Text 2163, 220 rader
Skriven 2005-06-18 07:27:50 av Greg Sears (1:153/307)
     Kommentar till en text av George Pope
Ärende: Re: Advantages or NOT
=============================
 GS> |          W A R N I N G   W A R N I N G   W A R N I N G               |

Funny

 -=[17-Jun-2005 09:20, George Pope replied IN a message to GREG SEARS]=-

 GP> Thanks for that -- it allowed me to delete your message without
   > reading it!

  G-day George Pope, there is a great example "free choice working!"
                     better than some ass-hole bitching, complaining,
                     and wineing about stuff protected with better...
                     warnings than are on the public TV, radio, or a
                     vcr in any shop! ;-)))


> OBJoke: for our Moderator and all-round friend/servant

Gadzillion Things To Think About

  Do they have reserved parking for non-handicapped people at the Special
Olympics?

  Do you think female Sumo wrestling will ever be an Olympic sport?

  If the official list of Olympic sports continues to grow wouldn't the
Olympics eventually become a year-long event all the time?

  Is the real purpose of the Olympics just to let us know about all the
new countries in the world that we have never heard about before?

  The Winter Olympics has the luge so why can't the Summer Olympics have
a huge waterslide race?

  Why do people blow horns at the Winter Olympics but not at the Summer
Olympics?

  With respect to the use of drugs at the Olympics isn't the gold medal
winner ALWAYS the highest on the podium?

  Womens' Pole Vaulting has now become an Olympic Sport but why is it
that we never see womens' pole-vaulting on TV?


> OBJoke: for mr. <+]::-) ("Cyberpope")

 Holistic New Age Technical Support?

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. 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. The Psychic Friends Network has a distinct edge over Microsoft
in the areas of courtesy, response time, and cost of support

3. 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 support 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 Network
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


... >             ooo
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... >   __m_00_m__|_|__  Cheers, I C E-man

... >                     --spying with free beer at the wall for ALL.

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