Microsoft, worst customer support ever

You know, I was just discussing with a photographer the lack of intelligence we’ve seen with the folks in charge of customer service at the company that hosts our content management system.

This seems to be a trend: The folks that deal directly with the customer don’t tend to know what they’re doing, or how their product works. It’s the worst business model I’ve ever seen.

If I owned a company, where customer support was an integral part, I would put my best and brightest there. It’s not like people don’t talk … I’m sure not on my way to pick up an Xbox after reading your post.

Maybe someday companies will learn this. One can hope.

From my experience it’s not just customer support that aren’t always familiar with their own products. I’ve been to a variety of conferences where the sales people demo’ing their companies products aren’t even familiar with all the features they’re talking about in front of a group. I’ve also been in the audience at some Microsoft launch events and the speakers didn’t know what I would consider the basics of their beta software. I was a user and had the impression that I knew their presentation better than they did.

You’re solution isn’t very realistic either though. You don’t put your “best and brightest” making a high-dollar salary on the front lines answering phones. You have them developing the software and fixing the actual problems. However, you need to hire and then train the right people and put them in the right job.

The other insight I can give is that many times the “developers” have ZERO people/social skills to compliment their knowledge of the product. That’s not very helpful either.

[...] Pat Thornton, the Journalism Iconoclast, has shared his recent experience with trying to work with and endure the “customer service” [imagine finger quote actions for emphasis] that was provided by the Xbox Live CSR when he had problems with his 12-month Xbox Live subscription card. What was Microsoft’s solution to the problem? Was it to send me a new XBOX Live card? Was it to credit my account with 12 months of a Live gold membership (the simple thing to do)? [...]

Isn’t it because the people on the other end of the telephone, who happened to be so conveniently named “John Anderson” and such, are actually in cubicle-filled call centers in India reading from a question flow chart?

Oh, outsourcing….

I’m sure somewhere there was a blog post about an Xbox user who ended up finding out the email address etc of Steve Jobs, and his assistant and publicised it as the way to get a response…

Googling for it came up with this instead: http://blogs.msdn.com/mthree/default.aspx.

It is shocking that the Xbox has had so many problems – and customer support hasn’t been ramped up to deal with them. No-one should have to live in constant fear their console is going to implode every time they use it. MS had a huge headstart over Sony this generation, and if they manage to blow it, it’ll purely be down to reliability and customer support.

I’m dealing with a newspaper that is spending millions of dollars to buy a new editorial system. The engineers and customer service reps keep giving us a litany of the things that their system won’t do, but not because it is a piece of shite, but because editorial systems shouldn’t be expected to do things like publish to the internet in a form that is discreet from the ink on paper product. I sat through countless meetings conference calls where reasonable requests were met by the response: “Why would you want to do that?”

Instead of telling them to shove their worthless, dated product up their wide, pimply bottoms, the higher ups at my place shrug their shoulders and say: We don’t have any choice, this is the best system we could get.

Why would you — as Steve Ballmer — pay for top-notch customer support if people keep buying your crappy product? Why would you — as the purveyor of slipshod editorial products to a dying industry — provide good support if your customers don’t make you pay when you don’t?

Join with others ranting against Microsoft at blogs with big audiences. Try to get your voice heard. But if there are too many complaints or the great behemoth simply won’t listen, use that discretionary income for something else. If you grit your teeth and pay them, that’s the same as dropping your pants, greasing your bum and bending over a table. You may not have asked explicitly to be buggered, but the request is strongly implied. That should be the approach whether one is buying a $500 video game system or a $5 million publishing system.

I know what you mean… i contacted microsoft about a video error with my 360 and after spending an hour on the phone answering questions taht should ahve took 10 minutes maybe(Had a guy who couldn’t speak english well) they finally told me i had to wait for them to send me a specific box to send my xbox 360 in. well even thats fine, but then i wait like 2 weeks and never recieve one… so when i contact microsoft again they only tell me taht theyre waiting to recieve my console… well obviously seeing as i havnt gotten the box. so ive had no help whatsoever and still have a broken xbox

I’ve had a similar problem. I used to have Xbox live gold, and then I moved to an internet free location (horror). While there my xbox live (year) subscription was almost over, and I decided not to renew it as I couldn’t use it. My credit card had just expired, so I didn’t bother updating the new one assuming this would mean I just get downgraded to ‘silver’ and then i could renew it when i have a connection again.

