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This is a great one...and most of us can relate to it!  (Can you say "IS HELP?")



In the course of a recent Microsoft Access programming project,

we had three difficult technical problems where we decided to call a support

hotline for advice. This article compares the two support numbers

we tried: Microsoft Technical Support and the Psychic Friends

Network. As a result of this research, we have come to the following

conclusions:



1) That Microsoft Technical Support and the Psychic Friends

Network are about equal in their ability to provide technical assistance for

Microsoft products over the phone; 2) that the Psychic Friends Network

has a distinct edge over Microsoft in the areas of courtesy, response

time, and cost of support; but 3) that Microsoft has a generally

better refund policy if they fail to solve your problem.



In the paragraphs that follow, we will detail the support calls we

made and the responses we received from each support provider. We will

follow this with a discussion of the features provided by each support

provider so that readers can do their own rankings of the two

services.



Our research began when we called Microsoft regarding a bug that we

had detected when executing queries which pulled data from a Sybase

Server into Microsoft Access. If we used the same Access database to

query two databases on the same server, we found that all of the

queries aimed at the second database that we queried were sent to the

first database that we had queried. This problem existed no matter

which database we queried first. Dan called Microsoft's Technical

Solutions Line, gave them $55, and was connected with an official

Microsoft Access technical support person. As Dan began to explain the

problem, the support person interrupted him, and told him that since

it was clear that it was not just a problem with Access but with the

two programs together, Microsoft would not try to help us. They

did,however, have a consultant referral service with which he would be

glad to connect us. Dan then asked if we could have our $55 refunded,

since Microsoft was not going to try to answer to our question. The

tech support person responded by forwarding Dan to the person in

charge of giving refunds. The person officially in charge of giving

refunds took Dan's credit card info again, after which Dan asked about

the referral service.  It was too late, however -- the refund folks

could not reconnect Dan with the tech support guy he'd been talking

with, nor could he put Dan in touch with the referral service hotline.

End of Call One.



Our second call came when Dan was creating some line graphs in

Microsoft Access. Microsoft Access actually uses a program called

Microsoft Graph to create its graphs, and this program has a "feature"

that makes the automatic axis scale always start the scale at zero. If

all of your data are between 9,800 and 10,000 and you get a scale of 0

to 10,000, your data will appear as a flat line at the top of your

graph -- not a very interesting chart. Since Dan was writing Visual

Basic code to create the graphs, he wanted to be able to use Visual

Basic code to change the graph scaling, but he could not find anything

in the help files that would tell him how to do this. After working

with Microsoft Graph for a while, Dan concluded that it probably

didn't have the capability that he needed, but he decided to call

Microsoft just to make sure. Dan described his problem to the

technical support person, whom we'll call Microsoft Bob. Microsoft Bob

said he'd never gotten a call about Microsoft Graph before. He then

left Dan on hold while he went to ask another support person how to

use Microsoft Graph. Microsoft Bob came back with the suggestion that

Dan use the online help. Dan, however, had already used the online

help, and didn't feel that this was an appropriate answer for a $55

support call.  Microsoft Bob didn't give up, though. He consulted the

help files and learned to change the graph scale by hand and then

began looking for a way to do this via code. After Microsoft Bob had

spent about an hour on the phone with Dan learning how to use

Microsoft Graph, Dan asked for a refund since he had no more time to

spend on the problem. Microsoft Bob refused the refund, however. He

said he wouldn't give up, and told Dan that he would call back the

next week.



Microsoft Bob did call back the following week to admit failure. He

could not help us. However, he couldn't give us a refund either.

Microsoft Bob's supervisor confirmed Microsoft Bob's position. While

Microsoft Technical Support hadn't solved our problem, they felt that

a refund was inappropriate since Microsoft Technical Support had spent

a lot of time not solving our problem. Dan persisted, however,

explaining that if Microsoft Bob actually knew the program, he would

have been able to give Dan a response much sooner. The supervisor made

no guarantees, but he instructed Dan to check his credit card bill at

the end of the month. The supervisor explained that if Dan saw that

the charge was still there at the end of the month,then he would know

that he hadn't gotten a refund.  End of Call Two.



