Newsletter Archives

  • Microsoft… I’m not in the mood for this

    Buried in the latest insider edition is this little nugget….

    Changes and Improvements

    [General]

    • We are continuing the exploration of badging on the Start menu with several new treatments for users logging in with local user accounts to highlight the benefits of signing in with a Microsoft account (MSA). If you see one of these treatments, give us feedback on what you think. As a reminder, it is normal for us to try out different concepts in the Dev Channel to get feedback.
    Different treatments of badging on the Start menu highlighting the benefits of signing in with a Microsoft account for users logged in with a local user account.
    Different treatments of badging on the Start menu highlighting the benefits of signing in with a Microsoft account for users logged in with a local user account.

    So being that this is nearly the end of the unofficial tax season for me … long story short those of us in California really get until October 16 due to our flooding earlier this year, but we’re still doing tax extensions to be proactive and ensure the IRS handles these right… but I digress, and this is patching week, and well… I’m tired!  My patience is at absolute ZERO.  So needless to say this is not going over well with me tonight.

    Here’s what I tweeted to @brandonLeBlanc on twitter tonight

    Sometimes we WANT the choice we have gone OUT OF OUR WAY to select.  If we wanted a Microsoft account, we would get that Microsoft account.

    I guess I should look at the bright side, there are enough folks using the workaround that they are taking the time (and developer effort) to code this up.

    More about this as we know more about this. As always we’ll keep you up to date in the newsletter.

  • Patch Lady – when support goes too far

    First off I know many of you will go …uh huh what do you expect of a company that maps your house.. but I love my irobots… until they don’t work.  I purchased an iRobot i7 with a clean base that … for a while would vacuum the house and go back to the base and empty itself.  And Susan was happy.  Until it didn’t empty itself.  It would go back to the base and charge but would not sense that the clean base was there.  So I went on the web and did all the support documents said to do to get it to work again.  And still it wouldn’t see the clean base.

    So finally when busy season was over and I had a chance to call them, I did.  And during the call explained all the steps I had previously gone through to get it working.  (rebooted the machine, rebooted the clean base, moved the iRobot to 8 feet away from the clean base and pressed the button to go home, cleaned all sensors, cleaned all clean base sensors, etc, etc, even removed the battery to reset the unit, trust me folks I’m a geek, I read your support docs and nothing is working).  So then the support personnel wanted to do a video chat with me.  I’m on a phone I’m thinking…. I’ve explained what I did… why do I need to do a video call?  So he texts me a link to their support video platform.  Which I can tell from clicking on it that their video chat tool is having technical issues and is not making a connection.  He has me try a second time and it doesn’t work.  So then he informs me that I need to record a video and upload it to icloud in order to share it with him to demonstrate what is not working and what steps I’ve done to get it to work.

    Excuse me?  Gentlemen at what point in time do you take the word of your customer and do the right thing?

    I asked to speak to a supervisor to express my opinion that asking me to do a video call was beyond acceptable as a practice to ask of your customers especially after your support tool clearly was not functional.  They agreed and promised to send out a replacement robot, clean base and evacuation bin.  So today the package arrives from iRobot telling me to reset my robot, take out the battery and put it in the replacement one and then send back the defective three parts.  So I remove the five screws, take the battery out, and open up the replacement box getting ready to place the battery in the replacement robot.  And that’s where the fun started.

    You see, only the clean base arrived, not a robot. Seriously of the three promised replacement parts, only one was shipped, the base vacuum robot in particular was not shipped.   So off I call again to ask then to follow up.  And they indicate they will have to look into it with UPS as it must be a shipping problem.  They assure me that three items were shipped.  I assure them that no, just one arrived.

    I am sure that if I looked into the customer support notes of my case they would probably call me slightly beligerent.  Right now I feel frustrated and feel that customer support shouldn’t believe the UPS shipping that says that “oh yes three items were delivered” and instead believe the word of a customer who loves your devices and is losing faith with them as a result of your customer support.

    Why do technology items have to constantly have such frustrating customer support experiences?  Why is this “acceptable” in this industry?

    Thank you, Woody for letting me vent on your platform.  At least it made me feel a bit better to get out my customer support frustrations.