3 ms·

Just curious, how is Microsoft's support in this department? Has anyone dealt with customer support for hotmail/outlook, skydrive, etc ?

by cabbeer 13y ago

dredmorbius 13y ago
Some years back I determined that Microsoft had a massive problem with spam transiting their network. I found a Sr. VP's name associated with the service, phoned the main switchboard, and asked for him. He picked up his phone on the first ring. I briefly described the issue (and how I'd determined it was a problem), he told me he'd have the appropriate manager get in touch with me later that day. I received that call 15 minutes later, and worked with the manager (submitting specific emails and identifying where on their network the problems were manifesting) for a couple of months during which time the spam volumes fell well over 90%. Part of the trick is knowing how to navigate / manipulate the system, and finding a problem they acknowledge as theirs. But in that particular case (and a small handful of others) I found the company highly responsive. Now, several years later when I'd bought both a shrinkwrap product and support contract to specifically resolve a data issue with a product of theirs, I got sandbagged. Demanded my money back for the contract. And no, I'm not a fan of Microsoft. But they do (at times at least) know how to run a business.
- teh_klev 13y ago
  I've emailed Scott Guthrie a couple of times with regard to a couple of ASP.NET issues I felt warranted his team's attention rather than use that "Connect" bug reporting crap. After three or four hours he forwarded my emails to "the right people" and cc'd me and I got to work with these folks resolving the issues at hand via email. Was a pretty good experience and Scott is a top bloke.
tempestn 13y ago
I briefly used Microsoft's Azure Bing custom search engine, or whatever they call it. I found the support to be extremely responsive and reasonably knowledgeable, even though I was only spending a few hundred a month. That said, the actual product features and terms of use were both significantly behind both Yahoo BOSS (which uses the same Bing index) and Google's search API. (One particularly terrible term was that you can't use it on pages with any advertising besides Yahoo/Bing ads.)
maaaats 13y ago
Twice I've been in contact, went well, at least compared to the radio silence Google has given me. And when searching I actually end up finding a ticket/question in some MS system with an official response. With Google I far too often end up in a Google Group with tens of complaints but no solutions.
julianz 13y ago
I have twice tried, and failed, to use support for Xbox live. Some idiot I don't know registered an Xbox account a while ago using my Gmail address by mistake. I ignored all the emails and figured they'd stop when a deadline ran out for confirming the email address or somesuch, but apparently not. Now his credit card has expired, so I tried to contact Microsoft to cancel the account and make the emails stop. According to their live help people there's no account registered to my Gmail address, and yet every month there's a new email that arrives from verified Microsoft servers. Impasse. And for extra bonus points, every single support link in the credit card emails is broken because they have re-worked the site for the new Xbox.

Just curious, how is Microsoft's support in this department? Has anyone dealt with customer support for hotmail/outlook, skydrive, etc ?

by cabbeer 13y ago

Just curious, how is Microsoft's support in this department? Has anyone dealt with customer support for hotmail/outlook, skydrive, etc ?

dredmorbius 13y ago

Some years back I determined that Microsoft had a massive problem with spam transiting their network. I found a Sr. VP's name associated with the service, phoned the main switchboard, and asked for him. He picked up his phone on the first ring. I briefly described the issue (and how I'd determined it was a problem), he told me he'd have the appropriate manager get in touch with me later that day. I received that call 15 minutes later, and worked with the manager (submitting specific emails and identifying where on their network the problems were manifesting) for a couple of months during which time the spam volumes fell well over 90%. Part of the trick is knowing how to navigate / manipulate the system, and finding a problem they acknowledge as theirs. But in that particular case (and a small handful of others) I found the company highly responsive. Now, several years later when I'd bought both a shrinkwrap product and support contract to specifically resolve a data issue with a product of theirs, I got sandbagged. Demanded my money back for the contract. And no, I'm not a fan of Microsoft. But they do (at times at least) know how to run a business.

teh_klev 13y ago
I've emailed Scott Guthrie a couple of times with regard to a couple of ASP.NET issues I felt warranted his team's attention rather than use that "Connect" bug reporting crap. After three or four hours he forwarded my emails to "the right people" and cc'd me and I got to work with these folks resolving the issues at hand via email. Was a pretty good experience and Scott is a top bloke.

tempestn 13y ago

I briefly used Microsoft's Azure Bing custom search engine, or whatever they call it. I found the support to be extremely responsive and reasonably knowledgeable, even though I was only spending a few hundred a month. That said, the actual product features and terms of use were both significantly behind both Yahoo BOSS (which uses the same Bing index) and Google's search API. (One particularly terrible term was that you can't use it on pages with any advertising besides Yahoo/Bing ads.)

maaaats 13y ago

Twice I've been in contact, went well, at least compared to the radio silence Google has given me. And when searching I actually end up finding a ticket/question in some MS system with an official response. With Google I far too often end up in a Google Group with tens of complaints but no solutions.

julianz 13y ago

I have twice tried, and failed, to use support for Xbox live. Some idiot I don't know registered an Xbox account a while ago using my Gmail address by mistake. I ignored all the emails and figured they'd stop when a deadline ran out for confirming the email address or somesuch, but apparently not. Now his credit card has expired, so I tried to contact Microsoft to cancel the account and make the emails stop. According to their live help people there's no account registered to my Gmail address, and yet every month there's a new email that arrives from verified Microsoft servers. Impasse. And for extra bonus points, every single support link in the credit card emails is broken because they have re-worked the site for the new Xbox.