Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Category: Organizations

  • At Long Last – A Result!

    You may recall that I’ve been trying for some time to get Microsoft to correct some false data that they’ve been holding on me. My Microsoft account for their online stores (the Zune/Xbox Live/Windows Phone service account) states that I live in the US, and not The Netherlands. It’s not possible for the owner of the personal data held in these service accounts to change this, so I’ve been asking Microsoft since December 2010 to either change it on my behalf, or delete the account so that I can create a new one with the correct data.

    The answer (stated in both Microsoft’s Support Forums and by their online Customer Support Teams) has always been that neither of these two options are possible.

    The only option that has ever been offered is to create a new Windows Live ID (WLID) and then use this to create a new service account that is linked to the new Windows Live ID. This has never been an attractive option to me, because it means I would end up with multiple online identities (the WLIDs), and multiple service accounts – at least one of which would still be holding incorrect data.

    It also seems to me that Microsoft could also be said to be contravening EU law on Data Protection, by refusing to correct false data that they hold on me.

    After feeling like I was beating my head against a brick wall with Microsoft’s online Customer Support Teams about this, in March I wrote to Microsoft’s European Headquarters to complain.

    I received a reply from Rob Warwick, XBOX EMEA Senior Advocacy Team, that had me scratching my head, because he was claiming that it was possible to delete my old service account (with the false information) and set up a new one that used my existing Windows Live ID. This directly contradicted everything stated in Microsoft’s Support Forums and by their Customer Support Teams, so I wrote and told him this. For good measure, I also wrote a formal complaint to Microsoft in The Netherlands, using text supplied by the Dutch Data Protection Authority, pointing out that, by holding incorrect data about me, Microsoft was in contravention of Dutch Law (artikel 36 van de Wet bescherming persoonsgegevens).

    I don’t know which of the two complaints worked (see update below), but last week I received an email from a member of Microsoft’s Xbox Global Escalations team. He informed me that they are the highest point of escalation for Xbox across the whole of Europe and that my case had been passed up to them to handle and they now had full ownership.

    He proposed creating a new temporary email address that would be attached to my old service account, thus freeing up my existing Windows Live ID to create a new service account (with the correct data). The old service account, and the temporary email address, would then be deleted by Microsoft. This is effectively what I had been asking for since December 2010.

    I must say that I was a little surprised that I had to get it escalated so far. I’ve asked repeatedly on the Microsoft Answers forums for the old account to be deleted and a new account opened with the same WLID, and had two attempts via online chat with Customer Support to get this done. In all cases, I (and many other people who asked for the same thing) have been repeatedly told that this was not possible, but that I needed to create a new WLID and use it to create a new account. However, it appears, as the Xbox Global Escalations team have demonstrated, to be perfectly possible.

    There are many people who are still in the same situation as I was, and equally frustrated. I find it strange that Microsoft should continue to frustrate and anger its customers, and not take steps to rectify the false information spread via its own Answers forum and Customer Support staff. I should add that the person in the Escalation Team that was dealing with my case has told me that he has now passed the case details regarding this to Microsoft’s Call Center feedback team to ensure the support staff are aware of this process and to ensure that moving forward this is an option for future customers. So hopefully things will improve.

    So to summarise, if you find yourself in the same position as I was, and are being given the runaround by Microsoft’s Customer Support, just write a formal letter of complaint to Microsoft, and ask that it get escalated within Microsoft.

