G
Guest
Microsoft has millions of customers now and this success is the downfall of
their customer support.
It seems that Microsoft has hired poorly trained people from overseas to
handle calls in English. My experience is that these people may NOT know
more than the average owner of a computer. They have worked ten days on my
problem all to no avail. I can see how unprepared and unprofessional they
have been in my case and it is making me wonder whether Microsoft is aware
that this bad support is going to hurt their product line.
It seems that there is a lack of guidelines that tech support must follow
and they are making many mistakes like advicing you to download questionable
software from strange sites, to taking over your machine, trashing it and
leaving you worst than before. A poor practice I noticed is that they will
switch support people over and over again and do not want you to call them
once the first contact is made. So far they switched three tech support
persons in my case and do not have the history of what has been done to my
computer. From their questions it seems as though they are starting from
scratch without knowing what has been done. This is what happened so far:
1. Email support: It was evident that support did not even read the problem
description. Provided wrong steps. Two days later, provide confusing
instructions. two days later, more confusion. after 8 days told them to give
my case to an expert.
No luck. Silence. Finally they Told me to call for phone support.
2. Phone support: Energetic guy sounded like he knew what he was doing.
Took over my computer, made CD drive disappear, then he announced that he
will roll back the computer to Xp SP1. He did. CD Drive did not reappear.
Confused, HE disappeard.
3. Phone Support take two: Another guy called me said he was going to take
care of things. He did not want to take over computer. Asked what was wrong
again. He sounded like the first guy with email support! He wanted me to
download firmware for the drive from flaky/strange web place. Download
luckly failed for some reason. Computer did not to open the file. CD drive
worked perfectly before so I could not understand reason to get new firmware
which I told him may be different than a driver AND that the already
installed driver version has a much higher version number than the firmware
available on that site. He said will investigate and will call me tomorrow
at the same time. One call per day you know.
SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS:
Ask support if your problem is well documented and with a straightforward
solution.
If not, forget about support. You may very well do a better job.
Be wary if they tell you, "We will take care of everything, not to worry,
relax." If you hear: " We are doing our best and ..." RUN!!
their customer support.
It seems that Microsoft has hired poorly trained people from overseas to
handle calls in English. My experience is that these people may NOT know
more than the average owner of a computer. They have worked ten days on my
problem all to no avail. I can see how unprepared and unprofessional they
have been in my case and it is making me wonder whether Microsoft is aware
that this bad support is going to hurt their product line.
It seems that there is a lack of guidelines that tech support must follow
and they are making many mistakes like advicing you to download questionable
software from strange sites, to taking over your machine, trashing it and
leaving you worst than before. A poor practice I noticed is that they will
switch support people over and over again and do not want you to call them
once the first contact is made. So far they switched three tech support
persons in my case and do not have the history of what has been done to my
computer. From their questions it seems as though they are starting from
scratch without knowing what has been done. This is what happened so far:
1. Email support: It was evident that support did not even read the problem
description. Provided wrong steps. Two days later, provide confusing
instructions. two days later, more confusion. after 8 days told them to give
my case to an expert.
No luck. Silence. Finally they Told me to call for phone support.
2. Phone support: Energetic guy sounded like he knew what he was doing.
Took over my computer, made CD drive disappear, then he announced that he
will roll back the computer to Xp SP1. He did. CD Drive did not reappear.
Confused, HE disappeard.
3. Phone Support take two: Another guy called me said he was going to take
care of things. He did not want to take over computer. Asked what was wrong
again. He sounded like the first guy with email support! He wanted me to
download firmware for the drive from flaky/strange web place. Download
luckly failed for some reason. Computer did not to open the file. CD drive
worked perfectly before so I could not understand reason to get new firmware
which I told him may be different than a driver AND that the already
installed driver version has a much higher version number than the firmware
available on that site. He said will investigate and will call me tomorrow
at the same time. One call per day you know.
SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS:
Ask support if your problem is well documented and with a straightforward
solution.
If not, forget about support. You may very well do a better job.
Be wary if they tell you, "We will take care of everything, not to worry,
relax." If you hear: " We are doing our best and ..." RUN!!