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Microsoft became incompetent in IT

mikekaganski.wordpress.com

61–70 of 160 posts

Re: Microsoft became incompetent in IT

#61
post #40

> But this, once an IT tech leader, became utterly incompetent in IT. And for me, it’s a pity. The rose tint is strong in these glasses. When was their support great? Or is the author simply confused about what tech they were a lead in?

I bet support is probably pretty difficult to do well especially when you have lots of different products and a large international customer base. So I am quite willing to accept the idea that MS support was at one time the best one could get, for those particular very rare combination of problems, while also being apt to frustrate people using that support.

All that said - do you have a better example of support for a company with similar to MS needs?

Re: Microsoft became incompetent in IT

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure that a text describing one's thoughts when facing something has the same requirements as a mail to a mailing list? And do you always think using quotations in your mind? Like "Oh I come across this interesting place; it's rather popular [quotation1] [qotation2]; my friend suggested me to visit it [a link to the friend's spoken advise]; etc."?

It's not presented as a thought. This is an article criticizing Microsoft, and criticizes their antispam measures saying they are bad due to an anecdotal false positive without considering that the overall effectiveness may be better than older approaches.

No you obviously didn't read it. It writes exactly "OK, they have a stupid AI that is worse than good old filters. OK, they made it react immediately, as an undoubted authority. But that’s not a big problem, right? They provide a way to appeal! Let me do that."

If you say that it's not a depiction of what someone thinks and does facing something, you just need to improve reading skills.

And basically that wasn't something important in the article; I made it rather clear. Their following catch22 was the most likable thing IMO; that was what I explicitly emphasized.

I wonder why do I write all that, though. If someone just wants to find something irrelevant, and build their criticism on that, there's no way to prevent it.

Re: Microsoft became incompetent in IT

#67

I've encountered something similar with Apple. I tried to create an Apple id on a reconditioned Mac. It said the machine had been used too many times to create an Appleid. In the process it seemed to flag my phone number so I was unable to create an account on another device. The two support chats just told me to try again with no change. The first chat took about 40 minutes, there was a 5 minute pause on every respo…

This is a bit different. You didn't even have an account yet. You had no data to lose.

Getting locked out of your own data is a far more serious issue.

Re: Microsoft became incompetent in IT

#68
post #52

This kind of issue is absurdly common. I’ve seen basically the same thing with Microsoft, Amazon and Google—personally and with others. With Google, it’s well-documented that sometimes, even if you don’t have 2FA turned on and you know your password, they simply won’t let you log in without some sort of additional verification… which may not be possible. This hit me once while overseas, I think I managed to get in by…

Exactly! The OP’s surprisal is surprising, given that 95% of all support interactions across the board are exactly like this. In fact, the internal support - i.e. the support for employees is just as bad and nonsensical. It goes pretty much like this. If your problem needs “reasoning” that entails more than matching a direct solution, you’re getting the default answer that’s the closest match to the solution. The onl…

> The OP’s surprisal is surprising, given that 95% of all support interactions across the board are exactly like this

If your point is "it is today's norm, let's accept it and shut up", I feel the opposite. If the "norm" is like that, expressing it aloud is my way of contributing to society.

Re: Microsoft became incompetent in IT

#69

I had the same thing with both Google and Apple. I have a Gmail account lost because they unilaterally activated 2FA on it with a fake phone number (something like 111111111). And for Apple, moving abroad made the appleid system crash in an loop and nobody in the support system has any idea how appleid works. Do not use any of the tech giants for any important data.

Were either of these paid accounts?

Re: Microsoft became incompetent in IT

#70
Microsoft sign-in issues are so widespread it's amazing people tolerate it.

I have never worked in any place where someone being unable to login to their MS account wasn't a weekly occurrence.

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