Despite building an alternative to Microsoft Office, LibreOffice developer Mike Kaganski still has to deal with Microsoft’s customer support since having his account locked. This led to a familiar tale of fighting a losing battle against customer support services that don’t quite understand what you’re saying.
In a blog cheekily titled “Microsoft, anybody home?” (via Techspot), developer Mike Kaganski recounts the tale of how poor his recent experience has been with Microsoft. He opens with “You know what: Microsoft became miserably incompetent in IT”, and things don’t really get better from there.
In a fairly routine message to the LibreOffice developer mailing list, he found out that his account was locked by Microsoft. The justification? “We’ve detected some activity that violates our Microsoft Services Agreement”
As this is a generic locked account notification, specific violations weren’t cited. Kaganski does show the original mail had quite a few links and suggests this could be part of why it was flagged.
There’s a relatability to the anguish of Kaganski’s tale, as he claims Microsoft not only failed to accept his phone number for verification but gave no alternative method in response.
After troubleshooting, talking to an AI chatbot, and attempting to reach out to support, he used his wife’s account to contact Microsoft instead, only for that support ticket to request their phone number once more. In a customer support story as old as time, the solution seems to be ‘have a phone number that works’ when part of the problem was ‘the phone number doesn’t work’.
After Microsoft closed the ticket, claiming it was fixed, and effectively ending the appeal, Kaganski says he has “filed another ticket, which they didn’t care to answer.”
We have asked Microsoft for comment on this story and what led to the account being locked, but have not yet received a reply.
Kaganski ends the blog with the line “[Microsoft] once an IT tech leader, became utterly incompetent in IT. And for me, it’s a pity.” I’ve spent my fair share of time dealing with customer support and can only empathise with the struggle of not being able to access your account.
Proof, if proof were ever needed, that chatbots don’t quite have the expertise for how varied support needs can get. It is nice, in a weird way, to know it’s not just me pulling my hair out every time I have to deal with online tech support.