10-year-old Microsoft Ticket Resurfaces?

Ian Lamont writes "Microsoft is apparently taking seriously a blogger's claim that a Microsoft tech support employee called back to check on a 10-year-old BSOD trouble ticket. The anonymous blogger suspects someone at Microsoft typed "1/8/08" into their tracking system for the date of a follow-up call, instead of "1/8/98." Microsoft told Computerworld support cases "are reviewed regularly so that we can ensure we're resolving customer issues in a timely fashion — regardless of the callback commitment set by the agent. Nonetheless, no system can ensure complete accuracy."" To be fair, this is all unverified, so choose to believe at your own risk.

heh, interesting disclaimer

[by Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, this is all unverified, so choose to believe at your own risk.

This is slashdot. The article is critical of Microsoft. Of course they will believe.

Re:heh, interesting disclaimer

[El Pollo Loco (562236)]

I believe I can fly
I believe I can touch the sky
A blue screen every night and day
call MS and yell away

I believe they will call
I see them calling 10 years down the road
I believe in MS
I believe in MS

Re:heh, interesting disclaimer

[commodoresloat (172735)]

The anonymous blogger suspects someone at Microsoft typed "1/8/08" into their tracking system for the date of a follow-up call, instead of "1/8/98."

Look, folks, if Microsoft had been spying on their employees back then, this never would have happened.

Re:heh, interesting disclaimer

[SpaceLifeForm (228190)]

Even if it's not true, the real question is:

After ten years, has Microsoft fixed the bug yet?

Re:heh, interesting disclaimer

[ConceptJunkie (24823)]

Actually, I don't find this outrageous or obnoxious or anything. These things happen. It's like the U.S. Mail delivering a letter decades after it was posted. They handle billions of pieces a year. It's bound to happen eventually.

What I want to know is whether the BSOD problem was ever fixed in those 10 years?

Re:

[Smauler (915644)]

As I recently found out when installing Vista 64. Nice brand new system, built myself, the problem was (and still is) that I've got 4gb of RAM on an nVIDIA chipset motherboard. Vista, from what I can tell, will not install at all with that configuration. Fortunately, I already installed Win2k and got it working properly, so could google it, and figured it out - the solution apparently is to take some of your memory out before installation, install, then go get microsoft's hotfix. Well, I took 2gb out, a

Re:

[ckaminski (82854)]

I disagree. Microsoft's second level tech support, or the MSDN support guys, are absolutely wonderful. It's the first level support that's farmed out to call centers like Stream that sucks rocks.

Re:heh, interesting disclaimer

[idontgno (624372)]

Yeah, I was going for the lame anti-MS joke.

What saddens me is that the only moderation I've gotten up to this point is +1 Insightful.

/. moderation makes Baby Jeebus cry.

I don't believe it

[oni (41625)]

Let's think about all the things that would have to happen for this story to be true:

1. Microsoft must have no mechanism for tracking work order/help requests. Come on. Every manager has daily/weekly/monthly reports that show the number of requests opened/closed/carried over and it flags old requests, and it sorts by age, so the oldest issue shows up at the top of the list. A manager would have seen this.

2. When the help desk guy was assigned to make the followup call, he didn't notice and find it odd that the original call came in 10 years ago? He didn't call his supervisor over and say, "hey I think somebody made a mistake here! Maybe we should just close this out."

3. Somebody has the same phone number of 10 years.

Or we could go with theory B: a blogger made up a funny story.

Re:I don't believe it

[ByOhTek (1181381)]

(2) is reasonable. Depending on the workload and setup, it is very reasonable the support agent didn't even look at the date field before making the call.

(3) I know some people that have had the same number for 10 years. Some for a lot longer than that.

Re:

[LMacG (118321)]

> 3. Somebody has the same phone number of 10 years.

This comes up on /. fairly often. I can think of dozens of people who have had the same number for at least that long. Heck, my aunt in Pennsylvania has had her number so long, I remember when we used a named exchange (OSborne 5) for it. I don't get the collective perception that keeping a phone number is unusual.