    Update: I’m now pretty sure that it was writing to Microsoft’s European Headquarters, and the subsequent correspondence with Rob Warwick, that got my complaint escalated and successfully addressed. I say this because last week I was phoned by the Dutch Xbox Live support team. My letter to Microsoft in the Netherlands had been passed to them to deal with. The support team proceeded to tell me that the data could not be corrected, and that I’d need to create a new Windows Live ID and a new service account. The same old story, in other words. I took some delight in being able to tell them that in fact I had already got my data corrected, and I did not need to have a new Windows Live ID created. Clearly, the message from the Xbox Global Escalations team has not yet got out to customer support…

    Update 11 October 2012: I’ve seen it being reported in several places on the web that Microsoft Customer Support is now able to migrate your account from one country to another. So it’s just taken five months for the message to get out from the Global Escalation team to Customer Support that migrations are possible…

    Update 25 January 2014: I’m back battling with Microsoft again. This time it’s because of the same problem that has occurred with Martin’s WLID (now called Microsoft Account). It has a US billing account associated with it, despite the fact that we live in the Netherlands. Trying to get Microsoft to resolve the issue is proving frustrating, to say the least.

  • “Features Have Changed”

    Oh gawd, here’s yet another example of Microsoft opening its mouth in order to change feet.

    We happy band of Windows Phone owners (a select few, I grant you) have had a number of ways to purchase Apps for our phone. We can browse the Apps Marketplace via our phones, via a web browser, or via the Zune software running on a PC. I say “had”, because as of yesterday, Microsoft has pulled the ability to browse the Apps Marketplace from the Zune software.

    Microsoft announced the change (on the same day as they implemented it) on their Windows Phone Blog. According to them, they’ve done it because their telemetry data tells them that only a minority of Windows Phone owners use the Zune software to browse the Apps Marketplace. That’s as maybe, but Microsoft could really have done a far better job of communicating the change than merely announcing it on a blog, which is probably read by a tiny minority of Windows Phone owners.

    Let’s imagine, for a moment, that you are one of the people (like me) who uses the Zune software to browse the Apps Marketplace. When you started up Zune on your PC yesterday, this is what you would have seen:

    Zune 5

    No information whatsoever about what the “new features” are, and you might be forgiven for thinking that the “new features” are something that has been added, when in fact something has been removed.

    You might think that it would have been far better to have had an explicit message communicating the fact that the ability to browse the Apps Marketplace has been removed, and to have had a link to the Apps Marketplace on the web, as well as saying that owners can also use their phones directly to browse.

    A number of people (myself included) have commented on the blog post to the effect that the communication of this change could have been handled far better. I see that the author of the post (Mahzar Mohammed) has responded in the comments, but he is still prattling on about the necessity to make the engineering changes. He doesn’t acknowledge (or perhaps didn’t even realise) that the bland “Features have changed” message in the Zune software was a terrible way to communicate the changes to users.

  • Left Hand, Meet Right Hand…

    Sigh, this is yet another rant about Microsoft…

    You may recall that I am concerned about the limitation in Microsoft’s Zune/Xbox Live/Windows Phone service account whereby you can’t change your country of residence if you move. You also can’t delete your Zune/Xbox Live/Windows Phone account without first deleting your linked Windows Live ID.

    I don’t want to delete my Windows Live ID (which I’ve had for more than 10 years), but I’d be perfectly happy to delete my Zune/Xbox Live/Windows Phone service account in order to start afresh with a new one.

    I’m not the only one so concerned, and there’s also an online petition about the issue.

    Last month, I wrote to Microsoft about this issue, asking that they give consideration to introducing the ability for consumers to delete a service account themselves, without also first having to delete the Windows Live ID linked to that account.

    Today, I got a reply from Rob Warwick, XBOX EMEA Senior Advocacy Team. It’s reproduced below (click for full size versions):

    Microsoft Reply scan

    Microsoft Reply scan0001

    I draw your attention to the bit where he says:

    …despite the fact a Windows Live ID needs to be linked to both these accounts, you can cancel either/or both Xbox Live and Zune without deleting the linked Windows Live ID.

    There will be a reply in the post to Mr. Warwick tomorrow. In part, it says:

    I am afraid that either you, or Microsoft’s Zune/Xbox Live Customer Support Teams, are very mistaken in this matter.

