Ever Received a Poor Response from Microsoft?

I feel like I'm asking for trouble here, but I'm trying to find examples where our responses to your questions have left you...

• More confused than you were before
• With a bad taste in your mouth about dealing with Microsoft
• Could have been worded better
• Not feeling respected as a customer
• Feeling like it didn't exlain the solution/problem in your terms (MS-only acronyms, passing the buck to other internal teams, etc)
• Etc

If you aren't comfortable posting your example in public as a response here then feel free to send the example directly to me (jledgard@microsft.com ).  I'm not trying to get anyone fired and would actually prefer if the names were changed to "protect the innocent".  What we are looking for are good real world "anti-examples" that could be used in training materials given to employees that want to learn "Customer Interaction Best Practices". 

Oh, I'll take your positive experiences as well.

Thanks in Advance

Edit: To clarify. While hearing about communication through official channels is interesting... I'm more interested in examples where the person responding was someone who's full time job was not to talk to customers.  Good examples include MS employee participation in newsgroups, resonces to MSDN Feedback items, or answers to questions in blogs.

Comments

• Anonymous
  March 09, 2005
  Well, I have to provide my positive experience(s), Josh. Despite the rep that exists, I've always found support and responses from Microsoft to be more than adequate.
  
  So far, in fact, that I had MS support fixing hardware problems for me when there was some corrupt memory issues.
  
  Further, the involvement in the community by employees is amazing. And yes, this predates the blogging craze.
  
  Thanks!

• Anonymous
  March 09, 2005
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  March 09, 2005
  I get the feeling you're thinking about direct communication with Microsoft through some kinds of "official channels" that I'm not part of, but I'd have to suggest that the IE blog is an example of a bad answer to questions. The recent posting on standards support is a prime example. The reason everybody's asking about standards support isn't because we want to be told, yet again, that Microsoft does or doesn't think that standards are good or bad in some nebulous, general kind of way. We want to know, specifically, that the particular specific huge holes in standards support are going to be addressed. Even if this information is released gradually, or we're told that "these items (PNG, fixed positioning, windowed selects, etc) are on our radar for consideration, but we haven't decided yet which ones we're going to address for IE7" or "PNG alpha is in, watch this space for more announcements". I can't understand the reasons behind the huge secrecy in what's in, out or undecided for IE7, but it would be possible to be at least a little bit specific about which answers you're not giving. Right now, despite the constant "we hear your concerns" rhetoric, there's no indication at all that anyone actually does hear what our concerns really are.

• Anonymous
  March 10, 2005
  Actually Stuart, the example you referenced is the type of thing I'm looking for. The training we are putting together is meant for people whose full time job is not to respond to customers.

• Anonymous
  March 10, 2005
  The only communication channels that I consider poor ARE the official ones. Particularly things like the "Official" IE blog.
  
  Overall, the MS employees posting in blogs, consultants at our site and on newsgroups are generally excellent.
  
  

• Anonymous
  March 10, 2005
  I've only need to contact support one time. I was having problems with email app with MSN Premium 9. I was trying to download the email, but was getting some kind of DLL error. I contacted support through a different channel and received a response in an adequate time frame. The answer was very informative and well written. I had no problems understanding what I was asked to do, but I am somewhat computer savy. My experience is positive.

• Anonymous
  March 10, 2005
  Ever received a poor response from Microsoft? You betcha! In fact, I would deem most responses from Microsoft as "poor". (A notable exception is Helena Kupkova on the XML team, so there is still some hope).
  
  Case in point: The UDT decoder in the DCOM stack is rotten, and has been for quite some time. When XPsp2 was released I managed to create a reproduceable case. And what was the response? I could contact PSS to look on the case. Right. Like I want to spend money to get your bugs fixed.
  
  The problem is that Microsoft cares very little about the problems people have with their programs and is very ignorant of use cases outside of the MSDN examples. Of course you SAY that you do, but the truth is far from it.

• Anonymous
  March 10, 2005
  Almost all of my direct contact with MS has been through blogs, and almost all of it is excellent. That's why the occasional bad experience stands out in my mind.
  
  Along with the IE blog situation I already mentioned, I did remember another instance where the response was noticeably poor. This blog post http://weblogs.asp.net/BCLTeam/archive/2004/12/21/328585.aspx?Pending=true
  specifically said "feel free to post additional questions or comments on this blog entry", but when I actually did post some questions, nobody ever answered. Ever.
  
  I think it's fine to not answer every comment on your blog posts, but if you specifically ask people to submit questions in the form of comments, you're taking on a responsibility to at least check and see if there have been any and provide some kind of indication that you're listening.

• Anonymous
  March 10, 2005
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  March 10, 2005
  > I'm more interested in examples where the
  > person responding was someone who's full
  > time job was not to talk to customers.
  
  In that case I'd estimate 90% of the responses were good and 10% were bad. In fact unofficial responses have often been more polite than my writing (likely because unofficial responders have themselves been officially treated far better than I, and they haven't developed the same degree of cynicism).
  
  Official responses are nearly the opposite, around 80% bad and 20% good. Some recent cases involve Windows Update refusing to download security patches, Microsoft Support refusing to provide the free support that the Windows Update site says is available for Windows Update failures, and Microsoft Support giving incorrect answers (things like instructions to run programs that don't exist in the failing Windows versions) and then no answers at all on followup. Some past cases I've already mentioned. Official reneging on officially stated warranties is still running at 100%.

• Anonymous
  March 10, 2005
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  March 11, 2005
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  March 11, 2005
  The next biggest problem is broken links to MS pages. I experienced this when I tried to find out how to use SQL server stored procedures to dynamically provide data to an Excel Spreadsheet. With all the talk about using Stored Procedures as the preferrred method of accessing data from SQL Server, and their is no example I could find anywhere. We HAD to put SQL Script into the Query space.
  
  No one at MS could find any info, and the Google searches went to heaps of MS pages which nolonger existed.

• Anonymous
  May 29, 2009
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• Anonymous
  June 15, 2009
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