Ballsy Customers

I tell you what, we get some ballsy customers that call Microsoft.

Today one called and he got a Windows Product Activation prompt on boot.

If he activated, it would work fine, until he rebooted.

If he didn't activate, it would log him back to the Welcome screen.

Well, phone tech calls me up and can't figure out how to fix it. So I have him go to msconfig and get me a list of the third party services.

What does my eye spy?

Reset5.

Call me weird, but I wouldn't risk calling a company I pirated software from for support on said pirated product.

Would you?

 

hahahaha That's pricless! Did you tell the guy that you knew he had pirated software?

 

We aren't allowed to.

Instead, we told him that there was nothing we could do, it was format time.

He uh...couldn't find his CD....

LOL.

Ranks right up there when we have customers wilth obvious CD errors or cannot activate and we have them read us what it says on top.

We get responses like:

FGCKW-"insert Devilsown product key"

"Memorex"

"It says nothing, its all silver, and has a blue bottom"

"Dell" (When its not a Dell computer, LOL)

 

MS could cut down piracy by suing its own support customers LOL.

 

hahahaha That guys hilarious! He probably doesn't own a single legit piece of software! hahaha

 

Maybe they don't know?

 

yea ... i had a friend who i was convinced she had bought a pirated windows copy ... well .. cause she didn't have a serial number or a CD

 

I refuse to believe that. Mostly because I was on the other end of the conversation and could observe their reaction when we discovered the piracy.

Some, when they find out, are scared and want to rid themselves of any legal liability and get a legit copy.

Many, many more suddenly have run out of time to troubleshoot on the call, but will call back...

Of course, I get email notifications when someone reopens a case of mine, and it never happens.

 

Its a company policy.

I'm guessing its because they don't want to get sued if someone is incorrectly accused.

That would be my guess.

We also were not allowed to discuss legal proceedings and so forth when the Justice department was raking MS over the coals.

 

Also, if customer service was doing their job, these people would never make it to the techs.

But enough crap has been outsourced to India, that its all gone to hell.

 

Are you able to inform these people that they 'may have a licensing issue' or is even that going too far for the ambulance chasers?

 

Yeah we can to a degree.

The safest way I found is to refer them to this article:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=326904

Thats when licensing issues are most common.

Or if they install multiple times, we tell them that it simply will not activate to extra computers.

 

Bwahahaha!

I caught 2 more people using it today!

This is fun

I'm just telling techs to format em.

What is hapepning, is they install Sp2, and it breaks reset5

 

Are you allowed to tell them their computer is broken, and they need to bring it to the shop for a new motherboard or hardrive, or something you make up?

 

I tell the techs to tell the customer that they have malicious software on their system and its format time

 

hehe thats good enough. then they'll ultimately end up going to the shop, buying a new copy of windows, paying the tech's to fix it. so their pretty much spending 4x as much as they normally would for a regular copy.... fools

 

I see there is no
"I don't own any pirated software" option

But that is pretty funny, I will give you that
There are alot of "hand me down" or "bought from a guy, I know" computers.
and Who knows whats on there?


And When I bought (well my wife with my money) it did not come with a cd.

 

You caught that eh?

 

MS must be pretty good at separating the BS from the simply annoying as far as Activation goes. (I'm annoying )

At first, I was a bit worried since I frequently change hardware, occassionally format and start fresh, and knew I'd be reactivating multiple times. I've done it enough that automatic activation chokes, but I've never had a problem reactivating over the phone. They ask me why, and I start telling them what all I've done to the box, and they reactivate me.

But it always amazes me that guys that will pay well over a grand for the latest & greatest hardware without even blinking choke over a hundred & something bucks for the heart & soul of the computer. I dunno. Maybe they stole the hardware too.

 

Be honest, MS cheeses me off. Reason, I purchased software, they offered support for it for a few years and now they don't want to support it anymore. Have a second puter, bought XP, now I don't think it's right I can't use the one copy of XP on two or three computers seeing how they want to discontinue supporting my windows 98.

I think people deserve tech support even if they did pirate it.


Now I am truly logging out and heading to the sack.

 

I don't think so.

 

A few points to be made.

1. You don't purchase software. You purchase licenses, that allow you to use the software. You have the legal right to return said software if you don't agree with the terms within. If you agreed to it, you are bound by a legal contract.

2. Companies stop supporting older software all the time. Sooner or later, it happens. When it does, they stop supporting it. Its the nature of the business.

3. People who pirate software stole it. They don't deserve anything.

 

i only have one pirated software and m$ does not support it nomore and they dont sale it nomore and its windows 98se and i never had a problem with it so you tell me is it pirated software if they dont sale it nomore now if they started to sale it again i would go out and buy it because i always used win98se and i dont like anyother windows system

 

98se is still supported.

98 RTM is not.

You were misinformed.

 

I reformat a lot too, not because i install new stuff, because the less computer literate users aka my family F it up all the time and i have to fix it and sometime she's too far gone

 

Thats psrt of that validation check that MS started up.

Its completely voluntary AFAIK, someone actively did it.

Let me gt more info on it.

 

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/photostory/default.mspx

Note in asterisks:

Requires Windows Genuine Advantage validation.

 

Right

 

I'm up to 5 people now I've caught with reset5.

Silly rabbits.