There are Microsoft employees who haven't even heard of windows phone

[Plazma1]

I know this may come off as a bit of a rant - but it kind of is one. I've been a loyal WP user - we have 4 in my family and 3 surfaces.

My Xbox Music / Zune pass randomly reset the other day so I called the Xbox support team. I was greeted by a rep who never heard of the Nokia 1020, didn't know that the music app on the phone came bundled into the OS. She had absolutely no clue what windows phone was. Seriously!? Her words exactly were - "well I never heard of that phone". The rep was a sweet girl, likely from the southern US, she tried to help me but gave me Android or iOS troubleshooting tips. I'm at a loss for words here.

Did Microsoft give up on Windows Phone internally and not tell the rest of us?!! She couldn't help me at all - in fact no one at MS could help me. I called a few departments after that Xbox music team failed me and no one had an answer aside from contact your mobile provider. In my case I paid $700 to MS for an unlocked phone - they are my provider!

The part that amazes me is this phone isn't really that old. In November my phone was just under a year old (it launched later in Canada than the US). The camera was having focus issues and so MS swapped me out a new phone. I now have a new replacement phone that is about 2 months old where my music pass fails to work. The 8.1 update has made my phone the slowest machine I've ever worked on. Resuming screens everywhere, apps freezing me back to the start screen. Xbox music working sporadically. The phone is a marvelous and beautiful yellow piece of frustration.

Now when I wait 10 seconds for the podcast app to resume and then kick me back to the start screen I've lost my patience. I start to wonder if MS is playing us for fools.

 

[SamJHannan]

Could be that she's a low-paid call centre gal (outsourced perhaps?) so not a true reflection of Microsoft, I get your point though, it's pretty bad.

 

[Plazma1]

Could be that she's a low-paid call centre gal (outsourced perhaps?) so not a true reflection of Microsoft, I get your point though, it's pretty bad.

Maybe low paid - but trained up as Xbox support. Everyone I talked to on the daisy chain of calls was for sure from the States. But when the MS support team can't support their own products on their own hardware - there is a problem. I advise anyone to call in to support and see how they treat their own products. This did not feel like the exception to the rule. And my issue is still unresolved.

 

[SamJHannan]

Maybe low paid - but trained up as Xbox support. Everyone I talked to on the daisy chain of calls was for sure from the States. But when the MS support team can't support their own products on their own hardware - there is a problem. I advise anyone to call in to support and see how they treat their own products. This did not feel like the exception to the rule. And my issue is still unresolved.

I've never had to use the support in the UK but I will definitely give it a try. Are there Microsoft stores in Canada?

 

[Ebuka Allison]

Maybe low paid - but trained up as Xbox support. Everyone I talked to on the daisy chain of calls was for sure from the States. But when the MS support team can't support their own products on their own hardware - there is a problem. I advise anyone to call in to support and see how they treat their own products. This did not feel like the exception to the rule. And my issue is still unresolved.

I've spoken to MS support several times. They seem to be nice people and know what they're doing

 

[Plazma1]

I've never had to use the support in the UK but I will definitely give it a try. Are there Microsoft stores in Canada?

Yes - and I'm headed there tomorrow because I know there is one employee who works weekends who actually knows what he's talking about.

I've spoken to MS support several times. They seem to be nice people and know what they're doing

They are nice people. But the point is I was routed to the Xbox team because the old Zune pass now falls under their purview. The support staff was crazy friendly - but completely unaware of WP. I wish I had recorded the audio of the call, because she almost didn't believe me that Xbox music came as part of the OS. I was and am still at a loss for words - and again this just fuels my frustration and I'm that crazy WP / Windows evangelist who up until recently recommended MS products to friends and family.

I run the on-air production department at a TV station and ensured we brought alot of their tech into our business and on-air hits. I think this call pushed me over the edge to start looking around at other solutions. It is just absurd.

 

[Darkgift]

Log in to Xbox.com with ur Microsoft account, got to your account and go to manage devices. You may have to remove an older device for ur pass to register this new replacement. Just remove the one that this one replaced. Your only allowed a certain number of devices to access ur pass.

 

[Plazma1]

Log in to Xbox.com with ur Microsoft account, got to your account and go to manage devices. You may have to remove an older device for ur pass to register this new replacement. Just remove the one that this one replaced. Your only allowed a certain number of devices to access ur pass.

