Article in brief.
Disappointed with your MS product before you even got it?
Better get used to that..
Microsoft is dishing out vouchers to disgruntled Surface customers burned by delays and confusion over shipments of their pre-ordered fondletops. The company has been handing over vouchers worth £50 to those whose Windows-RT tablets have not arrived despite pre-ordering before Thursday’s launch. Surfaces went on sale on 25 …
Real geeks do use MS products and do roll them out in the thousands and do check to see if they handle msi packages and AppV, citrix clients, and other desktop management software.
Real geeks do develop for a 90% of the market. And windows 8 sold more in 1 day than the new OSX in , what, a month?
Only faketards who make statements "Real geeks don't go near Microsoft products," say things like that while living off mummy and daddy at college or still live at home with them.
Oh and as for the Surface- Wasnt it supposed to be a failure- but they cant keep them in stock?
It would take something like a Hurricane to keep people from geting those orders.. oh WAIT - Did the reporter miss that small little storm on the East coast of the USA?
"Real geeks don't go near Microsoft products,"
Geek is a bizarre cultural export from the American school system where people can't think outside of stereotypes of athletic types and weedy but smart comic book readers. Whether "real geeks" use MS products or not, has little bearing on what professional programmers and IT experts use.
"Real geeks don't go near Microsoft products"
Real geeks solve problems using the tools required to get the job done. If that includes MS gear, then a geek uses it. Geeks with self-inflated egos and self-important opinion make posts like " Real geeks don't go near Microsoft products"
There was no word on what had caused the delays and confusion. Orders are shipped using UPS.
Ah UPS, the company that tried to charge me £30 customs fee on a £20 item that, after calling the customs guys was actually exempt from customs charges.
Needless to say I informed them I wouldn't be paying, and I had a written response from customs stating the item was exempt from charges (I didn't, but a little BS goes a long way), and if they wanted their money I'd happily see them in court. I heard no further response.
UPS
Unwarrented Postal Surcharges.
Thay are actually ok until something goes wrong. They have the worst customer service department in the world.
Shipped with them for four years with no problems. We spent just under $50K per year with them. They the problems started.
First we shipped a hard to sell item to Canada and then held the shipment at the local depot requesting a Power of Attorney document. Told the rep that it is not required from us but from the buyer for custom clearance but she insisted it is from us and emailed us the document to us for us to complete and fax back. Complete the document and tried faxing it but the fax machine would not pickup. We we got back in touch with the local department the following day they said they always had problems with their FAX machine so we should fax it to another nearby office... we kept them on the phone and they acknowledge receipt of the fax.
The next day the shipped the package back with our TAX ID written on the label because it was missing the same document which was not required in the first place....
At this point we contacted their main CS department who informed us that no such document was required of us and that delivery was proceeding. Except we had the package in our position. Had to issue a large refund to the buyer and then ship it Express via FedEx.
UPS did not refund our shipping charge.
A month later they ran a forklift through another high value shipment and refused to honor the insure because it was "not properly packaged". We objected in writing with a legal threat and they decided that given the extensive external damage to the package they will honor the warranty. After a month they sent us the documents to file the claim. A month later they told us they need additional pictures even through they had inspected the item a few days after it was delivered. Two weeks later they said they will not pay the claim because of missing documents even though we sent them all the documents they requested. After a phone call they apologized and said we would get a check in the mail in 5 -10 days. One month later we got voice mail saying they need certification of repair cost before they could proceed.
We wrote off the few thousand we had claimed for the damaged merchandise and have not shipped with them since. We have a number of other business partners local who after we shared our experience with them all switched to FedEx, I am sure this cost them $200K plus worth of business over the past year but I guess for a company with revenues in the billions this is not missed.
One thing I learned a long time ago when dealing with anyone's customer service department, was get the customer service representative's NAME and extension number.
God knows how many times an ID10T in CS tells you a some bullshit in order to avoid having to do their job. Then it is quite refreshing to be able to 'rake them over the coals' later when you figure out that you have been "shit upon".
I had this one CS rep who tried to feed me a line of bullshit, which I wasn't buying, and told her so. As she was hanging up her phone, she let loose a couple of obscenities. She didn't think that I heard her, but not only did I, but my boss, and the cassette recorder on the desk (we were using a speaker phone). I didn't let that one go, and got a hold of her boss. It is kind of hard to deny saying something nasty, when your own words come back to haunt you.
I have no shipping confirmation, it just turned up at lunch today. It was supposed to be here on the Friday.
Still I have a £50 voucher to use which is valid until October 2013 and it only arrived one working day late. I can live with that and so far i'm thoroughly impressed with it!!
*off to play Angry Birds*
Mine didn't turn up on Friday (and I got the £50 voucher).
Last week I phoned them & told them that rather than delivering to my house (where there would likely be no-one in) they should deliver to my work. Said change to the shipping address was showing on the website.
This morning UPS tried to deliver to my house. No-one was in. Bad form, MS :-(
Just now, UPS *came back and tried again*. That was a surprise! Thumbs up for the UPS driver! :-)
Looking forward to getting home & trying it out, now. Hopefully there's lots of obvious & simple apps missing from the store. Then I can write them and sell them to all the waiting punters. Oh, wait... Erm. Sell them to the other 2 ppl at work that have ordered one! ;-)
They didn't offer me a voucher... They attempted to take money from my bank this morning (so it was going to be late), but the bank thought it might be a scam so refused payment until I OK'd it. Microsoft then cancelled my order, and I'm back to the end of the queue, so it seems I'll be getting it three weeks late, and no offer of a voucher.
People generally don't mind if delays occur or mistakes happen they just want to be told what's going on. I pre-ordered my Surface over a week ago (before the sold-out information started appearing) and apart from the order confirmation have received nothing telling me what's going on. Not a single email.
A phone call to the support line resulted in more confusion as the rep just re-read my order confirmation to me and told me that the web site information was incorrect. Zero information on when orders would be shipped or why delays were occurring. I don't know why I expected better but I did.
The reason why they have stopped the Media Center keys I think is because people were using it to turn a KMS activated Windows 8 Pro (Installed from the retail iso) into a retail copy.
They would be pretty dumb to continue it anyway as it has been posted on mydigitalife. (Especially with all the extra they put in to stop SLIC bios mod's working.)
software copy shop, they had Win 8/Metro/whatever on sale for the princely sum of USD$1.
Since I am a happy XP Pro user, available on a compilation DVD also at $1, I demurred purchasing the latest and 'greatest' Windows.
Smart users put off purchases until the first Service Pack.
MS shows it has really some nerve:
Making a new OS that differs strongly from its predecessor.
Going into a new business producing consumer hardware in China.
Create a lot of publicity, and take on the logistical nightmare to get device, Windows 8, and pricing right into the shops just before Xmas.
Go into a tablet market that is dominated for 97% by two strong players.
Go into a new market that is dominated by consumers, not by PC producers which are the actual customers of MS.
Take on both challenges for new tablets and phones at the same time.
If they manage to do this all right, and sell a few million well working Windows 8 tablet before the year is over, MS created a miracle.
Neowin reported this on the 26th so it's already old news. As I was the first commenter there, I'll repeat here: Demand has obviously outsurpassed supply. It happens, get over it!
You know the Chinese sellers in GTAIV that keep saying, "All the news, only one day after the internet!"? Yours should be, "All tech news, three days after Neowin!" They're faster than you, hence why they're my preferred site, they're not pro-Apple either.