I currently work in 1st level support for an ISP, but I'll send my resignation letter this month because the job is total crap. Anyway, I have a technical background and at least I know what I'm doing, and so do some of my co-workers who have been there for years. But some don't have any clue about anything. Heck, some don't even know the difference between a wired connection and a Wi-Fi connection, but they're considered qualified enough to help customers with their connectivity issues. So here is how it works: Anyone who can type two words on a keyboard is hired, gets 2 to 4 weeks of training and voilà, now we have new tech "experts" on our team. Doing tech support basically means search the database for a manual that loosely has something to do with the customer's question and then just read instructions from the checklist "do this, do that, is it working now?".
So yeah, your experience is completely in line with the standard operating procedures at many tech companies. By the way, did they try to sell you something? We're supposed to ask this at every customer contact no matter what: Thank you for contacting support, I hope I was able to resolve your issue, may I offer you an upgrade for your existing contract?
I got the email from MS about the price increase and was furious. Here was my reply to their email - Absolutely ridiculous. I have seen no value added in the past ten years. Originally I had 365 that came with my computer and somehow it switched to having to pay for it yearly. My email is the worst it's ever been since. I get over 20 junk emails daily using Hotmail/ Office. I report them and they still keep coming. Now you want to raise the price 42%. If I didn't to need have Word . I would tell you exactly where to stick this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
People need to realize that "The Cloud" is just your stuff on someone else's computer.
I've been in IT for 25+ years now. For much of that time. I've hosted my own e-mail, which was useful for me for testing various things. So I used to have a small Exchange box, but it's recently been archived in favor of Carbonio CE, which is free and fairly easy to get up and running.
It looks like there's a big push on by Micro$oft to push everyone into subscriptions and hosted "services", and of course they're gonna "monetize" the hell out of them (i.e.: rape everyone with price increases) when they can. I would say that this is a strong counter-argument for moving away from Micro$oft. Certainly there is a business case for doing so. You might not be able to get away from Windows on the desktop, and that is fine, but there are plenty of other options in terms of "productivity" apps. Libre Office and a different mail and or file hosting provider would serve most peoples' needs.
Most people - like myself - would need something low maintenance and off-the-shelf. Any specific suggestions?
Also I am assuming that - unlike cellphone numbers - we don't have the right to transfer our own email addresses? (That right would be massively pro-competition.)
Mine is an username@outlook.com address and to be frank changing my main email address would be an absolute pain.
If you want your own transferrable e-mail address, you need your own domain. then your e-mail becomes (yourname)@yourdomain.whatever, and you can point that anywhere you like and take it with you.
Since Micro$oft owns the outlook.com domain, you can't take that address with you. But what you can do is forward mail sent to your outlook.com address to your new one. Eventually people will get used to the new address and you can decommission the old one.
Many domain registrars also offer mail and web hosting (or is it web/e-mail hosts offer domain registry?). Godaddy, Bluehost, Hostgator are a few. Shop around. They have plenty of info on their sites.
I've been in IT over 30 years, this is common place, all sense has left the industry which is now saturated with cheap utterly incompetent resources at the coal face and expensive utterly incompetent resources higher up. While the companies are making mega profits from their customers with a 'service levels out, money' in model. #PutUpShutUp
This perfectly sums up the world today, it's all fcuked. The new normal.
It is beyond me why everyone swarms the gropers and sluicers when they could have privacy. Sorry, but instead of growing alternative and ethical platforms, we just can’t rip ourselves away from being abused. What’s with that?
The problem is that just like game companies do, Microsoft hires programmers to do a project but then only keeps some of them, usually the cheaper ones.
When there's a bug they cannot figure it out because they never keep the original skilled labor.
They are not interested in your thoughts on the matter they are the "experts" and will tell you what is wrong and what must be done even if it does not work, it is also known as the 9th circle of hell.
I too am regularly frustrated beyond measure with Microsoft (though I do not use Outlook). The saddest and strangest part is that Gates made his wealth on this pathetic product.
If you want help, i can zoom any time tonight. Direct message me and I'll send you a zoom link. For qualifications look up Andi Vendetta West in Amazom books, authors, etc. It will save you a day of frustration and i'll walk you through the troubleshooting and get your email back up and running in no time. Most likely it is a firewall issue or a "third party application authentication" issue, but won't know until we check a couple things.
I did read the article. Access to the indexed mail list or as you call it, web client, is the apparent issue. To troubleshoot it you start with everything that could be blocking that access and work forward from there. If your intention is to just blame Microsoft and hope that they fix the issue, it will likely never be fixed.
Great, glad to hear they cleared it up for you. I seriously was not popping on here to argue with anyone. Just to offer free web support* if you wanted it. The speculative suggested plan of attack was just that. Especially with MS programs, start with the basics such as powercycle the machine and move forward from there. It takes less time to run through those basics than it does to explain why and failure to do so will often put one in a position hours later of having to go back and run them anyways, but since this is solved, yay.
*25 years working in the field and have written 2 college text books on Windows set up and security, so not just your average random commenter.
