Bootstrapper.com - Confessions of Serial Entrepreneurs

Here’s the latest response…they still won’t put me in touch with anyone in charge, gotta love bureaucracy. The intelligent thing to have done would have been to send me a couple of free games and an apology note. Instead I get phone calls and emails. Yay.

Hi Mr.Hecker:

I have been trying to contact you since last week since you re contacted our corporate office. I spoke to you last month which you wrote a bloq about me. I do not know why you have chosen to contact Microsoft again but I will let you know that if you are looking for a call from Kathleen Hogan or Steve Ballmer that it will not happen and as per corporate contacts, I will be your contact.
I am going to attempt calling you on 12/14/2007. If I cannot reach you than, I am going to have to close this case.
I look forward to speaking to you.

Regards;

Frank
Xbox Escalations, Microsoft
1-888-236-0927 ext 7075
reference:1049602553

Which one of my asshole friends posted by letter to bill gates to rumory? whose the asshole? I sent it to guys to review it and tell me im not crazy and you syndicate it to the world - assholes! You guys are really not good people. Whoever submitted that - you’re not invited to my events anymore. Come out, show your face you coward. You know i’m looking for capital and you put this out making me look like an ass. Come on! I wouldn’t do this to you! I wanted Bill to respond to me, not for this to get whored on the net! If i wanted that to happen - i would have done it myself!

R

So if you’ve been following my blog, you will have read how over the weekend XBOX tech support was useless. You may have also read that i got through to voicemail and left KATHLEEN HOGAN - worldwide VP of customer service a voicemail. She has yet to call me back. So I tried calling again today and they wouldn’t connect me. They said I need to establish contact with their executive office in writing. Now, as someone who used to run a call center company and can speak volumes about customer support id like to say Microsoft - you are an idiot. Your top customer support person should always be available to the public. I don’t want to hear any excuses, none. The lifeblood of long term business is customer support. Calling tech support - i found not a single person with real authority beyond a script that i can get on the phone. When I had horrible Treo 600’s years ago (23 of them) I called Sprint’s executive offices and got their top person and she owned up, apologized and sent me the Treo 650 the next day. She did the right thing and i like sprint for it. Microsoft I have to establish contact in writing - wow that is bullshit.

So what am I going to do? Use my contacts to get an introduction to the right person? No.

I am going to cold call Bill Gates. I’m pretty sure their filters to their executive office are down on the weekends so I’m going to cold call him and leave him a voicemail - and EXPECT him to call me back. After all I am a customer of his - shouldn’t he care that his current management is fucking over his baby and throwing it down a well?

Gentlemen, Microsoft has some serious issues. Here is my story.

I bought an Xbox. Then i bought all the gadgets. Then I bought the games. Then my XBOX scratched up my copy of Madden08. It was a perfect circular scratch that made my game unreadable. So i called MSFT. They told me to send back the console and include the game.

I sent back the console and the game and they sent me back a new console and MY SAME OLD GAME.

So now I have a new system but no game. $70 out the window.

So i called customer support. I spent a half hour on hold (first problem)

Talked to someone and explained him my situation. I had a very simple request I wanted MSFT to own up and give me a new copy of Madden 08. He said they couldn’t and offered me a choice of 4 replacements - the replacements were all games MSFT can’t sell even if they wanted to - they offered me bullshit.

So i asked for a supervisor. After another 15 minutes on hold she came on the phone and told me that they can’t replace the game that their xbox killed. I said fine so how about you offer me a game of equal value, perhaps Halo 3. She told me she could not do that and once again offered me the same bullshit 4 games.

So i asked how about i speak with someone that actually has the authority to do the right thing. She said she couldn’t do that - that there was no one I can speak to that has the ability to correct my problems. So i asked her a simple question: “how would you feel if you were in my situation and you buy a product from one of the biggest companies on earth and when they fuck up, they tell you that there is no one you can talk to in the whole company that has the ability to correct the issue and make good.” She agreed with me.

So I asked her for microsoft corporate info and she offered me an address. This is an insult.

So i left it like this: you put yourself in my shoes, you be the customer, you decide what to do, now I said this very calmly and I don’t know what she decided to do, I told her I didn’t want her to know, I just want her to make the decision she would make if she was in my shoes.

I did some digging and the proper contact is Kathleen Hogan. Look her up, I will post her contact info on Monday so that if anyone has an issue you can skip customer support which has no power to actually correct a problem and useless. Kathleen is the director of worldwide customer support. I suggest bypassing customer support and calling her whenever an MSFT product has a problem as customer service does not have the authority to correct the problem.

Now what’s the lesson here: If your customer service is not empowered to make a real decision and make good on a customer - your company is destined to get negative press such as here. Have you ever heard anything bad about Ritz Carlton? No, because EVERY employee there has the power to go above and beyond and do the right thing.

Microsoft outsources their customer service to India - which as a former CEO of an Indian Outsourcing Company - I can tell you is a BAD IDEA - DO NOT EVER OUTSOURCE TO INDIA.

But that’s besides the point. If a company’s customer service can’t correct the problem, don’t buy from the company. I am calling for a boycott on Microsoft and a short on their stock because they don’t give a shit about their customers.

My name is Richie Hecker. I am a tech exec and I run BootStrapper.com. My Number is 347 385 7865, if Kathleen wants to call and apologize I am all ears.

Richard Hecker