The Johnson Blog

Ramblings of a geek with a few hobbies…

Tag: support

  • My Painful Experience with Microsoft Surface Support

    This all started when my Surface RT’s screen cracked. I was using the device just minutes before picking it up and finding the screen shattered – I still have no idea what happened, but that is besides the point.

    I briefly chatted with support,who explained the cost. They agreed to take a look at it and determine if it was my fault, and if so they were supposed to call me to authorize repair. $300, fyi.

    While setting up the service, they ran into a problem which took a day to clear up. My device, a prior replacement due to video-out problems, was marked as an Enterprise device which apparently causes problems.

    So I sent my Surface in, and waited for a call. And waited, and waited. A little over a week later, my device arrived back at the house.

    With a letter explaining it was my fault and instructions on how to setup service.

    And to top it off, they applied numerous little sticker arrows pointing to the cracks. As if I didn’t know the problem!

    SavedPicture-2013530193141.jpg

    After another round of support, I sent it off AGAIN. It was mailed on May 9th and delivered on the 13th. Repair is supposed to take 8-10 business days.

    It has now been 12 business days, the status online hasn’t even acknowledged they received it, my Escalation Engineer says there is an “internal issue” preventing them from shipping, all I am told is “we are sorry”, and there is absolutely no ETA.

    For all I know, I won’t have this thing back by Christmas.

    Why, Microsoft?

    Or, rather: Why Microsoft?

    Nice way to treat your early adopters.

    Update 5/31/2013:

    At the behest of @surface, I emailed my Customer Care Advocacy Specialist last night, asking for more information.  I just received a response:

    Dear Eric:

    We have received your device, but the internal issue is preventing us from processing your device. Since we can’t process your device there are limitations to shipping a replacement. I understand this issue isn’t providing the best customer experience and I am deeply apologetic for that. However, I assure you were doing everything we can to get this issue resolved as quickly as possible.

    So Microsoft is holding my Surface in limbo.  It sounds like they’re just going to ship a replacement, but are waiting to fix an internal issue before doing so.  Excuse me?  You can’t send a replacement and fix your problem on your own time?  Seriously?

    I don’t think this is how you’re supposed to act when you’re getting your butt kicked in a market you showed up 3 years late to.

    Update 2, 5/31/2013:

    Yay, an official mention of no ETA:

    Unfortunately, I don’t have an ETA when this issue will be resolved, and our system is setup to receive an item and then ship a replacement.

    I understand my apologies are becoming redundant but I do apologize for this inconvenience and want this issue resolved for you as soon as possible. I am doing everything I can.

    Thank you for your continued patience.

    I think I sense sarcasm in that last line.

     

    Update 6/5/2013:

    Today I finally received my replacement Surface.  Thanks for taking your sweet time, Microsoft.  Here’s to hoping nobody else has to deal with that.

  • Avoid Webhost4Life for Hosting

    For a couple years now, I have been using Webhost4Life to host my Chef website, ejichef.com.   At $10-$12/month, they weren’t the cheapest option out there for Microsoft-based shared hosting, but they also weren’t the most expensive.  All-in-all I never had any major problems with them and their support was reasonably responsive (again, given the cost).

    I have learned that the company was recently purchased, and I had been getting emails about an impending migration to a new hosting “platform”.  My site’s turn was in the middle of the week last week, and I received an email when it was complete.   I quickly visited my website and navigated around, it all looked ok.   At first.

    A day later when I received my daily download report, I saw there was absolutely no traffic to my download (hosted elsewhere).  A little investigation showed that during the migration they had deleted all of my custom DNS records.  Frustrating, for sure, but not terrible.  I logged in and added the records which inexplicably caused my site to go down. 

    I chatted with a support rep online, who didn’t even try to solve anything and immediately created a ticket and told me it would be quickly resolved.   8 hours later there had been no change to the ticket so I chatted with someone else and was fed the same 4 auto-response lines I have learned to be the extent of their services.   Once again I was assured it was being worked on right now and will be fixed in 2 hours at most.

    10 hours later (around 18 total) I finally received an email that it was fixed.  What complex operation took the skill and expertise of an engineer?  Restarting IIS.  

     Strike 1. 

    Another day or two goes by and I go to look at the contents of the database that was migrated, and find that it is completely empty.  The schema was migrated but none of the data.  What were they thinking?  I went to take a backup of the old database, but found that I needed someone in tech support to do it.  After another chat, I was told they had to create a ticket to have the backup and restore done again.  I have never seen this ticket or heard if it has been completed (I had my own backup which I restored elsewhere, so it wasn’t critical).  Strike 1.5.

    Shortly after this, a couple Chef purchases came through but the license key generation code failed.  After some digging, I find that the problem is permissions-related and I gather all of the links and information needed to create a very detailed support case.   I created submitted the ticket, and here I sit on day 4 with it still not functioning.  Strike 2.5.

    What has thrown me over the edge is my interaction with the support team over these past 4 days.  The only activity I see on the case are my inquiries into the status  – not a single word back about what is going on, an ETA, or a request for further information. 

    I have chatted online with support too many times to count, each time being told (after putting me on hold for 4-5 minutes) that they had just personally talked with an engineer and they were working on it as we spoke.  I was repeatedly assured that the fix was at most 2 hours away.  Multiple times I was told they had just escalated the ticket to High Priority, which I’ll note is never reflected in the ticketing system.  During the first conversation the technican was in a hurrty to get off of the support line and told me that they had reproduced the error (and of course it will be fixed in 2 hours..), even though I had not given them instructions on how to reproduce it.  They quickly diverted the conversation when I brought this to their attention.

    I had been seriously considering upgrading my Webhost4Life account to a VPS (virtual private server) before all of this happened.   I’m thankful this all happened before I signed a year-long contract because I cannot imagine paying the VPS price and ending up with support like this. 

    During the frustration of that first 18 hour outage I opened an account with KickAssVPS.com and just yesterday made the decision to transition everything over to it.  As of right now I am no longer using my Webhost4Life account and am trying to cancel it.  While the cost is obviously more expensive than shared hosting, the KickAssVPS experience has been nothing short of excellent and I’m looking forward to using them for a long time to come.

    Hopefully my cancellation will be complete soon and I can say goodbye Webhost4life, and good riddance.