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Greetings --

Help us help you:



Otherwise, you might as well try here:

Psychic Friends Network
(800) 592-7827


Bruce Chambers
--
Help us help you:



You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on
having both at once. -- RAH
 
-----Original Message-----
Greetings --

Help us help you:



Otherwise, you might as well try here:

Psychic Friends Network
(800) 592-7827


Bruce Chambers
--
Help us help you:



You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on
having both at once. -- RAH
Click to expand...

Imagine that, there may acvtually be some substance to the
suggestion for the Psychic Friends Network!

Microsoft Technical Support vs. The Psychic Friends

Which Provides Better Support for Microsoft Products?

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:

that Microsoft Technical Support and the Psychic Friends
Network are about equal in their ability to provide
technical assistance for Microsoft products over the
phone;

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

that 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 Net work 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 1-(800) 939-5700
The Psychic Friends Network 1-(900) 407-6611
 
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