A year passes and im back to internet connectivity, and I decide its time to reconnect the xbox live account. I log in, and then it disconnects me. I try to resubscribe but it wont work. I think the first time I rang them they told me to give them my details so they could activate it, but they told me the card was being refused. I give up, and then ring later with another card. This time some slightly rude guy (who later informs me his name is Brad Pitt) tells me actually because i didnt pay my account was closed. He tells me theres nothing I can do, as its been ‘deleted from the database’. Of course when I log on to the website my accound is still there (and funnily enough has also been breifly updated from the few seconds my accound tried to connect). When i ring again he says its closed, theres nothing either of us can do, and basically i should f off and stop hassleing him, as I am better off making a new account. Except for the fact that im not.

Due to microsoft being so clever everything is associated to the live ID, saved games, email, xbox live purchases. So if i have to make a new one, i have to make a new msn account, and start all the games again, etc etc. Changing to a new email is one hell of a hassle due to the amount of things that rely on that account, and i dont want to redo all my save games, (fortunately i buy/spend and microsoft points, so I haven’t lost any money, but its nice to know i would of lost all purchases).

I ring up again, to see if I can complain, and this is what he says. First ‘There is no one higher than me you can talk to’ and to top it off, ‘Microsoft has no complaints department’.

Well who knew Brad Pitt was so good at customer service.

Does anyone know how I can contact a competent person to speak with regarding our XBOX Live account? Have been trying to resolve an issue for three days now and can’t seem to get someone on the phone who can actually help me.

Been trying to resolve a problem with my corrupt gamertag for 16 months now. I can’t recover it and they don’t care. Microsoft points, subscription, gamertag, all gone. They gave me a one month trial. oh, they also lie sometimes.

I am a father of 2 kids and up till now I did not believe in “online gaming” so I stayed away from it being Leary of people and things online. My son has asked for Xbox live for our 360 for years so I finally gave in and my wife and I bought an antennae, 12 plus one month Microsoft Gold card and 3300 Microsoft points for him to use to get going. After all it was his birthday. I secretly set it up not understanding the entire picture I made up a gamer tag and entered in the Gold subscription. I got everything set up and we gave it to him early but he did not like my gamer tag so we went to set him up with his own. We did that and everything worked fine for the first month. He added the points to his tag bought some stuff for Halo 3 and played with his friends online quite a bit. He actually built quite a reputation on his tag. All of as sudden yesterday he received an email from Microsoft live that his account was cancelled and he needed to purchase a subscription but we had one I did not understand. What I found out was since I put it under the tag I created all the points , reputation and everything would be lost unless I purchased a separate membership for his tag. I do not need a separate membership as I do not play the system.

I immediately called the support centre and got told the system was updating and I was to call back later. I called back and was told they cannot help me and I need to speak to a manager but they could not speak to me and I was to call back today. I called back today and got to speak to another person and she said I need to speak to a manager, 14 minutes later I spoke to a manager called Ron he was not interested in talking and told me I can call anyone I wanted but he will not help me. I called your office in Canada and they told me they will not help. I called the office in Washington and was told someone would call me back within 4 hours. I have wasted more time and effort on this then it is worth.

All I want is to transfer the membership under my gamer tag to his so he can do what we intended this to do. This would allow him not to lose the Microsoft points, reputation and experience points that are all on his gamer tag. As for my tag you can cancel it or terminate it whatever you wish to do. This is a 13 year old boy that just wants to play and I may have been stupid for what I did but I was just trying to be a dad. I would like a response prior to the weekend so I can get this fixed or I will cancel my member ship and sell the entire system as I understand now PS network is free and I do not need to spend all the money I spent to get nowhere.