    I have tried, on two separate occasions, via online chats with Zune/Xbox Live Customer Support to get my Zune/Xbox Live service account deleted without deleting the linked Windows Live ID. On both occasions, the Microsoft representative flatly informed me that this was impossible, and that my Windows Live ID would have to be deleted first. Only then would the linked Zune/Xbox Live account be deleted.

    Their advice was to create a second Windows Live ID, and then create a new Zune/Xbox Live service account. This is also the answer that is frequently given in the online Microsoft Answers forums.

    Nowhere has it ever been stated that it is possible to cancel either/or both Xbox Live and Zune without deleting the linked Windows Live ID as you claim. In addition, Microsoft’s online self-help account management does not currently offer this option.

    Therefore, with regret, I state that your answer has completely failed to clarify the state of my accounts and the options open to me. I look forward to your further help in resolving this matter.

    Yours sincerely,

    Geoff Coupe

    Left hand, meet right hand…

  • The Past Is Another Country…

    Thanks to a reference from another ex-Shell person, I came across this short film, made in 1963, about Shell Centre in London. It’s quite an extraordinary social document in a way, chock-full of unconscious sexism. But on the other hand, it does give the sense that, at the time, Shell thought of its staff as assets to be looked after and cultivated. Paternalistic, yes, but you got the sense that they cared.

    It was still like that when I joined Shell and began working in Shell Centre in 1980. It really felt like joining a family. I have to say that by the time I retired from Shell, that way of thinking felt as dated as this film. I can’t say that I think it is entirely an improvement.

  • I Don’t Believe It!

    You know, when I was at university, in the dim and distant past, back at the beginning of the 1970s, the LSE (the London School of Economics) was viewed as a hotbed of student activism. So recent events at the LSE have left me completely at a loss.

    It appears that there has been a mass invasion of politically correct body snatchers that has resulted in a Students’ Union that has completely lost the plot about what free expression and the ability to criticise means.

    Maryam Namazie points out the obvious: the LSE SU is supporting criticism of religion, just not that of Islam, which gets a free pass from them.

    It would never have happened in my days at Uni. What on earth is wrong with the students of today?

  • Time is Money

    When I was growing up (many years ago), there used to be a saying: “If you want to know the time, ask a policeman”. Presumably it started when most people did not carry around timepieces of their own, whereas policemen were issued with them as standard equipment.

    These days, it would seem, that London’s policemen consult a higher authority: the “Speaking Clock”.

    Guess how much they spent ringing the Speaking Clock for the time in the past two years?

    Just a staggering £35,000. The mind boggles. Particularly when they could have got the time, for free, from their mobile phones to atomic clock accuracy…

  • Open Mouth, Change Feet…

    For a moment there, I thought that Microsoft were improving. After a bad start in the process for rolling out updates for Windows Phone, they began communicating more transparently about the updates, and began rolling them out in a more timely manner. They even had Eric Hautala, General Manager, Customer Experience Engineering, posting weekly on the Windows Phone Blog about updates and their availability.

    Alas, all those improvements would appear to have come to a screaming halt. Yesterday, Hautala posted about a new Windows Phone update – 8107 – but also stated that it would only be available to those Carriers who requested it. Cue instant uproar from Windows Phone users who fought for improvements in the update process in the first place because Carriers were delaying the release of updates. And then to rub salt into the wounds, Hautala also wrote that Microsoft won’t be individually detailing country, model, and carrier details on the Where’s My Phone Update? site any longer.

    So much for a more transparent process.

    And what is in this update – 8107 – that carriers can elect to request, or not? Well, according to Microsoft it seems to have some pretty important bug fixes:

      • On-screen keyboard. Fixes an issue to prevent the keyboard from disappearing during typing.
      • Email. Fixes a Google mail syncing issue.
      • Location. Fixes a location access issue. With this fix, the Me feature in the People Hub sends anonymous information about nearby Wi-Fi access points and cell towers to Microsoft only if you agree to allow the Check In function to access and use location information.
      • Security. Revokes digital certificates from DigiCert Sdn Bhd to address an encryption issue.
      • Email threads. Fixes an email issue related to Microsoft Exchange Server 2003. With this fix, when you reply to or forward a message, the original message is now included in your response.
      • Voicemail. Fixes a voicemail notification display issue that occurs on some European and Asian networks under certain conditions.

