MS "Premium" support is worthless.

Rest assured, I didn’t buy it directly, but I get to use it for the first 90 days of owning MS Word (buying it was probably a mistake too, but for another thread). I call with a Word problem. The woman can’t fix it. She says my computer is running so slow that her diagnostic tools won’t work, so she wants to send me to the Windows “team” to speed up my computer, allowing them to fix my Word problem. Getting to this point takes a good 40 minutes. After getting reassurance there wouldn’t be a charge for the Windows fix (which is older than 90 days), she sends me along.

The new woman seems considerably dumber. I describe the problem, and she’s asking me to perform some routine web browsing to see if my computer is noticeably slow. Well, it never was noticeably slow, I was sent to her by some other MS asshole. But I tell one suspicion I had – just yesterday, I had switched on MS Speech Recognition to try it out. It did a pretty bad job taking dictation, and I decided not to use it. But once I turned it on, there seemed no way to turn it off, and every time I booted, there was the program open on my desktop. So I asked her specifically to shut it down so it wouldn’t restart every time the computer did. (FYI, it was not on the list of programs on the “Startup” tab of MSconfig.

Anyway, she’s dicking around for a LONG time, even asking me to move my computer closer to my wireless router, because the signal strength was too weak. My computer said signal strength was “Excellent”, but she must just have been fishing for time and ideas.

We’re up to nearly an hour (not including the Word woman) and she’s trying things in MSconfig Startup. Suddenly I see ALL the file boxes uncheck, and the window disappears, and the computer restarts. Sure enough, once I get to the desktop, the Speech Recognition window is gone, but I tell her I’m concerned that some of those programs on the Startup list might be necessary. She “explains” that she only closed the one program causing the problem, and everything else was as it is. She pretends to show this to me (she is remoting to my desktop and controlling my computer), but I can’t see anything, and she apologizes for opening it in a way that I can’t see, but everything is fine.

Then she puts me on hold to “make some notes”, and I decide to open MSconfig for myself, and sure enough, EVERY startup program except my anti-virus is disabled. Obviously, she had no idea what actually needed to be disabled, and then she lied to my face (well, into my ear) about what she did. And that’s what I told her. And she “explained” I misunderstood her, and reassured me than none of those other programs had to run at startup. Maybe it’s even true, since here I am on the web after a restart, but she outright lied to me.

Oh, and then she said my Windows problem is resolved, but she had spoken with the Word “team”, who were going to have to escalate my issue, without even making another attempt to fix it after the Windows “fix”, so someone will call me tomorrow.

And after a couple of tries at getting me to agree that this was “all right with me”, which it wasn’t, she wished me a good day, told me someone would call tomorrow about Word, and hung up on me.

To keep speech recognition from starting with the computer (in Win7) go to Control Panel - Speech Recognition - Advanced Speech Options (in the very left-hand panel) and it’s the first item under user settings. I’m surprised the MS rep didn’t know this- it took me all of five seconds to find.

What’s the nature of your Word problem? You’ll get better support here any day, even in the Pit.

You will probably get another phone call or email from MS asking about your support experience. Don’t hold back.

Well, I hadn’t looked for it much – I just threw it out to the support person because I suspected it might be eating up a lot of available memory. Not only did she not know the “off” switch, it was pretty clear she’d never even heard of of the feature before.

In Word, once I create and save a file, I can’t open it again. When I try, it crashes the whole program.

When we’ve had this happen at our company, its usually been because the person has exceeded 250 characters in the filename.

We’ve had lots of compatibility issues with 64-bit Office. None with 32-bit, so we actually re-shipped this year’s image.

Might also be a corrupt template.

We’ve had lots of compatibility issues with 64-bit Office. None with 32-bit, so we actually re-shipped this year’s image.

Might also be a corrupt template.

It’s not relevant to your problem, but some programs which seem to be omnipresent but aren’t in startup actually use the Task Schedule Library, like Apple’s Software Update (I don’t have an iPod and don’t use iTunes, so found out a way to disable it).

