Microsoft Sucks: How One Customer got Screwed Over

[Kara_Thrace]

Microsoft Support
This is something of a horror story and may sound unbelievable but I can assure you that every bit is true.

Back in May of 2013, I bought a new laptop that came with windows 8. I was not very excited about having to go to windows 8 and I was not a fan of the new interface. However, after using the system I became a bit of convert. Not so much to the new interface “tiles” but some of the other changes and the fact that it ran faster and used a lot less resources in which to do this.

I decided to upgrade my other laptop, a ASUS G75VW Republic of Gamers, system. Being leary of “upgrading” I did a clean install of Windows 8 pro. I bought it and downloaded it from the windows store. That process was pretty easy. I did a clean install. My Asus had been checked out to run windows 8 ASUS being very proactive about having the updated drivers and instructions on how to upgrade.
However, I noticed a 10-15fps drop in most of my games that I played. I tried to get new drivers but they didn’t help. I also had some strange screen corruption with certain videos that I tried to play, it would give the desktop a strange putrid color “tinge”

Nonetheless new NVidia drivers where released and I wanted to give windows 8 another try. I logged into my Microsoft store account accessed the purchase to download windows 8 pro upgrade. I downloaded the small program to access the iso for windows 8 pro. It downloaded it accepted my key but gave me an error of “invalid data” and would not download. After several attempts I gave Microsoft support a call. I called the Microsoft store a call first, the escalated my call to tech support.
Here-in my nightmare starts; I had backed up all my data on the windows 7 system as I planned to do a clean install of windows 8. Support insisted on connecting to my computer using their “logmeinrescue” system. I didn’t think this would help but they insisted. The spent several hours doing low-level checks with no avail. Eventually they rebooted my system but some quirk of the logmein service locked out my keyboard/mouse and I couldn’t access my computer, they rebooted it several more times to no avail.

Our phone call was disconnected. I tried to call back but I didn’t have the “case number” as it had been saved locally on the windows 7 system that would no longer boot up. A new case was opened.
During this time I used my 2nd laptop, the windows 8 system. I decided to try and access the download on that system. This is when I noticed the exact same error message. I told the 2nd support about this. After my windows 7 system the ASUS was not working, they insisted on seeing the error message on the windows 8 system. A Toshiba P845t-S4305 windows 8 touch screen laptop. I told them I didn’t want them to crash this system. They said that unless I allowed them access to my computer they couldn’t help me. Despite serious misgivings about this I allowed them access to my system. The spent some more hours on my toshbia and eventually forced a “checkdsk” to run. When it rebooted it would no longer boot to windows. Some low-level utility that HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH the download problem they had run crashed the system. I lost all my data on that laptop due to the total incompetence of Microsoft support.

While this was going on I was reinstalling windows 7 on my asus laptop. After I got that system to a bootable state with windows 7 and the network drivers, they insisted again on connecting to it. I told them they had crashed my Toshiba but would not even acknowledge they had Fraked it up. They just wanted to access my windows 7 system. We were now getting a new error that said the downloader couldn’t connect to the internet. Which was wrong as support was connected to my system via the internet. They then said it must be my provider. This entire time I insisted repeatedly that the problem had to be Microsoft servers and not my system. They said this was not the case.
At the end of this all, I had no working laptops and an entire day spent dealing with incompetent support persons. Additionally, they case number tracking system couldn’t find any of my previous call-ins to support regarding this issue. They said they had to elevate the problem, after leaving me with no working systems.

Later that night on June 18, I called Toshiba support about my Toshiba laptop that would no longer boot up. I had to do a complete factory reset and lost all of my data. I give Toshiba a 9 out of 10 as they were able to help me at least get a working system again. Compared to Microsoft crashing my system that was working just fine.
On June 20, 2013 at about 9am the 2nd level support called me to say they were ordering me a dvd of windows 8 pro at no charge. Laughable at this point. They confirmed my suspicion. THE ENTIRE TIME it was not my computers but a problem with Microsoft servers. Yes that is right it wasn’t my computers at all it was Microsoft’s servers.
What do I want, I want just compensation for my time and loss of productivity do to the crashing of my computers by Microsoft support. I am a small startup and don’t have the money to sue Microsoft as much as I would like to. So I take my battle to the social media.