Is Microsoft Support an actual joke?

[vanbot]

Not to throw around the old "What a joke", "You're a joke", "They're such a joke" accusations but after my experience today I am actually wondering if either today was Kafka Day and I missed the memo or if MS Customer Support is actually set up as a cruel joke.

I upgraded to Windows 10 from 8.1 and then did some digging online on how to optimize privacy. One suggestion was to sign in to local account. So I tried this but found that all of open Firefox tabs didn't migrate over so went to log back into my MS account so I could retrieve them but found that the username that I never paid any attention to when logging into Windows wasn't there. I know the pword but never paid attention to the username because it was always just there.

So began my odyssey.

Nine hours later I still don't have my username.

I have chatted online with 5 different MS reps and on the phone with 3 more. Despite me maintaining otherworldly patience and courtesy in the face of brutal incompetence and inefficiency I was hung up on or had chats ended by agents three times before anything had been resolved.

I have requested callbacks that told me to press "1" to connect but which, when I did that, just kept telling me that they hadn't received my input.

I gave them my phone number and even credit card info (they were real MS reps) but they still couldn't get me my username.

After three hours I asked one rep if they could find it by using my Windows SN. She said yes. I asked why none of them had suggested that option. She said because only tech support could get me that info. Sigh. So I asked to be connected to tech support. She said there was no chat and I would have to call tech support.

I waited an hour to speak to tech support and then hung up after never reaching a human.

I contacted MS Billing via chat...again Went over it all..again. Asked if there was a tech support chat option. This time they said yes.

Clicked the link to tech support chat. It said I was #199 in the queue. Waited for two hours as it counted down. It got to #2 and never moved again. Meanwhile I opened a second tech chat window. It said I was #186 in queue and kept counting down. The first one never moved.

I waited another 2 hours while the second window counted down to #1. It never moved again and nobody appeared to chat with me.

Is this typical?

 

[Someone Somewhere]

Your MS account username is your email address, I believe. I don't tend to use them.

This is why we don't usually suggest being early adopters unless you don't care about your data.

 

[vanbot]

Your MS account username is your email address, I believe. I don't tend to use them.

This is why we don't usually suggest being early adopters unless you don't care about your data.

The username is an e-mail address but it's an e-mail address that MS assigned to me when I first installed Win 8.1 on my laptop. I never use the e-mail address. It usually just sits there in my Windows log in uername field so that all I have to do is fill in the pword.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

Ah... that's a bit more difficult. They may have sent you an email to your normal email address when you signed up; search for something like 'microsoft account' in your email.

It looks like your MS account email could be your normal email; try that.

I just had a quick look, and I don't think changing from/to an MS account/local account should affect your AppData folder. Unless you created a new local account and deleted the MS account.

Are there any other folders in C:/Users? If so, the name is probably the email address of that account, or the bit before @outlook.com. You may also be able to just copy the Mozilla folder over to your new account.

 

[McHenryB]

I think this thread demonstrates that it is advisable to keep written copies of any usernames/passwords that you use, whether you chose them or they were assigned automatically. It's common sense really. As these things are designed to secure access to your computer, companies are reluctant to give this information out (and often they can't) without cast-iron proof that you are who you claim to be.

I've only had to contact Microsoft support once (on an activation issue with Windows 8). They were excellent and issued me with a replacement key when the original wouldn't work. But people do have different experience with different problems with different suppliers.

 

[jsmurray2]

To answer OP's question: Yes, it is a joke. Bill Gates is actually a funny guy, he and Steve Jobs are comedians who got in a fight over who's joke was better: Windows or Macintosh? Mac is downright hilarious, windows support is just a pain in the ass. If you wanna be serious for a second try GNU/Linux in perhaps a Debian-Based distribution. They do not torture their users.