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Microsoft

There's never a shortage of consumers, like those below, upset with Microsoft's software. Not to mention those who bought the Xbox or Zune. Louis of Owings Mills, MD, writes:
The following information about this company's lying and arrogance should be of interest in any investigation of their business practices. In fact, their latest affront to the consumer could possibly be construed as any or all of fraud, breach of contract and other forms of bad faith practice. This is certainly worthy of individual and class actions.

Part one involves Microsoft's arbitrary decision this past Fall of 1999 to severely limit the amount of phone and online support for their Office 2000 and Front Page programs. Perhaps this decision extends to other products, but my personal experience is with these two and being a small business and having the rug pulled out like this. I was told that there would be unlimited ongoing support on these two products which are very expensive, highly complex and difficult programs. As a business, we are dependent upon this software not only working correctly, but understanding its workings.

When you call and learn that your support is discontinued or running out they give you a song about some other silly support you have left that they can pull from, and I have their correspondence and records of calls, when they had the gall to commit another lie that their customers support this decision. Please find businesses who think it's a great idea for promised support to be arbitrarily discontinued.

They also point to online sources of information and the Help files which are extremely tedious and themselves time-consuming and difficult to wade through. Changing course like this in midstream is damaging to thousands of us in the business community and needs to be addressed legally and on a consumer level. Their actions, insolence, lies, false promises and programs continue to be a great source of aggravation and continue to cause daily problems in the operation of my business. Meanwhile, they continue to employ their expertise in using spin to deflect any responsibility going even as far as bringing up what they did years ago in response to other problems Neither I nor anyone else would be consistently filing against this company if such action was not warranted.

Besides terminating any support for me personally, and arbitrarily cutting off general support after promising it for an indefinite period, they have now refused, by their silence, to continue an ongoing case. This is after someone called me, decided that I should hear from another department which over a week ago I was promised the very next day, and concerning which he acknowledged would have resulted in my system being in the "unstable" condition it is now in as a result of their Internet Explorer 5 causing problems. Of course, and typical of Microsoft, I am still waiting, and they will do their usual attempts at spin and deceptive reasoning. They like to point to a refund they gave me years ago regarding another issue completely isolated from this one, as if that removes any responsibility for future wrongs. Because of their Internet Explorer 5 which they told me to download as part of correcting another issue, my computer literally crashes several times each and every day.

The loss of time and inability to run my business is incalculable. This company's actions and reactions are not only a major consumer issue, but downright criminal and needs to be looked into by state and federal agencies as well as consumer advocate organizations. I am also looking for assistance in a full blown consumer suit against this company for these and numerous other affronts and actions.

Without in any way denigrating any of Louis' arguments, we would strongly advise that he upgrade his operating system. We'd bet anything he is running Windows 98, which is not up to the serious multitasking Louis probably requires. A clean install of Windows 2000 would go far to solve his problems, we'd bet. And as for FrontPage, HTML is so simple and FrontPage so complex that we don't know why anyone would use it. It's much better to get Allaire's Homesite or any of a number of similar text editors that also provide site navigation functions. They are easier to learn, produce cleaner, less cluttered code and place less overhead on the machine. (Our reference to Homesite is not an advertisement. We have no business relationship of any kind with Allaire or any affiliated company).

Chris of Dallas writes (5/23/00):
I just wanted to add, dealing with win95, win98, NT, and 2000, I have to say I would suggest Windows NT to anyone. Windows 2000 is too full of bugs and has been highly unstable around here. I admit not everyone will be doing the same kind of work. I have been using windows NT for 3d animation and graphics work, because 2000 can cease to be running any apps that require more power than solitaire. Other studios that I know of are sorry they jumped ship to be on the cutting edge only to slip and fall off.

By the way, have I mentioned that the windows 2000 machine is the only one that can't see the network, Oh yes we got the new drivers. We also got the newest patch from microsoft to relax and play games. Can't get listed games working with the patch either. I'd tell people to wait about a year to see if it is any good. NT workstation can be found for $40 now if you look enough. (no not ebay)

More from Louis (8/6/01):
The problem continues in that these liars have yet to respond as promised and fixed that which another of their incompetent personnel caused to my computer which is repeated below. Work that could take 20-30 minutes now takes at least an hour or more. This is not only worthy of your investigation but individual and class actions.