    With the exception of the last bug fix, none of these are carrier-dependent, so why on earth is Hautala saying that we will only get these fixes if our carrier requests them? Frankly, I find this a staggering misstep by Microsoft. How to destroy customer trust overnight… I really am scratching my head trying to work out how an organisation that sets up a function called “Customer Experience Engineering” can do any worse.

  • Gone Missing: Bowers & Wilkins Customer Service

    This is a tale of two British companies that supply Hi-Fi equipment, and my contrasting experiences of their after-sales service.

    The first is the Acoustical Manufacturing Company Limited (now called QUAD Electroacoustics), which was set up by Peter Walker in 1936. It began by manufacturing public address systems, but in the 1950s entered the emerging domestic Hi-Fi market. The second is Bowers & Wilkins (B&W) established in 1966 by John Bowers as a company manufacturing Hi-Fi loudspeakers.

    Back in the late 1960s, I became a Hi-Fi enthusiast, and my first system included a QUAD 33 pre-amp and QUAD 303 power amplifier paired with KEF loudspeakers – the cost of B&W or QUAD loudspeakers was beyond my budget at the time. Eventually, in 1976, I replaced the KEF speakers with a pair of QUAD ESL-57 electrostatic loudspeakers, which I still have and enjoy to this day. I upgraded the QUAD 33/303 combo to a QUAD 44/405 system in 1982, and once again, I still have and use them. Along the way, I also added a QUAD FM Radio tuner.

    In 2008, I branched out into setting up my first Home Cinema system. This time, for the loudspeakers, I went for the B&W M-1 series, which had got good reviews in the Hi-Fi and Home Cinema press.

    In the course of the years, I’ve had to use the after-sales service of QUAD just once. My FM tuner developed a fault in 2005. I emailed QUAD in the UK, and my service request was forwarded to their distributor in the Netherlands, who contacted me the very next day. They subsequently repaired my tuner; result – one happy customer.

    My experience with B&W has, so far, not been so satisfactory.

    Last month, on the night of the 15th November to be precise, a shelf collapsed in our living room. Unfortunately, one of the B&W M-1 speakers was sitting on it at the time. It fell to the floor, but the fall was broken by the speaker cable. However, these little speakers are surprisingly heavy, and the result was that a small circuit board in the table stand that connects the external cable connections to the speaker itself got ripped in two; one half remained attached to the cable, the other half remained in the stand:

    20111116-1415-00

    So, on the 16th November I contacted B&W, via their web site, to ask them if it would be possible to obtain a replacement. On submitting the request, the web site promised that I would have a reply from B&W within three working days, and an automated response, copying my request, was sent to my email address.

    Three working days went by, and nothing further was heard.

    On the 28th November, I submitted the request again. Once again, the web site promised a response within three working days, and once again an acknowledgement of the request arrived in my email inbox. That’s the only thing that arrived. Once again, I’ve heard nothing further from B&W. Er, hello? Is this supposed to be customer service? I think not.

    Bowers & Wilkins Customer Service – gone missing. Result: one very unhappy customer.

    I should have stuck to Quad.

    Update 7 December 2011

    Well, it seems as though blogging about my experience with B&W customer service has produced a result. I was contacted this morning, first by the Director of Export Sales, and subsequently by the Group Service Manager.

    It would appear that their web contact form misdirected my messages, so no action was taken. I just wonder how many other customers this may have affected, leaving a trail of bad feelings in its wake.

