This is why Windows Phone 8 / Xbox Music will never work (support chat included)

[slashd0t]

I'm with the OP.. Its a total cluster F.. Hard reset your entire phone to get music pass to work?! Laughable..

Music Pass won't work for me either and they can't figure it out..

It's complete garbage..

 

[Dave Blake]

OP's experience is an example of "lousy user experience," and Microsoft needs to fix it.

"Have patience" or "chill" is a bad response, especially when the competition doesn't impose the restriction.

Trust me the competition isn't that good either. I have had issues with apple and have read similar issue with spotify. This OP need to relax and let this get worked out. I hate it when I see people who are unwilling to be helped and get angry at something like this. I am not saying that more couldn't be done or shouldn't be done but when your faced with comments like if I don't get my way I'm leaving why would anyone want to help you.

This thread remains open if the conversation remains civil.

 

[dalydose]

I have had issues with Xbox Music as well. I get errors when playing some songs. Some songs will play and some won't...from the same album. There is a disconnect between Zune content and Xbox Music, from what I can tell.

I don't think it is the same problem as OP, but it seems that Zune > XBox Music.

 

[darkoman4]

To OP credit it does sound different when you read this in a couple of minutes and when you are actually chatting for a half an hour.

 

[brmiller1976]

To be fair, if OP is paying for service, he has a right to expect instantaneous access and responsive service who make things happen for him.

 

[Alex Rodriguez Jr.]

To be fair on the rep though, it seems he wasn't paying and was on the trial period, his payment hadn't been processed, so he technically wasn't paying for any service.

 

[ImmortalWarrior]

To be fair, the OP doesn't know his ass from his elbow.

Understand that the person on the line is not a programmer. When you said "That makes no sense", what you were really saying is "I don't understand anything about technology or software and I'm a dumb *******".

Yeah, 24 hours is kinda ****ty, but it's obviously a series of tasks and data transformation services that are designed occur over the 24 hour period. Maybe you should educate yourself in software and service architecture before you give crap to a CSR who isn't responsible for what the development and management teams do.

What you should have done, was politely ask for the proper way to file a complaint. Then thank the person for trying to help you out. I don't work as a CSR because I would have told you to go **** yourself, but that's just me.

 

[Dave Blake]

To be fair, the OP doesn't know his ass from his elbow.

Understand that the person on the line is not a programmer. When you said "That makes no sense", what you were really saying is "I don't understand anything about technology or software and I'm a dumb *******".

Yeah, 24 hours is kinda ****ty, but it's obviously a series of tasks and data transformation services that are designed occur over the 24 hour period. Maybe you should educate yourself in software and service architecture before you give crap to a CSR who isn't responsible for what the development and management teams do.

What you should have done, was politely ask for the proper way to file a complaint. Then thank the person for trying to help you out. I don't work as a CSR because I would have told you to go **** yourself, but that's just me.

I don't think so man what about that is civil?

 

[Alex Rodriguez Jr.]

Wow, while all the right information, there's no need to rage like this lol

 

[hary536]

To be fair, if OP is paying for service, he has a right to expect instantaneous access and responsive service who make things happen for him.

Msft would have covered it's bases, if they have a notice on their billing website, which says "Payment processing and activation of services can take upto 24 hrs". That simple statement
would have not given any user a chance to complain. I don't understand,whey they fail to post these kinds of notices.
Similar issue was recently reported(by me) for outlook mail renaming issue. That feature is currently down since many days, but Msft didn't have any logical notice about it until recently.

 

[profet]

To be fair, the OP doesn't know his ass from his elbow.

I guess my 10+ years of writing backend SOA's in Java, C# and php along with my 6+ years of experience in mobile development writing J2ME for Blackberry, Java for Andoird and .NET compact don't count.

I bought this phone to write some applications for this platform. And honestly, if the customer service is this great, I don't see the platform catching on. So why waste my time?

 

[profet]

Oh and 24+ hours later... still not working.

I will NOT hard reset my phone and lose all my third party app data and settings to simply play music. That is a ****ty user experience and poor compartmentalization on MS's part.

 

[spaulagain]

Oh and 24+ hours later... still not working.

I will NOT hard reset my phone and lose all my third party app data and settings to simply play music. That is a ****ty user experience and poor compartmentalization on MS's part.

.

I don't know what your issue is then. Never had problems like this and I have had Music Pass for over 2 years.

 

[jiayit]

I was on the Chat with a Nokia Rep online that day. He took the courtesy of telling me what I already know. He took 25 minutes to check what I already know when I provided him with the EXACT same information. Then he said that Nokia'd email me on 24-48 hours. 1 week down, no sign of anything. I agree online chats sucks, but I think both party was at fault. TS was kinda rude, and the rep was annoying when she refused to escalate it, as per the customer request.

