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10-year-old Microsoft Ticket Resurfaces?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the still-faster-than-your-mortgage-banker dept.

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.

4 of 257 comments (clear)

  1. I don't believe it by oni · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:I don't believe it by ByOhTek · · Score: 4, Insightful

      (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.

      --
      Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
    2. Re:I don't believe it by croddy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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."

  2. Re:heh, interesting disclaimer by ConceptJunkie · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?

    --
    You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.