Re:

[bhsurfer (539137)]

i wonder if the perception of phone numbers as something that frequently changes has any correlation with job-hopping. it would seem to me that the type of person who jumps jobs every 2 years would probably also be the type of person who moves frequently and thus doesn't always get to keep their phone number, and i'm going to take a wild guess that at least some people here fit neatly in that category.

of course, i've only been in my current job for about 7 months and my landline number is 6 years old, so o

Re:I don't believe it

[EricWright (16803)]

My father, who worked in two-way communication systems (think CB radios/base stations, 911 comms systems, etc) before retirement, has had the same mobile phone number since the late 1980s when it was attached to an $1100 in car system, the old kind with a base station mounted under the driver's seat and a handset cradle bolted onto the floorboard. He actually kept the same number with the same system (through NUMEROUS buyouts/takeovers) until cell number portability was finally mandated in the US.

Makes my 9 years with the same mobile number seem paltry in comparison.

Re:

[Splab (574204)]

Oh the joys of those good old times. My dad had one of those cell phones installed when it was very new in Denmark (this was early 90'ties), it was very impressive back then - even had hands free installed which pretty much required most of the car to be taken apart.

Re:

[moderatorrater (1095745)]

Whatever happened, I think it's dumb to condemn Microsoft over this. With how many tickets they've dealt with since Windows and DOS came out, having this happen once isn't a bad record.

That being said, you should add: 4. Their system for tracking tickets would have to not have changed in the past 10 years.

Re:I don't believe it

[croddy (659025)]

It's inevitable that a ticket will fall through the cracks once in a while. My first reaction was "Wow, impressive. They retain trouble ticket data for 10+ years."

Re:

[ckaminski (82854)]

I had a coworker, 99, 2000 maybe who had the entire Microsoft internal knowledgebase from Stream on a collection of a dozen CDs. As a developer, those CDs were like gold-plated gold. I'm sorry I don't have them anymore...

Re:I don't believe it

[ILongForDarkness (1134931)]

2. When the help desk guy was assigned to make the followup call, he didn't notice and find it odd that the original call came in 10 years ago? He didn't call his supervisor over and say, "hey I think somebody made a mistake here! Maybe we should just close this out."

They probably have an autodialer, the agent didn't even see the ticket before the system called the guy. I worked for a Capital One call center for a while. I was real nice when the systems were slow: "Hi ... is ... Steve Johnson there" I must have sounded retarded but it was actually that I was waiting for the account to come up so I knew who "I" just called.

Re:I don't believe it

[Lumpy (12016)]

1 - Most trouble ticket software I have been exposed to can easily let this happen, enter in the wrong date like that and it will not show up on some reports.

2 - you are giving way too much credit in abilities to help desk people. it's so bad nowdays that most are incredibly uncaring and skilled due to falling wages.

3 - I not only have the same phone # from 10 years ago, but it's a cellphone number! I also plan on keeping my voIP number for at least 25 years or until my provider dies or turns evil.

I know many people that have been bugged by incredibly old followup calls from tech service at a company. One friend was called on gear that we had removed and threw away for at least a year and a half... It was on a spontaneous reboot issue we reported 5 years ago.

Re:

[antibryce (124264)]

until my provider dies or turns evil

Better keep a wooden stake nearby, in case it does both.

timestamps?

[192939495969798999 (58312)]

Microsoft built a system without timestamps, where you have to manually enter a date? I dunno whether calling that believable or not believable is more flamebait, but it's sure a wild story.

Re:

[fataugie (89032)]

If employees pay peanuts they can only expect monkeys!

Woooha, slow down cheif.

Employers, not employees pay...
and, monkeys work for bananas, not peanuts.

Clearly not their fault

[Thanshin (1188877)]

Microsoft actually answered in time and slashdot reported the news ten years late.

I call BS.

[RandoX (828285)]

Nobody EVER calls back.

