Posted by Jim at April 13th, 2005

Every so often in the course of doing Windows system administration you end up calling Microsoft. My experience with MS tech support ranges from good to not so good.

The good experience occurred in 1997 when my parents bought me a copy of Word 97 for Christmas. It wouldn’t install. I called technical support (for free) and they told me how to solve the problem.

Fast forward to 2004: Last year I had to call them with a server licensing issue. They moved me back and forth between 2 departments at least twice before one of them decided they actually had the power to solve the problem.

Today: I called them today and stayed on the phone with them for 4 hours. During this time they tried little more than I’d already tried myself, put me on hold to discuss the problem with other people at the call center, and finally told me that they didn’t know how to solve the problem. They’ll call me back tomorrow.

Did I mention that Microsoft moved their call center to India? So there’s also the added accent barrier. Not to mention the fact that I don’t always enunciate as well as I might, making things a little more difficult for them.

Things that made the experience particularly special:
1. The way the call got cut halfway through the process.
2. Starting from scratch with a new person.
3. The time spent on hold was literally long enough for me to fall asleep. Imagine waking in your boss’ chair, phone embedded in your ear, to an Indian accented voice saying, “Hello? Jim? Hello? Jim?”
4. I spent four hours of my life talking about Microsoft Outlook. I will never get that time back.
5. Microsoft tech support now costs $35 per incident–except for development related incidents. Then it’s $245.