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

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

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

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

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

After ten years, has Microsoft fixed the bug yet?

Re:heh, interesting disclaimer

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:heh, interesting disclaimer

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

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

(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:

> 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 us

Re:I don't believe it

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:I don't believe it

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

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:I don't believe it

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."

Clearly not their fault

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

I call BS.

Nobody EVER calls back.

This seems fishy

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

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...

So?

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.

Maybe it's valid?

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?

Obviously fake

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

"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."

Calling to close it after 10 years because...

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

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.

Re:This one time at band camp...

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

Re:Hey, they're early!

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 :-)