    However, in my case, the issue has been resolved, and I’ll be able to repair my speaker. B&W’s customer service has been found.

  • Hoist By Their Own Petard

    A rather ironic little story in the Dutch news today… TomTom, the Dutch SatNav company collects information from its devices installed in cars. This information gives an insight into the driving habits of the motorists using the TomTom devices.

    TomTom sells this information on to other companies. One such company has taken a very enterprising approach and sells the data to the Dutch Police, who use it to determine where best to set their speed traps. Quite right, too.

  • “Many Tears Are Dropping”

    I see the Sandd/Selektmail postman riding by almost daily, clad in yellow, astride his moped. If he stops by our letterbox, it is to deliver mail that hovers dangerously close to what most people would describe as junkmail. If I’m nearby, I give him a friendly wave.

    However, if this article by James Meek is to be believed, then perhaps a friendly wave is not enough to compensate for the postman’s lot.

  • The Other Shoe Drops

    If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll be aware that I recently moved across to hosting it on Blogger after more than five years of it being hosted on Microsoft’s Windows Live Spaces.

    I made the move in June when Microsoft started removing features of the Spaces service. Despite a chorus of complaints from users, Microsoft would not come clean about their plans for the service. Indeed, they denied that anything was amiss. Nevertheless, I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop, and today it did.

    Microsoft have announced that they are pulling the plug on Windows Live Spaces. They have at least tried to sugar the pill by offering existing users the chance to migrate their blogs over to being hosted on WordPress.com, but the Microsoft gadgets that people used to customise the look and feel of their blogs are no more. So it’s not a full migration, just a migration of the core blog entries and nothing else.

    Although I had set up an account on WordPress.com in June as a trial, I finally decided to move to Blogger, because there I was able to use Javascript in widgets and blog entries. WordPress.com, like Windows Live Spaces, does not allow the use of Javascript. That meant that I could not embed my Photosynths in my posts, or use the LibraryThing widget to display a rolling selection of books from my library on my blog.

    I’ve decided to stick with hosting my blog on Blogger, but I have migrated the content of my old blog from Windows Live Spaces to WordPress.com in order to preserve it once Microsoft wipe out Spaces. That content can be found at Geoff Coupe’s (Old) Blog.

    So what can we learn from all of this? Well, it seems to me that Microsoft’s customer relations in this instance have clearly followed the mushroom model; i.e. keep your customers in the dark and throw shit on them. Not a good way to deal with your customers I would have thought. This debacle has certainly left a bad impression on me.

    Update: Cough, after a couple of months, I left Blogger and moved back to WordPress

  • A Catholic Appeal

    Johann Hari addresses an appeal to British Catholics in the run up to the Pope’s visit. I suspect that most will be blinded by hero worship and not see the feet of clay in the red Prada shoes.

  • The Pope and Gorgeous Georg

    Colm Tóibín has a very good article in the London Review of Books looking at the issue of homosexuality and the Catholic Church. It’s long and it’s worth reading.

  • Missing the Target

    We wade through a sea of advertising these days. Waves of the stuff crash in via post, newspapers, email, TV and many other channels. Most of it is not targeted at us as individuals, but the percentage of advertising that has been created specifically because of our past purchasing history is rising all the time. Amazon, for example have done this for years.
     
    So it’s something of a jolt when a company sends out what you think would be a perfect opportunity for targeted advertising and gets it massively wrong.
     
    Yesterday, for example, I got an email from Geni, an online genealogy service that I happen to be a member of:

    "This Mother’s Day, give that special mom in your life a truly unique gift: a beautiful, framed poster of her family tree.

    Because your family tree is already on Geni, sending a poster is a snap. Personalize her poster with your choice of designs and colors. Each includes up to five generations of relatives, and can be shipped directly to her".

