Microsoft & Xbox Live: When Customer Service Goes Drastically Wrong

Written by Russ on March 14, 2008 – 10:43 am

Alternately titled: How Microsoft is Stealing $50 from Me. You Could Be Next.

Here’s the simple breakdown of the story:

October 20: Xbox Live emails me, account will auto-renew next month
November 20: Xbox Live emails me, account renewal a success!
November 21: Xbox Live emails me, prepaid card for 12+1 months has been successfully applied!
November 21: Xbox Live emails me, again confirming prepaid card successfully applied!
March 3: Xbox Live emails me, prepaid card being canceled tomorrow!

So, in internet-speak, I said, “WTF!?”

The story seems pretty clear, but after some grueling time on the phone with Microsoft, first in India and then in the United States, Microsoft has made it pretty clear to me that I’ve done something wrong, I’m borderline a criminal and they absolutely WILL NOT be giving me a credit for a prepaid card, nor will they refund it, supply a code for re-use, etc.

The longer, more detailed story, as it has been explained to me, via “Jason” and “Christine” at Microsoft, in regards to Case Reference #1061488919

The details in all of this are still murky to me–Microsoft apparently has a policy, but I’m not sure how they see it as either logical, customer-friendly or even helpful.

At the time of authoring this, I see it as stealing from me.

When I first signed-up for my Xbox Live account, I apparently used a credit card that was eventually replaced due to some fraudulent usage. Since I want to remain upfront and honest about this–as I have since the beginning with Microsoft (even when I was irate after asking 6 different times to please speak to someone else)–I was unsure which card I had used, but in the event that it was the card in question, I wanted to cover my bases.

Almost a month before my account was set to expire–or rather, drop back down to “Silver” Status, my pals at Microsoft sent me this:

From: “MICROSOFT *XBOX LIVE”
Subject: Automatic Renewal Notification for Xbox Live 12 mo. Gold Membership
Date: Sun, October 21, 2007 1:11 am
To: russ

Dear Russell,

Your subscription to Xbox Live 12 mo. Gold Membership is scheduled to be automatically renewed on Tuesday, November 20, 2007. Here is a description of the service:

Welcome to the future of gaming and online entertainment. As a new Xbox Live® Gold member, you will enjoy access to demos, trailers, downloads, tournaments, friends, and your gamertag, your unique digital identity. For only $49.95 plus applicable taxes per year, your 12-month Xbox Live Gold Membership gives you all the rewards, privileges, and possibilities that come with being a Gold member. Your membership will automatically renew to an annual membership at the then current price, unless you change your renewal or cancel before your membership ends. Pricing details can be viewed in the Account Management area of your gamer profile. For information about changing or canceling your membership and your membership refund policy, go to www.xbox.com/live/accounts.

Please confirm that your account and payment information is up to date.

To update your credit card information:
1. Select your gamer card.
2. Select Account Management.
3. Select Memberships.
4. Select the membership you want to update.
For more info, go to www.xbox.com/support or call Xbox Customer Support at 1 (800) 4MY-XBOX.

Thank you for using Microsoft Online Services.

The Xbox Live team.

Note: Please do not respond to this message.
To receive notifications at a different e-mail address:
1. Select your gamer card.
2. Select Account Management.
3. Select Contact Information.
4. Sign in with your Passport Network credentials.
5. Update your e-mail address.
Form: 12

Cool! Thanks, Microsoft. I’m glad we’re friends and you reminded me about this. I wonder what card I used…

See, I thought for certain that a declined card from Microsoft would have an email generated saying “Russ, your card is bad, click here to fix this and we’ll be friends again.” But that didn’t happen. Instead, what happened was this:
In fact, Microsoft was kind enough to confirm that this was groovy, too, and that we’re still BFFs:

From: “MICROSOFT *XBOX LIVE”
Subject: Confirmation of renewal of Xbox Live 12 mo. Gold Membership
Date: Tue, November 20, 2007 12:51 am
To: russ

Dear Russell,

This mail is confirmation that you have successfully renewed your subscription to Xbox Live 12 mo. Gold Membership. This renewal goes into effect on Tuesday, November 20, 2007. Here is a description of the service:

Welcome to the future of gaming and online entertainment. As a new Xbox Live® Gold member, you will enjoy access to demos, trailers, downloads, tournaments, friends, and your gamertag, your unique digital identity. For only $49.95 plus applicable taxes per year, your 12-month Xbox Live Gold Membership gives you all the rewards, privileges, and possibilities that come with being a Gold member. Your membership will automatically renew to an annual membership at the then current price, unless you change your renewal or cancel before your membership ends. Pricing details can be viewed in the Account Management area of your gamer profile. For information about changing or canceling your membership and your membership refund policy, go to www.xbox.com/live/accounts.

