OT: Fw: [silk] MSTS vs PFN...

[Suresh Ramasubramanian <mallet@xxxxxxx>]

Nice :)

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From: Ramakrishnan Sundaram 
Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2001 13:54:46 +0530
To: silk-list
Subject: [silk] MSTS vs PFN...
X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.0.2


Microsoft Technical Support vs. The Psychic Friends Network:
Which Provides Better Support for Microsoft Products?
by Michael Patrick Ellard and Daniel Albert Wright
 From BMUG newsletter, without permission.

In the course of a recent Microsoft Access programming project, we had 
three difficult technical problems where we decided to call a support 
hotline for advice. This article compares the two support numbers we tried:

Microsoft Technical Support and the Psychic Friends Network. As a result of 
this research, we have come to the following conclusions:

that Microsoft Technical Support and the Psychic Friends Network are about 
equal in their ability to provide technical assistance for Microsoft 
products over the phone;
that the Psychic Friends Network has a distinct edge over Microsoft in the 
areas of courtesy, response time, and cost of support; but
that Microsoft has a generally better refund policy if they fail to solve 
your problem.
In the paragraphs that follow, we will detail the support calls we made and 
the responses we received from each pport provider. We will follow this 
with a discussion of the features provided by each support provider so that 
readers can do their own rankings of the two services.

Our research began when we called Microsoft regarding a bug that we had 
detected when executing queries which pulled data from a Sybase Server into 
Microsoft Access. If we used the same Access database to query two 
databases on the same server, we found that all of the queries aimed at the 
second database that we queried were sent to the first database that we had 
queried. This problem existed no matter which database we queried first. 
Dan called Microsoft's Technical Solutions Line, gave them $55, and was 
connected with an official Microsoft Access technical support person. As 
Dan began to explain the problem, the support person interrupted him, and 
told him that since it was clear that it was not just a problem with Access 
but with the two programs together, Microsoft would not try to help us. 
They did,however, have a consultant referral service with which he would be 
glad to connect us. Dan then asked if we could have our $55 refunded, since 
Microsoft was not going to try to answer to our question. The tech support 
person responded by forwarding Dan to the person in charge of giving 
refunds. The person officially in charge of giving refunds took Dan's 
credit card info again, after which Dan asked about the referral service. 
It was too late, however - the refund folks could not reconnect Dan with 
the tech support guy he'd been talking with, nor could he put Dan in touch 
with the referral service hotline. End of Call One.

Our second call came when Dan was creating some line graphs in Microsoft 
Access. Microsoft Access actually uses a program called Microsoft Graph to 
create its graphs, and this program has a "feature" that makes the 
automatic axis scale always start the scale at zero. If all of your data 
are between 9,800 and 10,000 and you get a scale of 0 to 10,000, your data 
will appear as a flat line at the top of your graph-not a very interesting 
chart. Since Dan was writing visual basic code to create the graphs, he 
wanted to be able to use visual basic code to change the graph scaling, but 
he could not find anything in the help files that would tell him how to do 
this. After working with Microsoft Graph for a while, Dan concluded that it 
probably didn't have the capability that he needed, but he decided to call 
Microsoft just to make sure. Dan described his problem to the technical 
support person, whom we'll call Microsoft Bob. Microsoft Bob said he'd 
never gotten a call about Microsoft Graph before. He then left Dan on hold 
while he went to ask another support person how to use Microsoft Graph. 
Microsoft Bob came back with the suggestion that Dan use the online help. 
Dan, however, had already used the online help, and didn't feel that this 
was an appropriate answer for a $55 support call. Microsoft Bob didn't give 
up, though. He consulted the help files and learned to change the graph 
scale by hand and then began looking for a way to do this via code. After 
Microsoft Bob had spent about an hour on the phone with Dan learning how to 
use Microsoft Graph, Dan asked for a refund since he had no more time to 
spend on the problem. Microsoft Bob refused the refund, however. He said he 
wouldn't give up, and told Dan that he would call back the next week.

Microsoft Bob did call back the following week to admit failure. He could 
not help us. However, he couldn't give us a refund either. Microsoft Bob's 
supervisor confirmed Microsoft Bob's position. While Microsoft Technical 
Support hadn't solved our problem, they felt that a refund was 
inappropriate since Microsoft Technical Support had spent a lot of time not 
solving our problem. Dan persisted, however, explaining that if Microsoft 
Bob actually knew the program, he would have been able to give Dan a 
response much sooner. The supervisor made no guarantees, but he instructed 
Dan to check his credit card bill at the end of the month. The supervisor 
explained that if Dan saw that the charge was still there at the end of the 
month,then he would know that he hadn't gotten a refund. End of Call Two.