    Er, just one thing; my mother died in 2001…

  • Moving In Mysterious Ways

    Last week, I ordered a new monitor from Dell. Yesterday, I received an email from Dell telling me that the monitor had been despatched from the warehouse, and was on its way via UPS. The email also gave a link to a UPS web page that tracks the progress of the package.
     
    I confess I am confused. So far, the package seems to have come into the Netherlands at Eindhoven airport yesterday, from where it was promptly despatched to Brussels in Belgium. Hello? This seems to be a case of one step forward, two steps back. Brussels is twice as far away from here than Eindhoven is, and it’s in another country. UPS seem convinced that the package will be delivered today. We’ll see.
     
    This is not the first time that I’ve had experience of UPS moving stuff around in mysterious ways. A few years back, a Dell system was despatched to me from Ireland. It first travelled to Rotterdam, then was sent to France, where it languished for a few days, and eventually was returned to Rotterdam for delivery to me a few kilometers away in Gouda.
     
    Update: …Their wonders to perform… Well, it arrived shortly before 1PM today. I still think that sending it further away to Brussels seems a bit bizarre, but there you go…

  • Blood Money

    So, Shell has settled out of court with the plaintiffs in the Saro-Wiwa case. As a retired employee of Shell, I have the uncomfortable feeling that too much dirty linen would have been aired in court, which saddens, but doesn’t really surprise, me. At least the Saro-Wiwa family and the other plaintiffs feel some sense of closure, which is a good thing, but I am not proud of Shell.
     
    And now Malcolm Brinded, the executive director of Royal Dutch Shell, has an opinion piece in today’s Guardian claiming that Shell wanted an opportunity to prove its innocence, and that settling out of court, far from suggesting that Shell was guilty, was the right thing to do. The piece strikes me as a study in breathtaking effrontery. No, I’m not proud of Shell at the moment. 

  • The Executive Summit

    This story, from The Daily WTF, reminds me of what I often observed in my working life. To be fair, though, in some of the buildings the facilities seemed as though they had been designed as an IQ test by a particularly fiendish architect.

  • Flying Blue Unspeak

    I’m a member of KLM’s frequent flyer group: Flying Blue. My membership dates from the time when I worked for Shell, and clocked up a fair amount of flying points (and over forty of the Royal Delft houses) visiting various Shell companies around the world over a period of twenty four years. I accumulated so many points, that my frequent flyer card is, so KLM currently state, at "Platinum" level for life.
     
    Since taking retirement, I’ve hardly travelled at all. Still, I thought, the flight miles that I had accumulated would remain "in the bank", as it were, ready for when I wanted/needed to redeem them. KLM’s Frequent Flyer programme has always had a point of saying that the award miles were "valid for life". Silly me; today I received an email from Flying Blue telling me that, as from the 1st April 2009:
    "Your Award Miles are valid for life, the only condition is that you take a flight with a paid ticket allowing Miles accumulation at least once every 20 months with AIR FRANCE, KLM, Air Europa, Kenya Airways or Aircalin, or one of the SkyTeam partner airlines".  
    "The only condition"? Excuse me, you’ve just totally redefined the meaning of "valid for life". Flying Blue have the gall to say in their email:
    "Flying Blue is committed to rewarding its active customers". 
    This is clearly Unspeak for "Flying Blue is committed to screw its non-active customers". Well, thanks a bunch, you bastards.

  • Interviewing Van Der Veer

    Here’s a video (with an accompanying article) of George Monbiot interviewing Jeroen van der Veer, CEO of Shell. It’s worth watching, and the article is thoughtful as well. The key point, it seems to me, is that, as Monbiot says:
    Saving the biosphere, in other words, cannot be left to goodwill and greenwash: the humanity of pleasant men like Van der Veer will always be swept aside by the imperative to maximise returns. Good people in these circumstances do terrible things. 

  • Take Aim, Fire…

    Yes, I know it’s a bit like shooting fish in a barrel, but I couldn’t help but cheer the Cranky Product Manager on as she pours withering scorn over this poor sap.