Wow, I had an experience with Microsoft customer service that was a revelation. For six months information was diligently collected and processed, multiple case ids were issued all with the promise of going to the "Escalation Department". Mind you the Escalation department was not tech support, we were deep, deep in the machine of people mover bureaucracy.
But it is no fun, even for a bureaucracy, to keep issuing case ids and not be able to tag them as closed at some point. For this creative stories--so creative they should have been able to solve the problem--are required. The first 'close' story contradicted the error message entirely and got tagged as a media download issue, not our department. As the answer was made up, there is in fact no department that can solve the problem. How, then, to get out of the loop?
The mission was to go back to customer service, force another "escalation" and find a way to tech support. The key was to make sure that responses could not match anything on their checklist. Every question they ask is designed to elicit a key word, so you can be filed away again. I had to get my colleague to assist with this because it was like a chess match. One wrong comment and you were back to square one--the old childhood game of Shoots and Ladders. Finally, we got a call from tech support. After six months of diligent phone calls and emails, it turned out this was a known problem that took only several minutes to fix!
Some time ago we had a server outage issue with Cable Vision in New York that affected our customers in one neighborhood of Brooklyn. This was a very specific issue but we could not get past tech support that told you to unplug your modem and count to ten. In this case, they promised you the "red board". Desperate, we contacted Cable Vision corporate and reached the head network operating center of Cable Vision corporate in Atlanta. She immediately understood what was required to solve the issue and laughed out loud when we told her our difficulty getting assistance in New York. She tried on our behalf--and she was told to unplug her modem. The head Unix system administrator for Cable Vision corporate was not laughing anymore.
These are all tricks to try and find the real people who can help you which are veiled behind customer service. On this Hallow Eve, I hope for the passing of the customer service graveyard duty that not only are customers subjected to, but countless people who have this terrible job. Sometimes it is difficult to solve a problem, but let's at least address the nut of the problem, rather than causing a bigger one in its place.