If you have any questions, please go to www.xbox.com/support or call Xbox Customer Support at 1 (800) 4MY-XBOX.

Thank you for using Microsoft Online Services.

The Xbox Live team.

Note: Please do not respond to this message.
To receive notifications at a different e-mail address:
1. Select your gamer card.
2. Select Account Management.
3. Select Contact Information.
4. Sign in with your Passport Network credentials.
5. Update your e-mail address.
Form: 24

Okay, so my immediate thoughts are this: Awesome! I must have used some other credit card instead! Cool!

Reality: According to Microsoft, a successful renewal is not the same as the SETTLING of the account.

Customer Reality: Uhhhh, what’s the difference? Why would you give me a receipt of “success” when I’ve not paid for something? They don’t give me a receipt at the grocery store until I actually pay for my groceries and the cash, check or credit card is deemed to be “good” tender.

However, I soldiered on, probably playing some Halo 3 in my spare time. My Xbox Live 12+1 Month PrePaid card arrived from Amazon (thank you, Amazon Prime!). I went ahead and applied the card to my account–knowing me, I’d misplace it within the next year, anyway.

From: “MICROSOFT *XBOX LIVE”
Subject: Renewal Confirmation for Xbox Live Prepaid 12 + 1 Month Gold Membership Card.
Date: Wed, November 21, 2007 6:51 pm
To: russ

Dear Russell,

This mail is confirmation that you have successfully renewed Xbox Live Prepaid 12 + 1 Month Gold Membership Card.. The subscription will expire on Sunday, December 20, 2009. Here is a description of the service:

Welcome to the future of gaming and online entertainment. As a new Xbox Live® Gold member, you will enjoy access to demos, trailers, downloads, tournaments, friends, and your gamertag, your unique digital identity. Your 13-month Xbox Live Gold Membership gives you all the rewards, privileges, and possibilities that come with being a Gold member. At the end of 13 months, your membership will automatically change to a Silver Membership, unless you use another prepaid card or change your membership renewal options. Pricing details can be viewed in the Account Management area of your gamer profile. For information about changing or canceling your membership and your membership refund policy, go to www.xbox.com/live/accounts.

If you have any questions, please go to www.xbox.com/support or call Xbox Customer Support at 1 (800) 4MY-XBOX.
Thank you for using Microsoft Online Services.

The Xbox Live team.

Note: Please do not respond to this message.
To receive notifications at a different e-mail address:
1. Select your gamer card.
2. Select Account Management.
3. Select Contact Information.
4. Sign in with your Passport Network credentials.
5. Update your e-mail address.
Form: 42

Why, you’re welcome, Microsoft! Thanks for acknowledging that. Wait–what’s this? Oh, thank you for acknowledging it TWICE:

From: “MICROSOFT *XBOX LIVE”
Subject: Renewal Confirmation for Xbox Live Prepaid 12 + 1 Month Gold Membership Card.
Date: Wed, November 21, 2007 6:51 pm
To: russ

Dear Russell,

This mail is confirmation that you have successfully renewed Xbox Live Prepaid 12 + 1 Month Gold Membership Card.. The subscription will expire on Sunday, December 20, 2009. Here is a description of the service:

Welcome to the future of gaming and online entertainment. As a new Xbox Live® Gold member, you will enjoy access to demos, trailers, downloads, tournaments, friends, and your gamertag, your unique digital identity. Your 13-month Xbox Live Gold Membership gives you all the rewards, privileges, and possibilities that come with being a Gold member. At the end of 13 months, your membership will automatically change to a Silver Membership, unless you use another prepaid card or change your membership renewal options. Pricing details can be viewed in the Account Management area of your gamer profile. For information about changing or canceling your membership and your membership refund policy, go to www.xbox.com/live/accounts.

If you have any questions, please go to www.xbox.com/support or call Xbox Customer Support at 1 (800) 4MY-XBOX.
Thank you for using Microsoft Online Services.

