General
Here is the press release we just got from them being awarded the Hosting Solutions Go To Partner.
June 24, 2009 11:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time
MaximumASP Honored as 2009 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference Awards Winner in Hosting Solutions
LOUISVILLE, Ky.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today, MaximumASP, www.maximumasp.com, proudly announced it has been selected as a 2009 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference Awards winner in Hosting Solutions. The company was chosen out of an international field of top Microsoft partners as delivering market-leading customer solutions built on Microsoft technology.
“We are thrilled to be recognized from among thousands of Microsoft partners to receive the 2009 Microsoft Partner of the Year award in the Hosting Solutions category,” said Wade Lewis, co-founder and Managing Partner of MaximumASP.
Co-founder and Managing Partner Silas Boyle added, “This award is a great testament to partnership and cooperation that we have worked to develop with Microsoft over the past nine years. We appreciate the recognition and view this as a great symbol of the benefits of a long-term, strategic relationship with Microsoft.”
Awards will be presented in a number of categories, with winners chosen from a pool of nearly 2,000 entrants worldwide. The Hosting Solutions Partner of the Year award recognizes partners who have demonstrated solution innovation and a commitment to engaging with Microsoft. As you complete your entry, document how your company and hosted solution focused on an end-customer business challenge either by identifying a new market opportunity or by using technology innovation to address the need. Along with demonstrating innovation, your submission should show how customers have seen you working closely with Microsoft. Showcase this commitment by providing examples, such as which version of Microsoft product your solution is built on or how you have actively promoted your solution through marketing campaigns. Also, if your solution allows for extensive customization or if you are selling through a channel of resellers, be sure to describe those differentiators in as much detail as possible.
To be eligible for this award, you must:
- Be active in the Hosting Solutions competency.
- First profile your nominated solutions in Partner Solution Profiler.
“Microsoft is pleased to recognize MaximumASP as the Hosting Solutions Partner of the Year for its MaxV platform, and for demonstrating an in-depth knowledge of Microsoft technologies,” said Ross Brown, Vice President, Solution Partners and ISVs, Microsoft Corp. “By working closely with Microsoft, MaximumASP contributed to the development of the Microsoft Dynamics Datacenter Toolkit, which enables hosting providers to deploy on-demand managed services and virtualized servers powered by Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and Microsoft System Center. By utilizing the toolkit, MaximumASP has proven its ability to offer instant scalability, increased support through advanced monitoring, disaster recovery, and ultimately higher customer satisfaction.”
The Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference Awards recognize Microsoft partners that have developed and delivered exceptional Microsoft-based solutions over the last year.
About MaximumASP
MaximumASP, based in Louisville, Kentucky, was founded in 2000 as an outsourcing firm for Microsoft Windows based hosting and IT services. The company currently hosts more than 50,000 domains for customers in over 60 countries. With a strong focus on hosting solutions that combine advanced monitoring and management tools, MaximumASP has become a top choice for Microsoft developers seeking a robust hosting platform for mission-critical web applications. For more information, visit www.maximumasp.com.
The Next Generation of Windows® is almost here!
Microsoft has released a video blog called Talking About Windows.
This video blog provides insight on Windows 7 from the Microsoft engineers who helped build the product.
www.talkingaboutwindows.com
Check out what those who have used the product have to say.
It seems like a mandatory thing – own an iPhone, download a ton of apps (mostly free) and write about them on your blog. My turn.
My Top Ten (this one goes to Eleven!)
Evernote (free) – truly one of the best apps, Evernote is an extremely usable note-taking tool which combines text, photos, and voice notes with a synchonized iPhone client, web client, and desktop client. I’ve personally used this in place of OneNote to effectively take notes at a three day conference where I simply didn’t want to drag my laptop around. Worked beautifully. I’m not as familiar with Evernote as I am with Microsoft’s OneNote (my favorite Office application) but it is a strong contender due to the super-useful iPhone client. I’m sure this will eventually warrant it’s own blog post. I use it and love it.
mBoxMail ($9.99) – thanks to my complete reliance on e-mail and my possibly insane desire to keep my work and personal mail accounts as separate as possible, I was forced to turn to a distinct mobile app for my personal e-mail. I use HotMail as the mail server for DevCow. Until recently, HotMail didn’t offer Pop3 access in the US and the mobile web UI is less than appealing. Along comes mBoxMail (specifically version 2.0 which I am testing in beta) which offers a slew of features I love, including features which are missing from the current default iPhone mail client. I’ve actually written about mBoxMail already. I use it and love it.
CameraBag ($2.99) – the iPhone is just so appealing to grab and play with that the camera on it is seeing a lot more action than any of my previous cameraphones. Unfortunately, Apple didn’t put a good camera here so I’ve picked up CameraBag to improve my photos with a variety of filters and effects that really make a difference. The filters offered here do a variety of neat little edits such as black and white, sepia tones, super-saturation of color and more. Best of all, the effects can be easily layered. This is about as complex as I’d like to manage when editing photos on the iPhone and it works beautifully. I use it and love it.
