here’s a letter I recently sent to the customer support feedback at my hosting supplier. Examples like this are what make my experience with Microsoft so much more frustrating – I know that good, prompt, competent service is possible. In this case, I wanted to make sure it was noted.

***

“I just wanted to thank you for the excellent, clear help you’ve given me regarding my account. I was honestly expecting to run into a bureaucratic and technical mess — instead, my issues are solved, and with the instructions below, I was able to update my information quickly and easily.

The courteous, timely correspondence was much appreciated, and I hope you continue with the great job you (and your team) are doing.

Many thanks,

PS – Please pass my email on to your manager if you can – I find that too often, good work goes unappreciated. I would love for the rest of the company to know why it continues to have me as a customer, and one who will recommend pairNIC to others.”

I thought I’d inquire about the apology game download that Microsoft was offering to the people that they inconvenienced during the holidays with the Live Network outages… The download that you had to grab in the span of five days (given, of course, that you’d even heard of it), and the download that required the use of an Xbox.

Which was currently in for repairs, correcting a known manufacturing flaw.

I just got off the phone with Xbox live tech support, and after waiting for people to read to me from their horribly obvious and pedantic ’support’ scripts, they told me I was essentially shit out of luck. I was told that was the only time MS was going to offer the free download, and they apologized. The apology sounded completely insincere, but it was well-enunciated, and was most of a proper sentence.

If I had been standing in the call centre, however, I think I probably would have heard that well-enunciated apology echoed at many stations.

The wonderful part of the call was when they said they’d note my inconvenience, and gave me a reference number to remember them by.

And, at last, I was invited to “feel free to call back if ever [I] was ever experiencing the same inconvenience,” (presumably so that I could be politely told to pound sand again).

Ah, the personal touch.

I get to the onramp of a great big highway, but I have to pay a toll… It’s reasonable, and I need a reliable way to go hang out with some friends I rarely see, so I pay it… but halfway down the line, they tell me I can’t drive on it anymore – not just traffic, understand – it’s actually broken, and you’re driving on boulders. Sorry, you’ll just have to visit your friends some other time.

Refund the toll? Of course not, they didn’t expect people would be using it. But here’s an ugly bumper sticker that you can put on the back of your car. You’d have to pay for it, usually, but they’re giving it to you for free because they like you.

Oh, except that you’ve got to pick it up before Sunday on the other side of town… just use this convenient highway they’ve got set up here *wink*.

Unfortunately, they also make all the cars, and mine’s in the shop, because they didn’t make it to last more than a few months.

That’s all fine, though… I don’t want Microsoft’s free bumper sticker – a little fucking respect as a paying customer would be nice, however.

You only have FIVE days to download their hand-picked game, too… chances are that most casual gamers that don’t follow Major Nelson et al will miss it altogether.

I know that I’m still waiting for MS to send me my shipping coffin, so I can send them their crappy box back… wonder if I’ll have to buy all my games again? Gotta love the infection of DRM.

and you know what? we all keep taking it… defending it, even, as if it’s insane to even contemplate a different way of doing things.

Reminds me of this: http://www.safetycenter.navy.mil/Articles/a-m/monkeys.htm