Our third call to Microsoft involved using the standard file save dialog 
from within Microsoft Access to get a file name and directory string from a 
user in order to save an exported file. The documentation didn't make it 
clear how to do this using Visual Basic code within Microsoft Access, and 
Dan decided to call Microsoft to ask if and how a programmer could do this. 
The technical support person he reached told him he was asking about a 
pretty heavy programming task. He cheerily informed Dan that he'd called 
the wrong number and advised Dan to call help for Visual Basic, not Access 
($195 instead of $ 55). This technical support person was extraordinarily 
helpful in getting Dan his refund. End of Call Three.

Stymied by our responses from Microsoft, we decided to try another service 
provider, the Psychic Friends Network. There are several noticeable 
differences between Microsoft and the Psychic Friends Network. Microsoft 
charges a flat rate per "solution," which is a single problem and can be 
handled in multiple phone calls. As described above, Microsoft may or may 
not issue a refund of their fee if they fail to provide a solution for your 
problem. The Psychic Friends Network charges a per minute fee. They do not 
offer a refund if they cannot solve your problem. However, unlike 
Microsoft, they will not charge you extra if they provide more than one 
solution per call.

We decided to test the Psychic Friends Network by asking them the same 
questions that we had asked Microsoft Technical Support. We called them and 
were quickly connected with Ray, who was very courteous and helpful. Like 
Microsoft Bob, Ray quickly informed us that he wasn't fully up to date on 
the programs that we were working with, but he was willing to help us 
anyway. We started off with our first problem: making a connection from 
Microsoft Access to two different Sybase Servers. Ray worked hard on this 
problem for us. He sensed that there was a problem with something 
connecting, that something wasn't being fulfilled either in a sexual, 
spiritual or emotional way. Ray also identified that there was some sort of 
physical failure going on that was causing the problem." Do you mean that 
there's some sort of bug?" we asked. Ray denied that he knew about any sort 
of bug in the software. "Are you sure there's not a bug?" we asked. Ray 
insisted that he did not know of any bug in the software, although he left 
open the possibility that there could be some bug in the software that he 
did not know about. All in all, Ray did not do much to distinguish himself 
from Microsoft Technical Support. He wasn't able to solve our problem for 
us, and he wasn't able to confirm or deny that a bug in Microsoft Access 
was causing the problem. We then asked Ray our question about using Visual 
Basic to set the axes of a chart. Ray thought hard about this one. Once 
again he had the sense that something just wasn't connecting, that there 
was some sort of physical failure that was causing our problem. "Could it 
be that it's your computer that's the problem?" he asked. "Is this 
something that happens just on your computer, or have you had the same 
problem when you've tried to do the same thing on other computers?" We 
assured Ray that we had the same problem on other computers, then asked 
again, "This physical failure that you're talking about, do you mean that 
there's some sort of bug?" Once again he assured us that there wasn't a 
bug, but that he didn't know how to solve our problem. "I sense there's 
some sort of sickness here, and you're just going to have to sweat it out. 
If you'd like, you can call back tomorrow. We have a couple of guys here, 
Steve and Paul, and they 're much better with computer stuff than I am." To 
conclude our research, we asked Ray about our problem with the standard 
file dialog box." It's the same thing as the last one," he told us. 
"There's some sort of sickness here, and you're just going to have to sweat 
it out. There is a solution,though,and you're just going to have to work at 
it until you get it."


Conclusions
In terms of technical expertise, we found that a Microsoft technician using 
Knowledge Base was about as helpful as a Psychic Friends reader using Tarot 
Cards. All in all, however, the Psychic Friends Net work proved to be a 
much friendlier organization than Microsoft Technical Support. While 
neither group was actually able to answer any of our technical questions, 
the Psychic Friends Network was much faster than Microsoft and much more 
courteous. Which organization is more affordable is open to question. If 
Microsoft does refund all three "solutions" fees, then they will be the far 
more affordable solution provider, having charged us no money for having 
given us no assistance. However, if Microsoft does not refund the fees for 
our call regarding Microsoft Graph, then they will have charged us more 
than 120% of what the Psychic Friends charged, but without providing the 
same fast and courteous service that Psychic Friends provided.
Microsoft Tech Support 1-(800) 939-5700
The Psychic Friends Network 1-(900) 407-6611

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