New
#150
"Support engineer" in M$'s eyes is an outsourced Indian working in a call centre answering your calls about activation. Hardly an "engineer".
From my experience calling tech support(not just MS) it was someone reading from a list of things to try. As if that wasn't bad enough, their accent was so bad I could hardly understand them. When my problems weren't solved on the first call and I had to called back who ever answered would start at the very beginning of the list even though I had told them what I had tried. I am not a fan of telephone tech support and never will be.
Oh, yeah, been there, done that. Got the T-Shirt and shredded that sucker! I won't call Support; I come here to get any help I need. :)
The beauty in being an official member of Technical Previews is that we get to hob nob with the real Support Engineers working on the Microsoft campus.
Since there's no official Technical Preview Network for Windows 10, neither I nor any of my co-testers have any influence in that area.
The Support Engineers in each product area only work with their specific product. In the Office 2016 TP, they were further divided up into support groups, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. As I'm sure the Windows 10 support groups are equally divided, such as Edge, Skype, OneDrive, etc.
So, nope, no chance I could influence anyone on Windows 10.
There's need to be, to put it as politely as possible, nasty or snide. The person working in the call centre may very well have achieved an educational level and qualification beyond most of us. That education may or may not have led him/her to the level of nerdship or esoteric knowledge of those of us who frequent these forums.
I've called Microsoft support three times.
The first time I spoke to a charming young lady from the Philippines, about a problem with a beta Windows 10. She first told me that she was not yet Windows 10 fluent, but nevertheless made every effort to help me to sort out the problem. No joy, but I appreciated her genuine and concerned effort. She was quite clued in, but somewhat restricted by her brief - which I expect was to follow a flow chart of potential solutions to Windows problems.
The next two times I don't know where I got connected to, perhaps somewhere in the U.S, or perhaps Asia. My hearing is fortunately attuned to various accents, so I can generally work out what I'm hearing. Whether the speaker can easily understand my particular, and no doubt peculiar to them, accent is another matter. In any event, the technicians said "Sorry, Windows 10 is not yet released. I'm not certified in it yet". At that stage I gave up trying to sort out the problem via that route, understanding that the technician concerned may have had a life which sensibly did not include his scouring the intricacies or eccentricities of a product outside his purview.
in the end I sorted out my problems without having to resort to pranging my computer with a hammer. That is an option which on occasion appeals to me, but which would be of very short-term satisfaction. Searching these forums probably pointed me in the right direction.
I'll just settle for MS fixing the broken Dolby Digital Live 5.1 issue. That's where my threshold is at atm.