answers.microsoft

Is useless. These support engineers give unclear or useless answers.

Even if you clearly say what you’re using and doing.

Then they will still ask what you are using and doing. 

They give useless answers. It seems like it’s just a copy and paste answer. That has nothing to do with what you asked.

Conversation 17 comments

  • 442

    08 December, 2016 - 9:11 am

    <p>So, what was your question?</p>

    • 5496

      08 December, 2016 - 9:26 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#29222">In reply to </a><a href="../../../../users/Narg">Narg</a><a href="#29222">:</a></em></blockquote>
      <p>Who said it was a question?</p>

  • 5664

    Premium Member
    08 December, 2016 - 12:37 pm

    <p>I see it constantly. The questions are almost always answered by other users, and the "engineers" are often so clueless that they don’t recognize that someone is describing a problem.&nbsp;</p>
    <p>"Every time I power on my PC, Windows hangs at startup. I power it down and start it again, and it works."</p>
    <p>"Hello. I am Microsoft Engineer. You must do clean startup to fix Windows Startup Issue. Press Windows Key + R…"</p>
    <p>They then give you some basic, amateur-level troubleshooting tip. I’ve seen people describing systemic problems and the so-called engineers offer crap-ass basic tips. Tell them that you need to install a storage driver for a SATA hard disk because without it, the system is running slow and they offer some dumb tip on optimizing for speed.</p>
    <p>Pointless.</p>

    • 5496

      08 December, 2016 - 1:14 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#29324">In reply to </a><a href="../../../../users/jimchamplin">jimchamplin</a><a href="#29324">:</a></em></blockquote>
      <p>These so called "support engineers", are probably a call center in India. Who are just copying and pasting off a troubleshooting tree.</p>
      <p>And have no knowledge of the question being asked.</p>

      • 5664

        Premium Member
        12 December, 2016 - 1:48 am

        <blockquote><em><a href="#29339">In reply to </a><a href="../../../../users/lordbaal1">lordbaal1</a><a href="#29339">:</a></em></blockquote>
        <p>Oh no doubt!</p>

      • PincasX

        06 February, 2018 - 8:25 am

        <blockquote><a href="#29339"><em>In reply to lordbaal1:</em></a></blockquote><p>Mmmm… Implicit bias. </p>

    • 3385

      10 December, 2016 - 1:22 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#29324">In reply to </a><a href="../../../../users/jimchamplin">jimchamplin</a><a href="#29324">:</a></em></blockquote>
      <p>I agree they post supposed answers to issues when in fact their post has nothing to do with the issue at hand.</p>
      <p>Don’t get me started regarding the flat file nature of the posts over in the MS Communities. It makes following subthreads impossible.&nbsp;The result is that you have people reposting the same answers over and over again especially when a thread gets extremely long ie. 50+ pages.</p>
      <p>&nbsp;</p>

      • 5664

        Premium Member
        12 December, 2016 - 2:05 am

        <blockquote><em><a href="#29744">In reply to </a><a href="../../../../users/PcGuy8088">PcGuy8088</a><a href="#29744">:</a></em></blockquote>
        <p>And the fact that things are presented out of order makes it worse. I hate when the "engineers" mark a question closed, putting their non-answer at the top.</p>

    • PincasX

      06 February, 2018 - 8:31 am

      <blockquote><a href="#29324"><em>In reply to jimchamplin:</em></a></blockquote><p>To be fair, the sample question you are posing doesn't make sense. If the PC hangs at start up every time then how does powering down and starting it again work? Either it hangs at start up every time or it doesn't. </p><p><br></p><p>I have worked in the customer support industry (both doing support and in management) for a long time and while I'll concede that most customer support is crap, I also have to point out that customers tend to think they are far more clear in their description of things than they are. </p>

  • 5501

    Premium Member
    08 December, 2016 - 12:56 pm

    <p>The ultimate test would be to see if you can slip past them the "coffee mug holder" on your old Packard Bell…</p>

  • Edward Grego

    05 February, 2018 - 5:58 am

    <p>Their responses are frustrating at best. I've never gotten a direct answer from one of the engineers, it's usually a user that gives the help needed and I think this type of customer service is doing more harm than good.</p><p>If Microsoft is going to identify it's engineers then they should be knowledgeable and helpful, not some canned responses that likely came from the same search that got you there.</p><p>Put some knowledgable help in your forums MS, and, when you're created a problem code you need to create an explanation for the code!??! Or, stop giving use a code and tell us what the hell went wrong…lol. </p>

    • jimchamplin

      Premium Member
      05 February, 2018 - 7:59 am

      <blockquote><a href="#243241"><em>In reply to Edward_Grego:</em></a></blockquote><p>It wouldn’t be as bad if it were a user driven help community. The addition of the “engineers” just takes it over the top to pure crap.</p>

      • hrlngrv

        Premium Member
        05 February, 2018 - 3:53 pm

        <p><a href="#243252"><em>In reply to jimchamplin:</em></a></p><p>Most of those <em>'engineers'</em> (in the sense of sanitation engineers) have zero practical experience and are just using <em>'expert'</em> systems and following support scripts.</p>

        • jimchamplin

          Premium Member
          05 February, 2018 - 7:01 pm

          <blockquote><a href="#243329"><em>In reply to hrlngrv:</em></a></blockquote><p>Yeah, they’re pretty much just call center desk jockeys.</p>

  • hrlngrv

    Premium Member
    05 February, 2018 - 3:51 pm

    <p>They're not useless. Sometimes MVPs answer questions, and they have actual real-world, 1st-hand experience. In my own experience, user-to-user support works better than MSFT support. Better than Dell support too unless one paid for on-site service. HP is the only tech company that's provided decent online support for me. Pity I can't stand their laptop keyboards.</p><p><br></p><p>The old USENET newsgroups MSFT used to operate until about a decade ago were far better than the new web site.</p>

  • seapea

    05 February, 2018 - 11:27 pm

    <p>oh, it gets better. </p><p>I have InsidersBuild 17_063 on a M4500 Laptop. 17_083 aborted its installation for reasons unknown, and when I say abort I mean Screen of Death abort. Since then , the Update does not work (yes, i deleted all the files in SoftwareDistribtion), sometimes it will the 70% of installing but then it aborts out again. </p><p>Worse, now the laptop does a reboot every 10 minutes or so if the machine is not being used. </p><p>Oh and did I mention that the Feedback app no longer works – it gives me SoD when i click submit button.</p><p>ANYWAY, you'd think that after 3 weeks of constantly having the system upload the files each time the system does an SoD i'd hear from someone at MSFT. Nope. To make matters fit in perfectly with this thread – the URL provided on the Green SoD leads to a MSFT "can not find the page" error. The URL provided in the Event Manager Errors (mostly bug check crash) – you got it, also leads to a MSFT "can not find this page" error.</p><p><br></p><p>Thank goodness it is not a production pc 🙂 and since i cloned/migrated to an SSD I am letting the system reboot till it gets an answer from MSFT via driver or whatever.</p><p><br></p><p>Oh – and I forgot to mention. In doing research on MSFT about the problem , there are lots of references to SkyDrive !</p><p><br></p>

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