I do wonder what the Psychic friends would tell you if you're flying a
helicopter in downtown Redmond...
-- Ernie P.
[From Nev Dull*. No apocrypha check performed]
----------
>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: 1)
>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; 2) that the Psychic Friends Network
>has a distinct edge over Microsoft in the areas of courtesy, response
>time, and cost of support; but 3) 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 (800) 939-5700
>The Psychic Friends Network (900)-407-6611
>