MY MS ODYSSEY

Fol­low­ing my re­cent moan about local cus­tomer ser­vice, here’s some­thing for bal­ance.

There’s an un­spo­ken thrill in con­tact­ing Mi­crosoft Sup­port. It’s like en­ter­ing a Kafkaesque labyrinth where your sim­ple query will meet a litany of cheer­ful plat­i­tudes, re­peated re­quests for the same in­for­ma­tion over and over again – name and email being the favourite, though not ex­clu­sive, can­di­date – still more ir­rel­e­vant ques­tions and an en­thu­si­as­tic re­fusal to solve your prob­lem in under an hour. My lat­est ad­ven­ture began with Maria, a cus­tomer ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tive who may or may not have been re­placed by an overly po­lite chat­bot halfway through our ex­change.

Maria kicks things off with a flour­ish: “Wel­come to Mi­crosoft Sup­port, my name is Maria. May I know also your name?” A promis­ing start. My name is Bar­ney, and I’m here to cor­rect a billing issue in­volv­ing tax. How­ever, be­fore we get to the heart of the mat­ter, Maria wants my mo­bile num­ber. Not to worry– this is only “in case we’re dis­con­nected”. Oh, that’s promis­ing, I think to my­self. I de­cline, sug­gest­ing email in­stead. Maria cheer­fully ac­cepts this slight, pro­claim­ing, “Sure thing, Bar­ney!” Clearly, she didn’t miss the train­ing ses­sion on over­com­ing re­jec­tion.

I ex­plain my issue: I’ve been charged 21% tax on my Mi­crosoft 365 Per­sonal sub­scrip­tion de­spite liv­ing in Spain and MS being a com­pany based in Ire­land. Maria de­clares her­self “ready to work on this to­gether”, like we’re prepar­ing to co-au­thor a self-help book. Per­haps we should, it would take less time.

Be­fore any­thing pro­duc­tive can hap­pen, she must “ver­ify my ac­count”. Yet an­other time. Be­cause I’ve al­ready signed in three times using my fin­ger­print. A code is sent, I reply promptly, and Maria, buoyed by the suc­cess­ful ver­i­fi­ca­tion, dives into an­other round of ver­bal high-fives: “Since you’ve got me here, I will do my best to help you out… I know we can work on this to­gether”. Her op­ti­mism is re­lent­less, if mis­placed and ut­terly point­less.

Maria’s first break­through is a bomb­shell: tax IDs, she re­veals, can only be added for com­mer­cial prod­ucts. I feel like I’ve just been handed the plot twist of a par­tic­u­larly dull legal thriller. But wait - there’s hope! Maria sug­gests we can­cel my sub­scrip­tion, process a re­fund, and then re­pur­chase the prod­uct, this time with my tax ID at­tached. I’m as­sured this will elim­i­nate the tax. “Shall we?” she asks, like a gal­lant part­ner lead­ing me onto a bu­reau­cratic ball­room dance floor.

Nat­u­rally, I have some con­cerns. “OK, but only if the price doesn’t in­crease and my ser­vice isn’t af­fected” (I’ve seen this film be­fore). Un­de­terred, Maria as­sures me she’ll in­ves­ti­gate this cru­cial point be­fore pro­ceed­ing. It’s at this junc­ture that time seems to freeze. Sec­onds stretch into min­utes as I wait, won­der­ing if Maria is por­ing over some an­cient Mi­crosoft tome for an­swers. Or maybe she’s been side­tracked by a mo­ti­va­tional poster about team­work.

Fi­nally, she re­turns, to in­form me that there has in fact been a price in­crease in Jan­u­ary and there­fore the price I paid with a promo code / ac­cess key / what­ever it was will not be ap­plic­a­ble if we pro­ceed with her “so­lu­tion”. I would in fact end up pay­ing more, even if the tax is de­ducted. “Cool right?” She didn’t say that, but I imag­ined she did.

I was just typ­ing in “For­get it” when… hey presto, out of nowhere Maria comes up with a “bet­ter so­lu­tion”: she would give me a “case num­ber” - a sort of sou­venir from this vir­tual theme park of in­ef­fi­ciency if you will, and I could con­tact them again this time next year to add my tax ID and not pay tax on next year’s in­voice. “That’s great!” Not sure my sar­casm came through in the chat.

So there you go, it’s not only local cus­tomer ser­vice that dri­ves me up the wall. And for­give my scep­ti­cism, but is any­one else won­der­ing what will hap­pen to that 21% tax I paid?

Opin­ion