The Xbox Live team.

Note: Please do not respond to this message.
To receive notifications at a different e-mail address:
1. Select your gamer card.
2. Select Account Management.
3. Select Contact Information.
4. Sign in with your Passport Network credentials.
5. Update your e-mail address.
Form: 42

And this, folks, was apparently my biggest, most evil and malicious mistake. THIS is where Microsoft decided that it is appropriate to steal from me, you, and any other customer in the world.

See, when I applied this prepaid card–which, by the way, could have been a nice gift from a parent, a nerd-supporting spouse, a nerdy boss, whatever–I did what is called “stacking” by Microsoft.

I’m still not sure how this is wrong. But apparently, when you “stack” AND you have an invalid credit card on file that they continue to attempt to charge, this is where you begin to earn your criminal status.

Allegedly, Microsoft sent me 2 follow-up emails to let me know that my card had been declined. I do not have those, but I have every email I’ve received that isn’t SPAM since 1997. Including all 5 emails referring to my Xbox Live account.

Microsoft has proof that those emails were sent–none that they were received mind you–and if I did not receive them, that’s an issue with my server and none of their concern. They do not, will not, pick up the phone to call you.

No, instead they send you an email that says this:

From: “MICROSOFT *XBOX LIVE”
Subject: Confirmation of cancellation of Xbox Live Prepaid 12 + 1 Month Gold Membership Card.
Date: Thu, March 13, 2008 7:37 pm
To: russ

Dear Russell,

This mail is confirmation that your subscription to Xbox Live Prepaid 12 + 1 Month Gold Membership Card. has been cancelled on Friday, March 14, 2008.

If you have questions about this cancellation, or if you want to reactivate your subscription, please go to www.xbox.com/support or call Xbox Customer Support at 1 (800) 4MY-XBOX.

Thank you for using Microsoft Online Services.

The Xbox Live team.

Note: Please do not respond to this message.
To receive notifications at a different e-mail address:
1. Select your gamer card.
2. Select Account Management.
3. Select Contact Information.
4. Sign in with your Passport Network credentials.
5. Update your e-mail address.
Form: 22

I received this on March 13th. I immediately picked up the phone and called my buddies at Microsoft. We’re BFFs, after all, and I wanted to know what I could have done to upset my pals. We should be able to hang out until December 2009, man!

After asking 6 different times to speak to someone else because the CSR from India was only repeating herself from a script and causing me phone rage, I finally spoke to “Jason” the supervisor who made a lot of wild claims.

He actually asked me if I read the Terms of Service. That’s the equivalent of “I’m not going to help you, you have the fine print to contend with”. Customer Service 101, I suppose.

Even so, as of November 2007, I had 25 months that I was paying for. If the credit card was declined, the appropriate response would be to simply subtract 12 of those months–the prepaid card was just that PRE PAID. PAID IN ADVANCE.

Microsoft: Your account is in billing violation and is in collections with Microsoft. If you would have called in before it was sent to them, we could have helped you. We WILL NOT be refunding, replacing or anything else to compensate for the prepaid card we’ve just canceled. We won’t even subtract the months you’ve used it. We would have, however, waived the $15 in fees and reinstate your account, at which point in time you can pay for service how you like or you can provide a new credit card.

Me: Okay, I’d like to fix the situations. We were tight before. Good friends, even. Look, how about I go ahead and give you a new credit card and I pay for a whole year–and we’ll just call the time that you’ve suspended my account as a wash since I’ve been busy with work, school, blogging about NotchUp, having a new baby, playing that new Mario game on the Wii and everything else. We’ll be buds again, we can hang out and I’ll let you play drums in Rock Band.

Oh, and just give me back that 12+1 month card, because, after all, it was PRE PAID.

Microsoft: Nope. We’re not friends. You’re a criminal. You were sent to collections and we canceled your PRE PAID card that you STACKED (gasp!) on your account that had a bad credit card on it. You, sir, do not get to keep your 12+1 months. It is gone. The code was “consumed” and we added it to your account. We’re canceling it.

Me: Wait, what?

Okay, so that’s poking a little fun at a situation that has gotten tense and terse. Microsoft will not budge.

The Resolution?
For starters, I’m blogging about this. I’m contacting the local “Fixer” people at the Big City Newspaper (Chicago Sun Times) to see if they can help. Google will be my friend and raise this up the flag pole.

