So, Microsoft has been trying to get their customers into subscription based and cloud based solutions. I will never be caught dead using those and the true story I am about to tell perfectly illustrates why:
Back in the old days, ISPs used to offer their customers web storage space and email accounts. My ISP - a major ISP here in Portugal, back then called Netcabo and now NOS - was no exception. Web page storage quickly went the way of the dodo and was discontinued as the Internet gained more and more popularity though.
Now, I have this <xxx>@netcabo.pt personal email account, which I obviously use for everything not Winstep related, which was created some 25 years or so ago. So, not something one would want to lose. I don't remember exactly when, but I think in 2014 my ISP decided to migrate all their customer's email accounts to Microsoft Outlook.com.
This way they completely washed their hands and Microsoft was now solely responsible for managing my email account (and the email accounts of all the other customers of my ISP).
Since then and for all these years things have been going so so, although from time to time I would have my login rejected by Microsoft's pop3 server for no apparent reason (unknown user name or password). Usually this situation would not last more than a handful of hours, I suppose someone at Microsoft would notice or be notified of the problem and quickly fix it, with no change or intervention from me.
And this gets us to last month.
Suddenly Microsoft's pop3 server starts spewing "-ERR Server Unavailable. 21" after accepting the login. I was still able to use web mail to access my account, but I need POP3 access. I wait a couple of days to see if Microsoft fixed the problem and when they didn't I decided to contact them.
So I contact the Outlook email client team (I'm still using Outlook 2003, and yes, I know, unsupported but works fine) who then promptly referred me to the Outlook.com team. There they again referred me to the Outlook email client team despite all my protests that this was not a client side issue (I even attached the client/server communication of the Winstep email checker with the raw server responses). You can already see where this is going.
So, luckily I managed to convince the Outlook client tier 1 tech that I needed to speak to a tier 2 tech (let's call him Alex). Despite me explaining until I was blue in the face that this was NOT a client side issue, I ended up having to let Alex remotely access my PC to see for himself. Half an hour later he was finally convinced, so much so that he himself sent an email to the Outlook.com team while still on my PC. Server issues are handled by the Outlook.com guys and now he too understood this to be a Microsoft Exchange server configuration problem.
Even then I was given the run around, but a couple of days later or so the situation was resolved and I got an email from the Outlook.com guy apologizing for the inconvenience. It 'only' took them a week to solve the problem.
Not 10 days later Outlook 2003 starts with the old issue of rejecting my login with '-ERR Logon failure: unknown user name or bad password.' This was on a Saturday, so I waited to see if Microsoft would eventually fix the problem like they normally do. Monday comes and goes and the issue persists. Again I am able to access my account via web mail, the only issue is when I try to access via POP3.
So, email to Outlook.com referring to the previous issue and begging them to believe me this was a server side issue. Again get referred to the Outlook client team. Now I know how Bill Murray felt in GroundHog Day.
So, I manage to talk the tier 1 tech to pass my chat to a tier 2 tech. Let's call this one Justin.
What happens for the next 2 hours I remained on a live chat with Justin (kid you not) was probably one of the most frustrating and infuriating things I ever had to go through in my life (being locked at home for 3 weeks now didn't help my mood either).
The conversation apparently had started well, but it soon became obvious that Justin simply REFUSED to believe that this might be a server side issue.
Despite me telling him what had previously happened, how it was indeed a server side issue, that this particular problem had happened before and usually 'solved itself' (which meant a server side problem), despite showing him the raw server responses of the Email Checker so he could see this was NOT an Outlook 2003 problem, despite actually telling him what I do and that I have been a developer for over 35 years so he should at least give me *some* credit, Justin simply REFUSED to believe me.
All he needed to do was contact the server team or send them an email explaining the problem, but he would not do that because, according to him, there was no proof this was a server side issue.
In his own words after literally two hours going back and forth:
"
Also from my end, I am unable to connect you directly to anyone in Server Manage Team because:
1. The issue you are raising is from the connection between Server to the product which was "out of warranty time" and "self-developed".
2. At this moment, from our informational page, the Server health is still good: https://portal.office.com/servicestatus."
The Out of Warranty product is Outlook 2003, and the "self-developed' product is the Email Checker module in the Winstep application (he even saw the website himself, so he KNEW this was not a 'mom and pop' operation).
So, according to Justin writing a self-developed application makes a liar out of me.
The whole thing was nothing but a 2 hour exercise in stupidity and pure frustration. In the end he referred me to some useless public forum links and terminated the chat (I saved the whole conversation by the way, so if anyone from Microsoft is reading this and wants to know how it actually went, just drop me an email to the Winstep support address).
Now, with 'quality level' tier 2 tech support like this would I EVER trust Microsoft with critical stuff like handling business office documents over the Cloud?
NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS!!!! Imagine something going wrong, you losing access to all your customer invoices stored on the Microsoft cloud, and then running face to face with Justin. "No, no, it's not a Microsoft problem. YOU must be doing something wrong, WE are Microsoft, we NEVER make mistakes." Aaaaaaaaaaargh.
And so the problem remains. My only hope is that someone at Microsoft either reads this or finally notices - or gets notified, I'm sure there will be others in the same situation as me, and just as frustrated - that something in their servers is not working as it should.
And Justin, if you are reading this (I told him I was going to write this article) you really should be ashamed of yourself. If Winstep's tech support was even 1/10 as bad as the type of 'support' you gave me, I would have been out of business a long, long time ago.