Our third call to Microsoft involved using the standard file save

dialog from within Microsoft Access to get a file name and directory

string from a user in order to save an exported file. The

documentation didn't make it clear how to do this using Visual Basic

code within Microsoft Access, and Dan decided to call Microsoft to ask

if and how a programmer could do this. The technical support person he

reached told him he was asking about a pretty heavy programming task.

He cheerily informed Dan that he'd called the wrong number and advised

Dan to call help for Visual Basic, not Access ($195 instead of $55).

This technical support person was extraordinarily helpful in getting

Dan his refund. End of Call Three.



Stymied by our responses from Microsoft, we decided to try another

service provider, the Psychic Friends Network. There are several

noticeable differences between Microsoft and the Psychic Friends

Network.  Microsoft charges a flat rate per "solution," which is a

single problem and can be handled in multiple phone calls. As

described above, Microsoft may or may not issue a refund of their fee

if they fail to provide a solution for your problem. The Psychic

Friends Network charges a per minute fee. They do not offer a refund

if they cannot solve your problem. However, unlike Microsoft, they

will not charge you extra if they provide more than one solution per

call.



We decided to test the Psychic Friends Network by asking them the same

questions that we had asked Microsoft Technical Support. We called

them and were quickly connected with Ray, who was very courteous and

helpful. Like Microsoft Bob, Ray quickly informed us that he wasn't

fully up to date on the programs that we were working with, but he was

willing to help us anyway. We started off with our first problem:

making a connection from Microsoft Access to two different Sybase

Servers. Ray worked hard on this problem for us. He sensed that there

was a problem with something connecting, that something wasn't being

fulfilled either in a sexual, spiritual or emotional way. Ray also

identified that there was some sort of physical failure going on that

was causing the problem." Do you mean that there's some sort of bug?"

we asked. Ray denied that he knew about any sort of bug in the

software. "Are you sure there's not a bug?" we asked. Ray insisted

that he did not know of any bug in the software, although he left open

the possibility that there could be some bug in the software that he

did not know about. All in all, Ray did not do much to distinguish

himself from Microsoft Technical Support. He wasn't able to solve our

problem for us, and he wasn't able to confirm or deny that a bug in

Microsoft Access was causing the problem. We then asked Ray our

question about using Visual Basic to set the axes of a chart. Ray

thought hard about this one. Once again he had the sense that

something just wasn't connecting, that there was some sort of physical

failure that was causing our problem. "Could it be that it's your

computer that's the problem?" he asked. "Is this something that

happens just on your computer, or have you had the same problem when

you've tried to do the same thing on other computers?"  We assured Ray

that we had the same problem on other computers, then asked again,

"This physical failure that you're talking about, do you mean that

there's some sort of bug?" Once again he assured us that there wasn't

a bug, but that he didn't know how to solve our problem. "I sense

there's some sort of sickness here, and you're just going to have to

sweat it out. If you'd like, you can call back tomorrow.  We have a

couple of guys here, Steve and Paul, and they 're much better with

computer stuff than I am." To conclude our research, we asked Ray

about our problem with the standard file dialog box."  It's the same

thing as the last one," he told us. "There's some sort of sickness

here, and you're just going to have to sweat it out. There is a

solution,though,and you're just going to have to work at it until you

get it."



Conclusions:



In terms of technical expertise, we found that a Microsoft technician

using Knowledge Base was about as helpful as a Psychic Friends reader

using Tarot Cards. All in all, however, the Psychic Friends Net work

proved to be a much friendlier organization than Microsoft Technical

Support.  While neither group was actually able to answer any of our

technical questions, the Psychic Friends Network was much faster than

Microsoft and much more courteous. Which organization is more

affordable is open to question.  If Microsoft does refund all three

"solutions" fees, then they will be the far more affordable solution

provider, having charged us no money for having given us no

assistance. However, if Microsoft does not refund the fees for our

call regarding Microsoft Graph, then they will have charged us more

than 120% of what the Psychic Friends charged, but without providing

the same fast and courteous service that Psychic Friends provided.



Microsoft Tech Support (800) 939-5700

The Psychic Friends Network (900)-407-6611