What Do I Want to Happen?
I only want what is fair, and that’s all I’ve asked for since the beginning. I didn’t start out being the ticked-off, phone-rage guy who wanted free service for life and all the cheat codes for every game and whatnot.

I want my PRE PAID card back–I PRE PAID for service that was taken away from me by a billing snafu–not anything that was behavioral or deceptive, but a pretty simple–and easy to rectify–mistake.

This should be no problem. I should, at the very least, have the remaining balance of my PRE PAID card available to me–I should NOT be canceled. That’s simply unfair, and it is the equivalent of stealing.

Microsoft, make this right. I promise I’ll be BFFs again and I promise I’ll tell everyone that you did.

Posted in Rant, User Experience | 4 Comments »

NotchUp Vs. GrandCentral: Design By, Uh, Someone Else’s Design?

Written by Russ on January 30, 2008 – 12:08 am

I don’t like NotchUp’s Terms of Service–I think I’ve made that clear. I don’t think I’m malicious about this, but I do think it is important that people be made aware of what they’re getting into.

Now, however, I’m beginning to truly dislike NotchUp, in general.

Since writing my post “NotchUp Privacy Down“, I’ve been Googling through the web to find out what people are thinking out in the rest of the world.

In my cyber-adventures, as it were, I’ve seen a lot of mentions about how NotchUp and GrandCentral seem to share the same graphical design.

Let’s take a look, shall we?

GrandCentral:

NotchUp:

I checked out GrandCentral.com’s History section, and they started their company in 2005. I’d say that gives them the benefit of the doubt. Granted, they may have purchased the site from a template company and NotchUp may have done the same, but it seems unlikely.

I’m sure this is beyond my capabilities to prove anything, but I’ll let the screen shots do the talking. I can tell you that when I did a comparison of the sites on 2 different layers in Photoshop, they were same width from the left and right borders–which very much appear to be the exact same drop shadow border. The backgrounds in their content areas appear to be pretty similar as well.

Sure, site rip-offs happen all the time. Hey, we couldn’t stop Vanilla Ice from working Queen’s “Under Pressure” into “Ice Ice Baby”, we’re certainly not going to stop people from “designing” the alleged same web site, right?

Ponder away.

To me, it just tells more of the story that is NotchUp. The level of trust that I have for them is far less than it was, well, when I received the invitation from a trusted friend.

————————

Sadly, it seems most people are more interested in the “How can I make money” aspect instead of the “Totally free isn’t just about cash” perspective that I seem to take. Christian Crumlish was cool enough to mention a posting that I sent out to the Information Architecture Institute’s mailing list–to the point that he even apologized to folks that he’d sent invites to.

People are starting to notice, and I think that’s a good thing. Hey, as long as I’m spending a moment talking about things, it was pretty cool that the NotchUp question on LinkedIn actually had a link to the posting I wrote–even before I had a chance to point it out.

I’m hopeful that people will slow down, take a deep breath and make wise decisions about their personal information.

I’ll leave you with a final thought:

How would you feel if LinkedIn suddenly changed their Terms of Service and/or Privacy Policy to match that of NotchUp?

Posted in Rant | 4 Comments »

NotchUp, Privacy Down

Written by Russ on January 27, 2008 – 11:03 am

Lately, I’ve seen a few discussions in regards to various forms of social/business networking, etc. I’ve also received a few invites to join NotchUp, which appears to be the new kid on the block, and I started to enter into their process since I was invited to the “Beta” by a couple of known and trusted colleagues.

In part of checking them out, I do what I always do whenever I see checkbox that says that I agree to someone’s terms of use–I read their terms of use.

From the start, NotchUp’s terms of use doesn’t read like the other places I trust. In fact, it reads like something familiar. It reads like something from a company I worked for many years ago that tried to sign people up for a job site only to in turn sell their information to companies. I’m sure you’ve seen several of these, some of them are akin to College Scholarships “just for signing up for free magazine subscriptions”.

Since my spider-sense was tingling, I knew I needed to read on–so I did:

9. NotchUp reserves the right to offer third party services and products to You based on the preferences that You identify in your registration and at any time thereafter; such offers may be made by NotchUp or by third parties.

That’s right: NotchUp can sell your information to third parties.

