Rather Rough Rollout for Redmond

I can tell right now the Gripe Line is going to be a bit Microsoft-heavy in the coming weeks. Not only are Vista and associated new business products bound to raise hackles on DRM and other fronts, it would appear Microsoft was not really all that well prepared even to help customers buy the software.

One reader buying Office 2007 Pro Plus under his company's volume license agreement was left empty-handed after paying his money. "Since the media is not available until January, it appears that I just spent $15,000 in licenses for software we cannot use, since Microsoft themselves cannot tell me where to download the media. My reseller is also trying to figure this out right now, but can't find anyone to tell us what to do. Chat support directed me to their support number, who refused to help. They even told me that the product was still in beta, then told me that they cannot support it and told me to go to the office web site. I asked to speak to a supervisor, and was hung up on. No one at Microsoft even seems to realize that the software has been released yet. I have spoken with about six people and chatted with three people, who all redirect me to someone else."

Microsoft continued to lead the Office customer on a merry chase for hours. "One rep did not seem to be aware that the media kit was still unavailable and acted surprised that my reseller did not have the CD available. Then the rep transferred me to someone else, who took me to licensing.microsoft.com, which I was already logged into. Nothing there for me. I entered my enrollment number but still do not see my software, so now I am being transferred to support for that sight, who told the tech after 5 minutes of waiting to go to a different number for media kit support. Now after 20 minutes on this call, the rep said that this media is available, but he is going to ask his supervisor for an updated sheet for some reason. He came back and said I need to get the media from my reseller. I told him that no reseller has this and that Microsoft is supposed to have it available for download. He is going back to his supervisor. When he came back he told me that my reseller should have the web site info to get my download. My reseller doesn't."

Ultimately the reader did discover the download procedure, but only after talking to what seemed like half the people in Redmond. "It appears that since we have a corporate Select level A agreement with Microsoft, and that our CIO is in charge of our program, I needed to go to licensing.microsoft.com and request access to my agreement, which then sends an e-mail to my CIO, who happened to be out for two weeks, requesting the access. Then, after he granted my access, I could see the agreements, but still could not download anything. I called Microsoft and found someone who knows what is going on who walked me through getting the download access. What sucks is that over several days I had about five hours total time lost trying to get this software because Microsoft was clueless."

Another reader ran into a somewhat different series of problems when trying to redeem an upgrade coupon for Vista. "With any good e-commerce site it is always good design to provide back buttons so the customer can make corrections to their order, or at least provide a review page that has links back to make corrections. Microsoft's Vista upgrade page has none of these BASIC e-commerce features. So, if you make an error, like selecting the x32 Vista Upgrade when you wanted the x64 Vista Upgrade, you have to go all the way to the order confirmation screen to CANCEL the order and hopefully try again. I did exactly that when there was no 'back', 'review' or 'modify order' links to make that change. No big deal, I canceled the order, so now I can go back and use my upgrade coupon to do the order right ...WRONG. Apparently the e-commerce software flags the upgrade coupon as used even if the order is canceled. This is horrible and sloppy e-commerce design."

As with the Office buyer though, the Vista upgrader's real problems in trying to get any help from Microsoft to correct the problem "Just try and use the 'Contact Us Link' and get a response. That thing has got to be a black hole. They didn't even have the courtesy to set up an autoresponder. A half dozen e-mails over a week and a half to the upgrade redemption e-mail address received no response whatsoever. When I finally did get some answers, they contradicted each other. I find the whole experience very poor indeed. So how long has Microsoft been getting to roll out Vista? This is the best they can do for their upgrade website?"