This seems fishy

[The Wing Lover (106357)]

I can't exactly put my finger on it, but there is something about the blogger's story that does not ring true. Maybe it is the lack of any personal information, or the implausibility of the ticketing system just cheerfully accepting a 10-year-distant callback date, or the implausibility of the tech who called his parents failing to notice that he was responding to a 10-year-old ticket.

In any case, I would hope that Microsoft actually verifies the claims before making a big deal of them.

No way

[dtolman (688781)]

I have worked in tech support at other companies, and we used to get regular reports about the oldest outstanding issues. And that was 10 YEARS ago - the same time this issue was opened. I can understand fat fingering the callback date - but no way an issue that old would get by for that long without being flagged by someone...

Oh, really?

[truthsearch (249536)]

Microsoft told Computerworld support cases "are reviewed regularly so that we can ensure we're resolving customer issues in a timely fashion

I guess everything is relative. Every time I had a support issue that required contact with a Microsoft developer it took days to even speak with one. And this was "enterprise" paid support, so I can only imagine what others must go through.

To their credit, once we were in contact with a developer they were usually helpful and always fast. But getting to the right pe

Re:

[dtolman (688781)]

From my experience at other tech companies, I think you're misinterpreting the corporate double speak that really just means that they regularly review issues to make sure they don't have months old cases cluttering up the system.

The real questions are...

[nullCRC (320940)]

1. Why is this considered "news"?
2. Who cares?

Re:

[RandoX (828285)]

I care. Unfortunately, I'm slightly outside the criteria to be considered a nerd, so your comment still stands.

So?

[ashridah (72567)]

I filed a bug against FreeBSD back in 1998. I didn't get a reply on that ticket until late 2002, if memory serves. Turned out to be a known issue with supporting EIDE, turning that off in the BIOS did the trick, as I discovered, and followed up the ticket myself the next day.

Over 2-3 years later, someone finally closed the ticket.

These things happen.

data entry is fun

[by Anonymous Coward]

yes, its true. some people have to work for a living and do things like type in bunches of numbers between incompatible systems. sometimes after 10 or 11 hours on a friday when you are late to pick up your kids and your weird supervisor said your shoes are not 'professional looking' enough, and you skipped lunch break to meet deadlines and the coffee machine was broken, and the printer jammed for the 8th time and someone told you that you should have filled out a problem report, and it was your responsibility, even though you have already filled out 5 problem reports all of which were completely ignored....

sometimes you might make a typo.

Maybe it's valid?

[Xest (935314)]

Perhaps the guy was setting up his machine ready to play Duke Nukem Forever expecting its imminent release and the guy at Microsoft knew better and put in what he thought was a suitable follow up date for checking if it worked out okay for him?

Only human

[ProteusQ (665382)]

I know of a prof who will remain as nameless as her university and department who, in 1992, called up a student to ask if he was still interested in a graduate assistant teaching position. He declined; he had sent his letter of inquiry back in 1978 and was no longer interested.

Re:

[trongey (21550)]

I know of a prof who will remain as nameless...

That's amazing. I'm always astounded by the things people without names have been able to accomplish.
On the other hand, what's up with parents? If you're gonna have kids you've got to at least take responsibility for giving them names.

Obviously fake

[Jugalator (259273)]

To be fair, this is all unverified, so choose to believe at your own risk.

From the article:

but that must have been when I was living at home with my parents

He's making the claim that he's not living at home anymore, under the condition that he's a geek.
From Geek Corollary #63, it follows that he's lying.

QED

Microsoft's reply

[gEvil (beta) (945888)]

"Sir, if you'd just wait until next year when we release Windows ME, I'm sure you'll find that all of your problems will have been resolved."