Full disclosure here: I did not get through the rest of their registration because, frankly, I don’t like to agree to Terms of Use before I get to see just what my privacy settings can be. They do offer up such a tab in their settings, but it is disabled and not viewable.

10. Without limiting any of the other disclaimers of warranty set forth in these Terms, NotchUp does not provide or make any representation as to the quality or nature of any of the third party products or services purchased through NotchUp.com or any other NotchUp Site, or any other representation, warranty or guaranty. Any such undertaking, representation, warranty or guaranty would be furnished solely by the provider of such third party products or services, under the terms agreed to by the provider.

This basically says that once you’re on someone else’s email list (after they’ve sold your information), they no longer take any ownership of how it is used. Think about that one. It can translate loosely to this:

Once we sell your information, it’s out of our hands. If you change your privacy settings with us, we’ll follow that setting, but if someone we’ve sold your list to sells that list or does not allow you to remove yourself from it, etc. etc. we’re not responsible. There would be a lot of hurdles to overcome to find out just where in the heck your name has ended up.

Not only that:

18. You understand and acknowledge that you have no ownership rights in your NotchUp account (“NotchUp Account”), and that if you cancel your NotchUp Account, all your account information from NotchUp, including resumes, profiles, cover letters, network contacts, saved jobs, questionnaires and email mailing lists, will be marked as deleted in NotchUp’s databases and will be removed from any public area of the NotchUp Sites. Information may continue to be available for some period of time because of delays in propagating such deletion through NotchUp’s web servers. In addition, third parties may retain cached copies of your Information.

“Marked as deleted” - got that? Not removed, but flagged as deleted and no longer publicly displayed. They’ll still have it, still own it. Those third parties may retained “cached copies” of your information–which means that they’ve got a snapshot view from a specific purchase point and they may continue to use the list from a specific date or merge it with a new list, etc.

19. Your email and other data that you submit as part of the resume will be made available to our recruiters and employers. NotchUp.com doesn’t have any control over how that data would be used. If you don’t want any such data to be displayed your only remedy is not to post any resume.

At least this is pretty black and white. But, of course, since the purpose of NotchUp is to connect employers and candidates, it sure seems pretty useless to have a profile without a resume, right? At least the listed this right up top and not 2/3s of the way down on their Terms of Use page.

Oh. Wait.

I should also mention that the only way you can find out about their privacy policy and terms of use is currently, at the time of this writing, by attempting to sign-up and following the link.

They do a fine job of telling you how safe and secure their site is. You have to read between the lines to understand just how little they’re actually offering you. My gut feeling was that they want you to feel that your information is secure and you can control how the other users of the site can view you–which is great. But what about the people who buy lists from them?

There is the potential to give up a lot of your rights to your resume and personal information, in my opinion. I’m posting this as caution to folks here—this site feels like a bandwagon with a “generate a mailing list” approach to it. I’ve worked for those companies in the past and the end result seems to be me feeling as if I need to create a new email account and trying desperately to remove my personal information from, well, just about everywhere.

Maybe it sounds a bit overly-concerned, and I’ll accept that. I’ll also say that I’ve been the victim of identity theft more than once in the past and it’s not fun having to deal with it. Since NotchUp takes ownership of your information and sells it to who knows who, you really are just exposing yourself without any real means of controlling how that works. And NotchUp isn’t on the hook for anything.

LinkedIn, for what it’s worth, takes its approach this way:

• We will never rent or sell your personally identifiable information to third parties for marketing purposes
• We will never share your contact information with another user, without your consent.
• Any sensitive information that you provide will be secured with all industry standard protocols and technology

That’s pretty nice of them, and I think that’s what we’d all prefer.

Interestingly enough, NotchUp allows you to “instantaneously import your LinkedIn profile into NotchUp to use as your NotchUp profile.” That means that all that privacy protection you get at LinkedIn could be gone within moments. In essence, they’re taking advantage of our lack-of-desire to fill out yet another profile form, using technology to ease that pain, and then potentially reaping the rowards of selling that data.

Likewise, Facebook says this (and we all know they’ve faced some scrutiny):

Facebook follows two core principles:
1. You should have control over your personal information.
Facebook helps you share information with your friends and people around you. You choose what information you put in your profile, including contact and personal information, pictures, interests and groups you join. And you control the users with whom you share that information through the privacy settings on the My Privacy page.
2. You should have access to the information others want to share.
There is an increasing amount of information available out there, and you may want to know what relates to you, your friends, and people around you. We want to help you easily get that information.

