PoliTech's Journal: Microsoft Technical Account Manager nightmare

I just had a call from our Microsoft Technical Account Manager and after ten minutes or so of him talking about his tax problems, we finally get around to talking about my MSI and Microsoft Group Policy problem with the new 64 bit GPMC on 64 bit Windows 7 and 64 bit Windows Server R2. (Bugs be tharrrr)

I had opened a support ticket a couple of weeks back, which costs my company money, and I had already asked him to close the ticket because I couldn't get any help from MS for weeks, and I can always just use the 32 bit GPMC which doesn't have the problems I've been experiencing with delivering software to 32 bit clients from the 64 bit GPMC.

All the MS support people did was point fingers at other MS departments, and then transfer my call to those departments ... so I repeatedly got the privilege of staying on hold again and again and again ... it was nuts!

He starts asking about the MS Support ticket (which should already be closed ... but naturally it isn't and so MS is still charging my company ... per minute ... for this open ticket) and as he talks it becomes more than evident that he obviously has misunderstood the problem entirely ... I mean he's not even close ... and we have talked about this at length already once before. After a few minutes of listening to his nonsense explanation of what he thinks the problem is, I told him that he has it completely wrong.

He then asks for me to explain the problem to him.

So I explain all of the technical details of the issue to him in minute detail ... how to reproduce it ... how the various MS Tech specialists had also reproduced it ... and even after a complete logical rational explanation ... he says that he still doesn't understand what my issue is.

So I mention to him that if he can't understand the MSI and GPO technical issues at hand, he is probably not qualified to give me a solution and I ask him if he could try to find a qualified resource who can help him and get them on the call?

Well that just pissed him off at me, and said that I was just being unprofessional with him, (yea ... after he wasted my time talking about his problems with his personal taxes and the IRS . I'm the one who is not being professional ... okay fine). He then tells me that basically the issue is my problem not his. (Yea, while my company pays for the "support" call)

So at this point I tell him that the entire call has become counterproductive and I ask him to please only call my boss if he needs to contact my companies department directly, and to please no longer call me directly from now on. (I'm not a manager nor do I wish to be a manager, and this guy should only be calling the manager anyhoo)

We hang up and then a few minutes later my boss gets a call from this MS douche nozzle complaining about me being so mean to him on the phone. Now I get to deal with that, yay!

And my company pays mountains of dollars per year for this crap.
Microsoft support soooo sucks ... it defies the imagination that their support can actually be getting any worse than it was ... but it is.

Bureaucracy

[mcgrew]

And people complain about the government. When any organization -- public, private, or governmental -- gets to a certain size, you are going to have monumantal bureaucracy, red tape, and buck passing.