You are wrong. There is no issue getting to the outlook website, the issue is with Outlook search both local and web as Jonathan clearly articulates. The problem is with Microsoft and only they can fix it as Jonathan has now stated Microsoft have confirmed.
Your comments perfectly highlight the problem with these services as I and others others have pointed out here!
I had something similar happen but not with search - I was trying to move my brother's files off of my phone to be dealing with a phone app error that I wanted fixed to get them off - when I consulted chat, the chat decided to ask for "remote access" which I stupidly permitted them to (this, after spending two weeks with One Drive support trying to divorce myself off of One Drive with sensitive data at 1.85GB). So I had no backup to OneDrive anymore and I couldn't exactly pull everything OneDrive because even though you might *think* you are moving your files off to a SSD hard disk that you think is safe, it is actually not, because when you check all you see are empty folders in your file structure and not the actual pictures or files you think you moved (alas, they are still stuck in onedrive where Microsoft likes to hang onto them, but they refuse to move them to your local because either there is a shortcut error or the checkbox is not solid green). Then randomly, the chat turned out to be a bot who on their own decided to do a "factory reset" without my permission - me fighting and swearing at the bot grabbing my mouse with all my might and fury and losing. After an agonizing 25 minutes, the PC restarted, with my data thank God still there. Never, ever use chat - always speak to a person and then verify, whether it's an actual human on the other end. Their "automated" workflows are evil and malicious. Their OneDrive is too. All meant to force you into paying more for their subscriptions, becoming dependent on them, and buying more and more and more space and more and more and more fees.
Lack of competition, squashed competition, in the technology world. When M'soft can own so much of the market , what do they care about the customer? Monry money money.
I have always loathed Outlook. Daily updates to try to make it better and it never is. While apple’s mail system is much much better, I have now subscribed to Protonmail. So much better and properly private.
Hi Jonathan, try changing the search to across "All Mailboxes" instead of the default "Current Mailbox" - as this seems to be a workaround for some users having the same problem.
I currently work in 1st level support for an ISP, but I'll send my resignation letter this month because the job is total crap. Anyway, I have a technical background and at least I know what I'm doing, and so do some of my co-workers who have been there for years. But some don't have any clue about anything. Heck, some don't even know the difference between a wired connection and a Wi-Fi connection, but they're considered qualified enough to help customers with their connectivity issues. So here is how it works: Anyone who can type two words on a keyboard is hired, gets 2 to 4 weeks of training and voilà, now we have new tech "experts" on our team. Doing tech support basically means search the database for a manual that loosely has something to do with the customer's question and then just read instructions from the checklist "do this, do that, is it working now?".
So yeah, your experience is completely in line with the standard operating procedures at many tech companies. By the way, did they try to sell you something? We're supposed to ask this at every customer contact no matter what: Thank you for contacting support, I hope I was able to resolve your issue, may I offer you an upgrade for your existing contract?
I got the email from MS about the price increase and was furious. Here was my reply to their email - Absolutely ridiculous. I have seen no value added in the past ten years. Originally I had 365 that came with my computer and somehow it switched to having to pay for it yearly. My email is the worst it's ever been since. I get over 20 junk emails daily using Hotmail/ Office. I report them and they still keep coming. Now you want to raise the price 42%. If I didn't to need have Word . I would tell you exactly where to stick this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
People need to realize that "The Cloud" is just your stuff on someone else's computer.
I've been in IT for 25+ years now. For much of that time. I've hosted my own e-mail, which was useful for me for testing various things. So I used to have a small Exchange box, but it's recently been archived in favor of Carbonio CE, which is free and fairly easy to get up and running.
It looks like there's a big push on by Micro$oft to push everyone into subscriptions and hosted "services", and of course they're gonna "monetize" the hell out of them (i.e.: rape everyone with price increases) when they can. I would say that this is a strong counter-argument for moving away from Micro$oft. Certainly there is a business case for doing so. You might not be able to get away from Windows on the desktop, and that is fine, but there are plenty of other options in terms of "productivity" apps. Libre Office and a different mail and or file hosting provider would serve most peoples' needs.
Thanks.
Most people - like myself - would need something low maintenance and off-the-shelf. Any specific suggestions?
Also I am assuming that - unlike cellphone numbers - we don't have the right to transfer our own email addresses? (That right would be massively pro-competition.)
Mine is an username@outlook.com address and to be frank changing my main email address would be an absolute pain.
If you want your own transferrable e-mail address, you need your own domain. then your e-mail becomes (yourname)@yourdomain.whatever, and you can point that anywhere you like and take it with you.
Since Micro$oft owns the outlook.com domain, you can't take that address with you. But what you can do is forward mail sent to your outlook.com address to your new one. Eventually people will get used to the new address and you can decommission the old one.
Many domain registrars also offer mail and web hosting (or is it web/e-mail hosts offer domain registry?). Godaddy, Bluehost, Hostgator are a few. Shop around. They have plenty of info on their sites.
Thanks for the suggestions.