I do have a 64-bit laptop.

BTW, someone from a higher level support team was supposed to call me today to fix my Word problem. No one called.

Not a chance this was the problem with my files.

I’ve never used premium support - is it one of those things where they monitor your computer remotely? I would uninstall that shit with extreme prejudice.

Can you try opening the file on different computer? What happens then?

Yes, they had me download and run some software that allowed them to take control of my computer remotely.

I can open the file on the same computer using Open Office. I don’t have a separate computer with Word on it.

I called them again today to try resolving my Word problem. I spoke to another “entry level” support person. The woman on Thursday told me my call would have to be escalated because she was unable to resolve it. The guy today said there was no indicator on the case that it had been escalated, and he thought he could help.

He fixed the problem in about 10 seconds. He disabled a Bluetooth add-in (I don’t have Bluetooth, and I have no idea how it got added in, unless it was during the original download and installation). That was it. I spent like two hours on the phone Thursday with worse than no results, and I spent ten minutes on the phone with this guy today, and about half of that was me thanking him and saying what a pleasure it was to be talking to someone who knew what he was doing.

Oh, yeah, after Thursday’s Windows “help”, I had to go back and re-enable many of the things that she disabled, because my computer wasn’t working properly. For instance, I had no sound. (I normally have all my system sounds turned off, so it took me a while to realize that.)

So…better than worthless? :slight_smile:

If you average it out – no. More than two hours to fix a problem that should have been fixed in 30 seconds. The Windows "help"person did actual harm to my computer and deliberately lied to me about what she did. Fortunately, I saw what she did, and was able to go back in and fix it later. And she, or one of the first “Word support team” then lied to me about escalating my case because people at her level could not fix it. And also lied to me about someone with greater expertise calling me the following day.

Oh, and I forgot one other lie – today. I talked first to a woman who routed my call to the guy who actually did the fix. I told the woman that I had been promised a call back the previous day, but no one had called. She said someone had called, but was unable to reach me or leave a message. Well, I have caller ID, and I have voice mail, and not only was there no voice mail, there was no call from any number I didn’t recognize. Maybe it wasn’t her lie – maybe someone else lied by putting that note into the case file. But the actually helpful guy told me there was no note in the file that my call had been escalated, and no there would have been no reason for some higher level person to call me yesterday, or even to add a note saying they tried to call. So my best guess is that today’s lie was straight from the woman I was talking to.

Don’t worry: I have it on [del]good[/del] authority -or an authority anyway- that you don’t need those things.
Seriously, Boyo, this was a helpful thread. We now know that both the Office and the OS tech support by MS is a value-subtracting proposition.

This probably happened. If you ever call any call center (not just tech support) and get an idiot on the other end of the phone, just hang up and call back. Eventually you will reach a gem like the guy who actually helped you.

“Hi. Are you the same idiot I just spoke to, or a new one?”

There was one other rather bewildering part if the story I forgot… Before I called the premium support phone number yesterday, I was online looking through their support “knowledge base”, and saw that there was an online Premium Support “live chat” option. So I thought I would try that after having such a bad experience on the phone.

I hooked up with the help person much faster than I had on the phone, and gave her my case number. She looked it up and said that since I had originated the case over the phone, I would have to continue to deal with the case over the phone. She could continue to help me, she said, but she would have to start a meter running and charge me money for the help. This, even though I already had a case number that she clearly had access too, and that my software was less than 90 days old and was still under warranty. So I had to disconnect and get on the phone, which worked very well since that’s how I got the guy who actually helped me.

It was just very strange. I don’t understand why their online “premium support” would have to charge me but the telephone “premium support” wouldn’t.

Because Microsoft is the great devil. The middle east has it all wrong. It’s not America, but an American abomination.

Sad but true. You don’t know whether you’re talking to a 5 year veteran or someone who just finished their training last week.