Do you know how to get Microsoft Technical Support?

When the chips are down and you’ve reach the point where you need help, it is reassuring to know Microsoft Support Professionals are only a phone call or maybe an email away. We want you to know what your paid-for and free Microsoft Support options are. We also want you to let us know if there’s anything we could do to improve our support offerings. Send us feedback at ukmsdn@microsoft.com we do want to hear from you.

Microsoft offers a range of support services designed to meet the needs of developers no matter what size of organisation you work in - from enterprises down, to small business to individuals. It is worth taking the time to understand what these offerings are – to ensure you get access to appropriate and timely support. If your organisation purchases Software Assurance, Essential or Premier services you should check with your contracts manager on the included support offerings.

As an individual developer or as a member of a developer team it is always worth remembering the maxim – ‘forewarned is forearmed’. On any issue or even during project planning, the freely available knowledgebase should be searched for known and potential issues. The knowledgebase is updated directly by Microsoft Support professionals when incidents are identified as repeatable issues.

There is a range of paid for Microsoft support services available for software developers. These are contained within the Professional Support service. There are a number of elements to this service as laid out below:

1. Professional Pay Per Incident

2. Professional Pay Per Incident 5 Pack

3. Business Critical After Hours Support

4. MSDN/TechNet Subscription Incident Support

After raising a paid-for support call, the next important thing is response time. How long will it take to get someone who knows what they are talking about to call you back? Microsoft has three support incident levels, Severity A, B and C. These each have an Initial Response Time associated with them.

Severity A: - 2 hours

Severity B: - 4 business hours

Severity C: - 8 business hours.

There are a number of common features to the support services.

1. Product coverage – all production versions of Microsoft servers, tools and business applications

2. Lifetime – full customer agreement is required to close an incident.

For current support service prices see this page.

Looking at each one in turn:

Professional Pay per Incident/ Professional Pay per Incident 5 Pack

Professional Pay per Incident provides a fixed cost single assisted break-fix support during business hours. You can start a support incident by phone or by email.

Support incidents can be purchased in packs of 5 with a 1 year lifetime from set up of contract.

Business Critical After Hours Support.

A fixed cost single assisted break-fix after business hours support request for Severity A issues on production versions of Microsoft server, tools and business applications. Support is purchase directly from Microsoft and is initiated by phone only. This is effectively the same as a Professional Pay per Incident but occurs outside normal business hours.

MSDN/TechNet Subscription Incident Support.

Depending on the style and level of your subscription you have between 2 and 4 incidents available for your use. These are assisted break-fix incidents, solution design services are available to developers under Premier Service contracts purchased annually.

Warranty Support.

In addition to these service offerings above there is also Warranty Support. 2 to 4 incidents may be included ‘in the box’ with certain Microsoft tools and business applications. For example MSDN Professional subscriptions include two no-charge support incidents, Visual Studio professional or higher with MSDN Premium include four no-charge support incidents, entitling you to technical product support from Microsoft either by telephone or online during normal business hours.

All Microsoft Technical Support services are subject to Microsoft Technical Support General Terms & Conditions.

Comments

• Anonymous
  June 06, 2010
  It might be good to have different sorts of support incidents and support functions.

• Anonymous
  July 24, 2010
  It might be better if they made contact with a support technician easier, one finding the right phone number is difficult, they run you through a lengthy menu that more often than not does not recognize voice recognition and they assume everyone is a whiz knowing how to navigate through the site.  All this to install Microsoft Office 2010

• Anonymous
  November 14, 2011
  I just want to talk to someone who could tell me how I would know if an email that I sent has been re-called.  I sent the recall message on a group email that I sent and I dont know if I have been successful in re-calling it.

• Anonymous
  February 11, 2013
  Current waiting time for tech support is 2-3 hours !

• Anonymous
  June 04, 2013
  I'm trying to find out the cost of "Professional Pay Per Incident 5 Pack".  Could you provide a direct link where I can see the pricing? The information above says "For current support service prices see this page."  But when I click on the "page" I couldn't find pricing on "Pay Per Incident".

• Anonymous
  February 04, 2015
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  February 08, 2015
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  February 20, 2015
  Ron - The SAME thing just happened to me just now, Feb 20, 2015 11:50am PST.  Very heavy accent, new my name and address!  He gave me the same number, said his name is Paul Martin and with Windows Technical Support.   I need to see how to report this to Microsoft.

• Anonymous
  February 27, 2015
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  May 15, 2015
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  July 31, 2015
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  August 11, 2015
  Microsoft Windows 10 upgrade has downloaded 22 times, install has failed 22 times.  None of the suggested fixes works.  Impossible to contact microsoft support. How to correct this?

• Anonymous
  October 08, 2015
  Why is it so hard to find the support web portal with software assurance to open one SQL ticket. Its brutal!!!!!! The only technology company in the world that makes it this hard to give them money for support.