most website shortcuts and program pre-
installed downloads in about twelve folders "on my
desktop" for quick access. They are sorted by affiliates
and member sites... rather than in favorites

I have lost six months of hard work and who knows how
much money I lost too?

Is this even fixable?

If anyone had this happen and knows how to recover
totally lost shortcuts, pdf files and downloads (saved on
a desktop) please help! I'll gladly pay!

George

 

[R. McCarty]

You best option at this point is to stop using the PC, and
have an expert diagnose the disk condition. In most of these
situations the more you do, the worse it will get.

If no other tools have been run on the drive, the data may
still be intact. What is needed is some serious diagnostic work.

The first thing that should be done is an attempt to image out
the drive to some kind of removable media. This may be
nothing more than disk errors (Did you do a Chkdsk C: /R?)

If you are inclined to try and fix it yourself, you should get
Partition Magic or another Disk Management program. Most
have a "Check for errors" tool. If you can get a definitive
error code or message it may help to resolve the problems.