 

[Daniel Ratcliffe]

Honestly, you have to try the solutions offered. A hard reset was an option offered. And I hate to say it, but it is a case of if the options aren't followed, then you can't be allowed to escalate it. I've followed requests properly, and when it didn't work out, then I escalated it, it got solved. Give it a try, your app purchases are already saved, and your layout can be screenshotted easily so you can get it right back to how you want it to. I'm sorry but I'm defending the CSR on this.

 

[profet]

Ok just spoke to a person three escalation up from first level support. And they resolved the issue WITHOUT a hard reset.

Here is what I've learned:
All of Microsoft used GMT dates. I originally signed up for the 30 day trial on 11/28/2012. For some reason (and the CSR wasn't sure what happened), but possibly since it was late at night, not a weekday, solar flares, gasses on venus, etc, my auto renewal date was set to 1/1/2013 (as seen in original chat). The subscription expired correctly on 12/28/2012. So there was a three day gap introduced into my account. Usually there is only a maximum of a 24 hour gap in service, I just got "lucky." He fixed the issue by cancelling my service and then having me go ahead and purchase it.

This fixed it without any of the tedious level 1 support drone requests to hard reset my phone.

But at the end of the day its microsoft's fault for not having all their systems using the same time servers.

 

[profet]

Honestly, you have to try the solutions offered. A hard reset was an option offered. And I hate to say it, but it is a case of if the options aren't followed, then you can't be allowed to escalate it. I've followed requests properly, and when it didn't work out, then I escalated it, it got solved. Give it a try, your app purchases are already saved, and your layout can be screenshotted easily so you can get it right back to how you want it to. I'm sorry but I'm defending the CSR on this.

Hard resetting a phone is a serious request for a business user utilizing third party apps and services (including company apps). Having to go ahead and reconfigure these apps manually and then manually all of my data again is not a 5 minute job. Until microsoft releases something like Android's Titanium Backup for windows phone 8. Thats simply not an option to fix a silly music streaming issue.

You can try to defend it all you want, but hard resetting a phone is not a simple fix for anyone but 12 year olds using their phone for facebook and SMS.

 

[Daniel Ratcliffe]

Hard resetting a phone is a serious request for a business user utilizing third party apps and services (including company apps). Having to go ahead and reconfigure these apps manually and then manually all of my data again is not a 5 minute job. Until microsoft releases something like Android's Titanium Backup for windows phone 8. Thats simply not an option to fix a silly music streaming issue.

You can try to defend it all you want, but hard resetting a phone is not a simple fix for anyone but 12 year olds using their phone for facebook and SMS.

While I'm glad it was resolved, this is the way it all works, at least in my experience (I've never had to an escalate an issue myself thankfully, except one particular issue of a problematic seller on eBay who sold me a duff phone as new and then proceeded to take back the phone and then refuse to refund me! Escalated it, explaining he had both my phone and the money and wanted a refund. PayPal quickly issued me a full refund minus the costs incurred to ship it back to him. So I got more out of it as I was willing to negate shipping costs at both ends in the refund had he agreed to it). I am indeed 21, and use a WP7 (hey, at least you can back up apps on WP8!) - so I know the pain that's involved in having to re-configure a phone. You could just restore the apps onto it, I had to find each and every app and manually reinstall it from marketplace. Any progress with games... lost. etc. So it's not exactly a 5 minute job to restore mine (heck, to recover my progress on games, you're talking like 3 months time to restore my phone.), but a hard reset is still a certain thing. Yeah, games aren't important I know. But if I was told to hard reset and that meant a 50 year recovery time to get all the company apps up and running again, so be it.

 

[mech1164]

Granted the OP may have been able to handle it a better way. Saying that though when you have a script drone at lv 1 what can we expect. Where it broke down was when it got personal. Instead of being accommodating and escalating, the CSR got obstinate to. Kinda sucks that the OP did the purchase in a funky time frame. That's where the rub comes.

An experience like this for the public is very bad for Microsoft period. It will just cause people to drop WP8 and never look back. I had a similar issue with my Cable company and my pc cable card dvr. First I had to explain what I had to lv 1 tech who was clueless. It wasn't till I jumped through all the hoops that they bumped me up to the next level. Thankfully this person took a moment and listened. Just like the OP within a few minutes all was well.

In a business where you don't have an option you have to do the circle jerk. With smartphones that's not an Issue. If Microsoft doesn't GET this then this is just the beginning.

 

[Bryan_J]

I read the OP's transcript as he was frustrated - could he have tried to be a bit more polite, I suppose. The CSR knows what he/she is getting into (or should) when they take that kind of job and while that doesn't excuse anyone to be a jerk, in the grand scheme of things, this chat isn't that awful as complaint/support calls go - plus, it was typed, it would've been much worse over the phone.

But...even if the OP could and should have been nicer, why are so many of us excusing Microsoft for implementing what is a far from perfect system? I love Microsoft stuff and have more of it than I probably should but, IMO, they've stumbled badly with Xbox Music and those of us who pay should not let them off the hook (or any developer who releases things that clearly aren't ready for prime time. Its a bad habit that we, the buying public, have let too many companies get away with for too long.