Trouble Ticket Systems

[jhRisk (1055806)]

Although I can understand how crazy things do indeed sometimes happen, but I don't know of a single "decent" trouble ticket system that by default doesn't mitigate such occurrences. Although the call back date could be set for any time whatsoever, there's always a date for resolution. Normally it's entered automatically based on the type of ticket, severity label as per the tech's discretion or any number of criteria and often not able to be changed by the tech him/herself. This prevents techs from trying to escape being listed on the "overdue" or "open tickets" reports managers pull up. If the tech can modify it then normally the managers pull reports on "time to resolve issue" or other such reports that would have eventually shown a ticket open for a long period of time.

What this reminds me of is a disturbing trend in bloggers that any traffic is good traffic and since they have little to loose they'll do just about anything. Gamecocks, Gizmodo and if we dig perhaps others recently, too. After all, when MS closes tickets they like to send an email (in fact one time I couldn't tell them I simply wanted to close a ticket, put no resolution and not receive an email but they were not allowed to just "drop it.) So why wouldn't the blogger get it as definitive proof of the event?

At the end of the day maybe it did happen... maybe it was data corruption... who knows but it smells fishy.

Why does it matter how long it takes?

[serutan (259622)]

The solution is still the same: Reinstall Windows.

Calling to close it after 10 years because...

[MahariBalzitch (902744)]

The tech finally found the solution for the BSOD:

Microsoft Tech: "Hello, I found a solution to your BSOD problem".

Customer: "What is the solution that it took you 10 years to find?".

Microsoft Tech: "Upgrade to Windows Vista. Have a nice day!".

Customer: "Fucker...".

Doubtful

[foetusinc (766466)]

I call BS. I worked Windows 95 support around that time ('98), and while we did often call people back to check on problems, it didn't work the way this guy imagines. Calls logged in workbench that we wanted to follow up on were just left open. Each morning you checked your open tickets, and called the ones that needed calling. No automated dialer either, as some have suggested. If something was left open to long your supervisor would check on it with you, and it would get closed or escalated posthaste.

If this guy really did get a call, my guess is he got a wrong number when a tech was following up on somebody else's problem. Maybe his customer record got mistakenly linked to somebody else's ticket. Maybe he's making the whole story up.

This one time at band camp...

[dintech (998802)]

People actually remember computers systems things that routinely do something interesting (good or bad) such as computer systems, cars, girlfriends and so on. Although these things aren't now deep within your long term memory it can take very little to bring them back. A sound, a smell a phone call from Microsoft...

Re:This one time at band camp...

[tristian_was_here (865394)]

You will if it's Ballmer on the other end.

Re:

[VagaStorm (691999)]

lol, the interesting thing her is that even tho they whant me to spend a fortune on not so backwards compatible upgrades evry 2 or 3 years, they them self have a system that goes back 10+ years :D :D

Re:

[Guppy06 (410832)]

He whose tab key is worn down.

Re:

[Anne Thwacks (531696)]

Dont hold your breath!

Re:

[ByOhTek (1181381)]

but it was really nice and fast on my computer (which was probably about a 333 GHz Pentium 2).

Wow. That's some impressive overclocking there. Liquid Hydrogen I take it? /sorry, had to be an ass there.

Seriously, 2-3 crashes a day? That would be intolerable for me. Mine (Visual Studios, several games, office, web) Crashed maybe once a week or two in Windows 98 when I tried to see how long I could run it. Of course, after running for almost a week, it was very slow.

Re:

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

They fixed them with the original XBox. When it blue-screened at an early public demo, Bill Gates said 'this machine must never blue-screen at a demo again.' So the developer team changed the background colour of the debug output screen to green.

Re:

[Otto (17870)]

Microsoft is based in the USA, not in Europe. 1/8/08 = January 8th, 2008.

Re:Hey, they're early!

[meringuoid (568297)]

Actually, if the ticket was for 1/8/08, then they're early -- by six and a half months.

On 11/9/2001, Osama bin Laden provided us all with the only lesson we'll ever need to help us remember how Americans write the date. 'Remember, remember, the eleventh of September, 9/11 airliner plot...'

The London bombers of 2005 were considerate enough to time their attacks such that news agencies on both sides of the Atlantic could use the same date shorthand :-)