It’s easy to jump on the proverbial bandwagon when it comes to social networking—or even professional networking. We all have a couple of things about any site or application that we wish were improved–even the ones we’ve worked on the design for. It makes it easy for a company to come out with an updated approach to something we already find some benefit in using. Unfortunately, it’s just as easy for these companies to throw out a privacy policy that is easy to ignored—and then your privacy could be as well.

I urge you all to proceed with caution and I urge you to take the time to read—very carefully—the terms and conditions, privacy policies, histories and about us sections of any websites you consider joining. NotchUp’s next-to-last statement kind of summarizes what’s happening on their site:

The only winners in all of this are job boards and headhunters.

That’s right, they summarize by saying the above, but the truth is in what they do NOT tell you:

They’ve created a new winner if enough people sign up: NotchUp.

Posted in Rant, Social Networking | 10 Comments »

Falling Down

Written by Russ on January 15, 2008 – 11:15 pm

There is not much on this earth that will make you realize just how little you know about the elevator that you stand in everyday than a very large, obnoxious noise followed by an abrupt jerking motion. I was the bottom of the shaft when this happened to me yesterday and I loosely recall erratically looking all over the elevator for the “stop falling” or “emergency brake” button. Once the elevator came to rest and the door opened, I moved toward an area that I thought would be safe (inside the elevator) still and looked cautiously around the car before catching my breath and stepping out.

I wonder, would anyone really recall that they should put their air mask on themselves first prior to helping the elderly or small children on an airplane in a disaster mode? Would you know where your flotation device is?

Does life require more quizzes, or have we settled on the success and failure rates in our world? Or now, more than ever, do we really need to focus on making everyday objects more usable?

Posted in Rant, User Experience | No Comments »

How Comcast VOIP Penalizes The Majority

Written by Russ on December 16, 2007 – 11:36 pm

I was one of the first to adopt Comcast’s VOIP when it came to my area. (If it would have been a midnight event at Best Buy, I would have stood in line for it–that’s just the kind of geek I am). For the most part, I do not notice that I have VOIP instead of a traditional telephone service, which, ultimately plays into Comcast’s favor. There are times, like when the cable service goes out that you realize that in order to call to report the problem, well, you have to use your mobile phone, but that is also a known risk.

There are also great benefits–like a voicemail system that is kind enough to send you an email and that allows you to access your messages online. Since the Comcast system will only store my password for 24 hours and I don’t feel like Im able to navigate their system quicly enough, I mostly dial-in to listen to my messages.

About 6 months ago, Comcast upgraded their voicemail services.

Upgraded?

Okay, let me rephrase: They upgraded their voicemail system.

The degraded their VUI (Voice User Interface) for the voicemail system, in my humble opinion.

Wikipedia has blessed me with some information that I’ve found useful:

Although the United States currently has no official language, English has long been the de facto national language. Government agencies in most states and at the federal level can commonly be contacted in Spanish. Many states such as California require legislated notices and official documents to be printed in Spanish alongside English and other commonly used languages.

And:

The United States does not have an official language, but English is spoken by about 82% of the population as a native language. The variety of English spoken in the United States is known as American English; together with Canadian English it makes up the group of dialects known as North American English. 96% of the population of the U.S. speaks English well. On May 18, 2006, the Senate voted on an amendment to an immigration reform bill that would declare English the national language of the United States. The immigration reform bill itself, S. 2611, was passed in the Senate on May 25, 2006, and now has to go back to the House of Representatives in conference to make sure amendments are agreed upon.

The Spanish language is the second-most common language in the country, spoken by almost 30 million people (or 12% of the population) in 2005.

Here are my key points to Comcast:

1. I live in the United States
2. American English is the most spoken language in the country

That said, the Comcast Voicemail system previously worked as follows:

1. Dial voice mail number / your number (if calling from home)
2. Press ‘#’ if you have a mailbox on the system (otherwise listen to bizarre message that allows you to enter in a phone number and leave a message for someone on the system–huh? The voicemail number is not a publicly known number)
3. Press your phone number
4. Press ‘#’ if you’re impatient and don’t want to wait for the system to recognize you (learned by trial and error, thank you very much)
5. Press your password
6. Press ‘#’ if you’re impatient and don’t want to wait for the system to recognize you
7. Enter voicemail system, do voicemail-related things

Upon implementation of the “system upgrade”, something broke. Much like the blasted soda machine in my office, I still get tripped up by this change.