I was told that there would be unlimited ongoing support on Front Page and Office products which are very expensive, highly complex and difficult programs. As a business, we are dependent upon this software not only working correctly, but understanding many of the ins and outs and the hows. This matter has been going for many months now after being promised support by their so-called professionals whose misguided advice got me into this problem to begin with. Because of their Internet Explorer 5 which they told me to download as part of correcting another issue, my computer literally crashes several times each and every day. The loss of time and inability to run my business is incalculable.

This company's actions and reactions are not only a major consumer issue, but downright criminal and needs to be looked into by state and federal agencies as well as consumer advocate organizations. They have lied, misled and done everything except to honor their promises and stand behind their junk. They like to point out that they reimbursed me for other software a few years ago as if that absolved them from all future responsibilities for issues that have been totally unrelated to this one.

Christian of Madison, AL, responded:
The advice given for this problem was a mere brush-off, and a wrongly advised one at that, based on my experience. Microsoft is criminally negligent in their support, and Windows 98 is a much better operating system than either ME or 2000. I have Windows ME on my current computer, and had a great deal of trouble hooking up my scanner to my computer by USB connection. After reading some of the newsgroups on the internet, I understand that my experience is far from unique. Microsoft Windows ME and 2000 are jokes, actually downgrades rather than upgrades. I never had any problems with Windows 98 crashing, but continue to have problems with ME, especially after several hours of uniterrupted use.

Windows 2000 is hardly a downgrade from Win98. It is a renamed NT5.0 and is, as we said in our initial response, a much more appropriate OS for anyone who needs bullet-proof multitasking. We run Win2000 on our Web composition systems and can count on one hand the number of complete system crashes since the day we brought it up.

Ed responded:

Harry of Victoria, B.C., writes:
I am another person with a Hewlett Packard computer that got shafted by downloading, at Microsoft's urging, an upgrade to Outlook Express 5.0. I have had MANY probs as a result of this fiasco. All I got from Microsoft was THE FINGER. I read similar complaints from other users to whom it was suggested that they should be using windows ME if they expect the new upgrades to work. Let me point out that this upgrade was offered LONG before windows ME was available....and wthout ANY warning that Windows 98 might not like it.

Seeing as I do not use my home computer for business, the only real consequences have been learning to circumvent the MADDENING ARRAY of malfunctions caused by this blip. I will eventually restore my HD but am putting off that incovenience as long as possible. This business has brought me to the conclusion that no one should buy proprietary systems with special versions of Windows, but only TRUE IBM CLONES and the commercial version of Windows. Otherwise, you WILL have problems, and you WON'T get any help.

Jerry of Topeka (5/2/00):
I have disliked Microsoft since my first exposure to their buggy software with MS-DOS in 1981. Multiplan 1.0 was beta tested, at a cost, on all Macintosh users in 1984, in 1985 Microsoft beta tested Word 1.01, also at a cost. 1986 brought the bug ridden Excel 1.0. I can't recall a single Microsoft product ever released on the consumer market that wasn't full of bugs. They stand out in my mind over many years of using Macintosh and PC computers. The most recent example was Office 98 for Macintosh which my son purchased while a college student. He has had to download between 10 and 12 "patches." Microsoft always seems to "beta test" their products on their customers to an extent not rivalled by any other vendor.

When my son first got Office 98 he was working on a term paper for school. He'd worked on it mostly in Word, saving every hour. He switched over to Power Point, not for the first time, and the Macintosh froze up and had to be restarted. Not only had he lost his work of the previous 30 minutes or so, but the file he had conscientiously saved every hour was corrupted. He lost four hours of work. His Macintosh had 192MB of RAM. He was only running Office 98.

A "patch" later solved the problem of a "saved file" being damaged by a crash. He was taking 21 hours that semester and the four hours of his lost time were very costly to him. The paper was for extra credit. He was on the borderline of an A or B in the class. There was not enough time to steal from his other studies to redo the paper. He got a B. A B is not a terrible grade but he did the work and he earned an A. He was a very good student in college. This happened last year. He's now teaching in the public school system and I am most proud of him.

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