Thanks bud for the insight. I did this back when I got the replacement - all worked well at the time. The pass just randomly cut out on me on my phone halfway through the current month. I have a 12 month subscription and it works on my other two devices. I did re-add the phone myself - but it seems to be some issues on the phone itself. My last resort is a factory reset - which I'm trying to avoid.

 

[tgp]

I'm not surprised. The company I work for is a Microsoft partner, and my boss himself is a Microsoft MVP. He is occasionally invited to conferences in Redmond. He said that among the MVPs there, the WP rate looks to be about the same as the real world; it's almost all iPhones and Androids.

There's a story about Steve Ballmer going bezerk when he got ahold of an employee's iPhone.

 

[JamesPTao]

My wife has a 1020 running wp8.1 with none of these issues. Perhaps you had a bad install. Have you tried a hard reset? I know her phone freaks out when she fills the memory (the phone warns her but she will literally fill all but like 100mb of the drive at times with pics). The resuming screen can be caused by too many active tiles I the live folders (although it takes quite a bit to do so on my 920). Are using the live lock screen app from ms? If so I highly recommend uninstalling it, the app caused several issues so.ulae to yours on my 920. If this is the case after uninstalling the app you have to go into settings and turn kids corner back on to completely did the device of all code from the app. Hope this helps.

 

[Darkgift]

Thanks bud for the insight. I did this back when I got the replacement - all worked well at the time. The pass just randomly cut out on me on my phone halfway through the current month. I have a 12 month subscription and it works on my other two devices. I did re-add the phone myself - but it seems to be some issues on the phone itself. My last resort is a factory reset - which I'm trying to avoid.

Ahhh...then unfortunately it looks like that may be your best bet.

 

[Jas00555]

IIRC, these people aren't "Microsoft employees", but they're outsourced and simply paid by MS. Frankly, if she's new, I wouldn't be surprised much. Don't think too much of it.

 

[T Moore]

Out of the 120k or so employees someone missed the class on WP?

 

[doubleodon]

Call centers are infamous for NOT having sophisticated support staff. Call centers actually AVOID hiring people with any real technical skills. They explicitly target people who will single mindedly stick to the pre-built support scripts.
Call centers are also infamous for leveraging small towns with high unemployment to give them extensive tax breaks for setting up their call center in the town. Then, as soon as the tax breaks expire, the call center will close up shop and move to the next desperate town.
Unfortunately, like most other US companies, Microsoft is almost certainly leveraging this type of outsourced support center.

 

[JamesPTao]

You probably got someone on their first day. Since 1020 sales are discontinued (at least production side) they probably searched in the wrong section for current phones and couldn't find it.

 

[RumoredNow]

I'm more concerned about your phone's slow down, rather than a call center gal not knowing what one of 18,000 phones is and maybe being a bit befuddled (all par for the course really and no shocker).

Have you at any time since the update done a Hard Reset?

Make a backup, Hard Reset or use LSRT. It may just improve things dramatically for your 1020's performance.

 

[Sonu K]

I'm not surprised. One MS employee argued with me(in twitter) that snapchat did right by pulling out all the third party apps. I was shocked!!! When I mentioned that he is a Microsoft employee who is against windows phone ( I even tagged msft's twitter account. LOL ) Then he chickened out. He tweeted he never said anything against windows phone and stopped replying.

 

[mathsisbest]

I'm not surprised. One MS employee argued with me(in twitter) that snapchat did right by pulling out all the third party apps. I was shocked!!! When I mentioned that he is a Microsoft employee who is against windows phone ( I even tagged msft's twitter account. LOL ) Then he chickened out. He tweeted he never said anything against windows phone and stopped replying.

SnapChat pulling out third parties is good for security. What they did wrong was not building an app for WP themselves.

 

[Sonu K]

Well may be. I don't use snapchat. So I can't really say. But if instagram pull out 6tag, it will really **** me off.

 

[ShinraCorp]

I've never had to use the support in the UK but I will definitely give it a try. Are there Microsoft stores in Canada?

Depends where in Canada. There's 3 in Toronto, 1 in Calgary, 2 in Vancouver, 2 in Edmonton and I believe that's it for now. As for the rest of the major Canadian cities, I have no clue when they'll have one.