The change has caused a slight-looking shift (see bolded text below) in the way the voicemail system now works:

1. Dial voice mail number / your number (if calling from home)
2. Press ‘1′ if you wish to hear your prompts in English, ‘2′ if you wish to hear your prompts in Spanish (Pressing anything else ie ‘#’ results in you listening to the English/Spanish message all over again)
3. Press ‘#’ if you have a mailbox on the system
4. The rest is the same

This seems minor, right? Simply adjust my thinking, unlearn what I’ve already been using for over a year, realize that there is an extra button press and accept that Comcast is attempting to serve a broader customer base. The thought itself is not problematic. The implementation is. To me. And possibly to those whom I assume are in the majority of their user base.

I do not take issue with that, but I would not expect to check voicemail in France and have to identify myself as a French speaker EVERY TIME. On the contrary, I would expect to listen until I heard something in English and then press the corresponding number that would allow me to listen in my language. If France had more than one primary launguage–like Canada (see the humor?)–, then I would expect to be able to choose my primary language in my voicemail set-up, including the option to select my language at each login. For Comcast, this does not happen–although I am allowed to set my languages in my Administrative options. You’ve probably guessed it: My language preferences are all set to English.

Still, I am an English-speaking American, and I am in America. For whatever reason (okay, for statistical reasons, even), I feel as my language should be in the majority. I feel that spoken prompts of a VUI should be in English automatically and I should not have to listen to a prompt that forces me to select the option to hear prompts in English. Instead, I should be able to quickly bypass the system and get right to my voicemail, which is all that I care about to begin with. Comcast, you may have fixed something that was not even remotely broken.

However, that 1 extra keypress repeatedly frustrates me and repeatedly trips me up and more frequently than I’d care to admit, causes me to redial voicemail and try again. Or wait until I get to computer and login and listen to an audio file.

In my mind, the system should work like this:

1. Dial voice mail number / your number (if calling from home)
2. Press ‘#’ if you have a mailbox on the system
3. Press your phone number
4. Press ‘#’ if you’re impatient and don’t want to wait for the system to recognize you
5. Press your password
6. Press ‘#’ if you’re impatient and don’t want to wait for the system to recognize you
7. Enter voicemail system, do voicemail-related things

Does that seem at all familiar? It should–it’s the same system that was previously in place. Before the system upgrade.

I wonder if this change was tested on an appropriate sampling of their user base? I’ve got a hunch it probably was not.

Perhaps a better enhancement to the system would be to perform an overhaul that could be used across all of Comcast, so there is a familiarity whenever you need to call in to one of their phone numbers. By gosh, even better would be the notion that there could be some VUI globals, well, globally.

Beloved Apple hung up on me today because I tried to hit ‘0′ to get a human and find out store hours, instead of just listening to their pre-recorded information. I think it may have been a ‘5′ that would have let me do that, but I was impatient and instead, I received a friendly “Good bye”. Somewhere in the world, someone is chuckling that the VUI was unforgiving and that I was too impatient. To a degree, that almost seemed rather Steve Jobs-ish, eh?

Regardless, the United States is a melting pot, and I’ll happily admit that. The Spanish language is ever-increasing in usage and there is a large population that needs to be served in voice systems. In fact, if nothing else, this emphasizes to me that a function needs to be dedicated on systems to change back and forth between languages.

Example:

1. 1-6 - used for standard “options” (each is task-specific, otherwise, by the time you listen to 9 or 10 options, you’ve spaced-out and missed the one you needed or invariably someone has distracted you and you randomly push a button anyway)
2. 7 - paginate backward through options
3. 8 - swap language (English / Spanish)
4. 9 - paginate forward through options
5. * - system help
6. 0 - Operator
7. # - “Enter” or “Finished submitting” or a bypass for when a system offers the option of your account, phone number, etc.

Maybe I’m not exactly breaking new ground with my frustration points here. I doubt that I’ve come up with a world-class solution at this point, but I don’t think I’ve met a person who enjoys any of the VUI systems in place today. It may be time for an overhaul.

And don’t get me started on the systems that force you to be conversational with them.

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