I've been in IT over 30 years, this is common place, all sense has left the industry which is now saturated with cheap utterly incompetent resources at the coal face and expensive utterly incompetent resources higher up. While the companies are making mega profits from their customers with a 'service levels out, money' in model. #PutUpShutUp
This perfectly sums up the world today, it's all fcuked. The new normal.
There are other systems. They work quite well.
It is beyond me why everyone swarms the gropers and sluicers when they could have privacy. Sorry, but instead of growing alternative and ethical platforms, we just can’t rip ourselves away from being abused. What’s with that?
Have you tried the web version?
The problem is that just like game companies do, Microsoft hires programmers to do a project but then only keeps some of them, usually the cheaper ones.
When there's a bug they cannot figure it out because they never keep the original skilled labor.
End stage capitalism.
Yes…as I say in the article.
The hardest thing is getting the first level support to understand where to send the ticket.
And then higher level support is sparse at best.
I had to deal with my local electric utility on a technical issue and until I was able to reach their engineer, the issue was run around.
Get a Mac😊
They are not interested in your thoughts on the matter they are the "experts" and will tell you what is wrong and what must be done even if it does not work, it is also known as the 9th circle of hell.
Get a Mac!
I too am regularly frustrated beyond measure with Microsoft (though I do not use Outlook). The saddest and strangest part is that Gates made his wealth on this pathetic product.
If you want help, i can zoom any time tonight. Direct message me and I'll send you a zoom link. For qualifications look up Andi Vendetta West in Amazom books, authors, etc. It will save you a day of frustration and i'll walk you through the troubleshooting and get your email back up and running in no time. Most likely it is a firewall issue or a "third party application authentication" issue, but won't know until we check a couple things.
The problem is with the web client also, the issue sits firmly with Microsoft!l. Reread the article!!!
I did read the article. Access to the indexed mail list or as you call it, web client, is the apparent issue. To troubleshoot it you start with everything that could be blocking that access and work forward from there. If your intention is to just blame Microsoft and hope that they fix the issue, it will likely never be fixed.
It is impossible that this is an issue anywhere else other than with something at MS’s end.
They’ve now emailed me basically admitting it.
The point is that this just started out of the blue simultaneously affecting 3 PCs AND outlook accessed via all browsers and any internet connection.
I didn’t mention, but my wife’s account (accessed via the same outlook installation on all 3 PCs) is fine.
The above is only compatible with a server side issue affecting my mailbox only.
Great, glad to hear they cleared it up for you. I seriously was not popping on here to argue with anyone. Just to offer free web support* if you wanted it. The speculative suggested plan of attack was just that. Especially with MS programs, start with the basics such as powercycle the machine and move forward from there. It takes less time to run through those basics than it does to explain why and failure to do so will often put one in a position hours later of having to go back and run them anyways, but since this is solved, yay.
*25 years working in the field and have written 2 college text books on Windows set up and security, so not just your average random commenter.
You are wrong. There is no issue getting to the outlook website, the issue is with Outlook search both local and web as Jonathan clearly articulates. The problem is with Microsoft and only they can fix it as Jonathan has now stated Microsoft have confirmed.
Your comments perfectly highlight the problem with these services as I and others others have pointed out here!
I had something similar happen but not with search - I was trying to move my brother's files off of my phone to be dealing with a phone app error that I wanted fixed to get them off - when I consulted chat, the chat decided to ask for "remote access" which I stupidly permitted them to (this, after spending two weeks with One Drive support trying to divorce myself off of One Drive with sensitive data at 1.85GB). So I had no backup to OneDrive anymore and I couldn't exactly pull everything OneDrive because even though you might *think* you are moving your files off to a SSD hard disk that you think is safe, it is actually not, because when you check all you see are empty folders in your file structure and not the actual pictures or files you think you moved (alas, they are still stuck in onedrive where Microsoft likes to hang onto them, but they refuse to move them to your local because either there is a shortcut error or the checkbox is not solid green). Then randomly, the chat turned out to be a bot who on their own decided to do a "factory reset" without my permission - me fighting and swearing at the bot grabbing my mouse with all my might and fury and losing. After an agonizing 25 minutes, the PC restarted, with my data thank God still there. Never, ever use chat - always speak to a person and then verify, whether it's an actual human on the other end. Their "automated" workflows are evil and malicious. Their OneDrive is too. All meant to force you into paying more for their subscriptions, becoming dependent on them, and buying more and more and more space and more and more and more fees.
Lack of competition, squashed competition, in the technology world. When M'soft can own so much of the market , what do they care about the customer? Monry money money.
I feel you. I've been experiencing the same & similar thing for the past month or so. - Often unable to access my own documents!
I loathe Microsoft (but use it out of necessity) and I think it 'knows' it! This is war.
I have always loathed Outlook. Daily updates to try to make it better and it never is. While apple’s mail system is much much better, I have now subscribed to Protonmail. So much better and properly private.
Good luck Jonathan.
Hi Jonathan, try changing the search to across "All Mailboxes" instead of the default "Current Mailbox" - as this seems to be a workaround for some users having the same problem.