Tweetie ($2.99) – I really enjoy social networking. I use it a lot, talk about it a lot, and have even co-authored a book about it, Social Computing with Microsoft SharePoint 2007. In my social networking life, Facebook and Twitter feature prominently. On my iPhone, I’ve tried out several different Twitter applications and in my mind the undefeated champion is Tweetie. Tweetie offers a great deal of features including the ability to save individual tweets and searches. These last two are favorite features of mine.
Stanza (free) – By far, this is the app I use the most on my iPhone. I’ve got a small library of e-books which I’ve been carrying around for years. This little tool can consume a wide array of formats and offers access to a number of built-in book stores, including a huge amount of free content and the Fictionwise premium store. I’ve never really used a Kindle or the Kindle iPhone app, but I can’t envision myself switching to that given the free content available and the online Google book search stuff recently released.
Facebook (free) – I freely admit that I like Facebook. I even like the new UI with the live feed on the home page. This app makes it easy to keep up on the go with a view into your feed, notifications, and inbox. You can even use this to send photos from your iPhone directly into Facebook (which has dramatically increased the number of photos I upload) as well as to chat with online friends with Facebook Chat. I actually use this mobile application more than I do the website these days.
LiveStrong ($2.99) – This calorie tracker integrates bi-directionally with the Daily Plate feature of LiveStrong.com. I’ve been using this website for nearly a year now and it’s helped me lose (and keep off) nearly 30 lbs since June of 2008. The UI is simple and the food database is enormous (and frequently full of duplicate items). This fits my needs as I’m not looking to count points or strictly regulate anything – I just need a way to keep an eye on what goes into my body so I know when I’m in danger of overdoing it. I managed to scoop this app up while it was still free a while ago.
WootWatch (free) – I love Woot.com. Take a product and discount it, write funny stuff about it, and sell the heck out of it! Great idea! Woot seems to have become a wildly successful little website, so much so that now there is a shirt.woot and a wine.woot. This fantastic little application lets me check in on each one of the woot sites every day and should I so desire, purchase the product right from the app. This is one of the most intuitive and easy to use apps on the phone and I regret that there will not be future updates because the application’s developer was hired into Apple.
Crayon Physics Deluxe ($4.99) – The first game I purchased for the iPhone and still the one I turn to over and over. The game is based on a simple concept – get the little ball to the little star. The trick is that you can draw crayon lines with your fingers and these lines have strength and weight which are affected by physics and gravity. Draw lines, ropes, pulleys, catapults, etc. Get the free desktop demo of this award winning independent game at www.crayonphysicsdeluxe.com. No, really. Go get it. Show it to your kids. Watch the videos on the blog about some of the clever Rube Goldberg solutions.
Lux Touch (free) – Risk for your iPhone. Lots of fun for a free game. I keep coming back to this one when I’ve got time to kill. This is the free version of an $8 game which looks good, but not worth $8 to me (yet).
Wolfenstein 3D Classic ($4.99) – How could I resist this one? The grandfather of first person shooters fully reproduced on the iPhone by the original designer, and completely open source. The game was fun back in the day and the iPhone version has this really amazingly clever touch control that makes it a blast to play. Hunt down some *** today!
Other apps I use (or at least have downloaded and not deleted yet)
Easy Wi-Fi (free) – I’ve not actually used this yet, but the claim is that this tool will streamline the connection to AT&T WiFi (which comes free with the iPhone) whenever you happen to walk into a place that offers AT&T WiFi (Starbucks?). Having attempted to manage the irritating connection details for AT&T wifi when wandering through the airport and such, I have to say that I’m really hopeful that this application lives up to its claims and I never have to deal with that junk again.
Wi-Fi Finder (free) – WiFi is faster and easier on the battery than 3G, so why not use a tool like this free Wi-Fi Finder to locate the nearest publically available and advertised Wi-Fi. Eat lunch there. Browse the web faster and for free on your iPhone at the same time. Good stuff. I’ve used this app once. It turns out that for me, I’m never really just wandering around in parts unknown looking for a wi-fi connection. I always have a destination in mind.
Microsoft Tag Reader (free) – I have no idea if this concept will take off or not, as I’ve only seen a single Microsoft product with a colorful Microsoft Tag on it (and that was a copy of the Halo Wars Xbox 360 game) but if it does take off I’ve got an app which can read them and react accordingly. For those who are unaware, this is similar to a barcode – except it’s a code readible by the terrible cellphone cameras. If we all had high resolution lenses capable of capturing a barcode, I’m sure we’d just be snapping photos of those. Since we don’t, the fine folks at Microsoft Research have come up with this clever information sharing tool. I’ve used this app once, inside the Microsoft store.
Cooliris (free) – search for pictures from a variety of locations like Google and Flickr. If you find one you like, Cooliris lets you set that as your iPhone wallpaper. The UI is pretty neat but there is a ton of data flowing through for this app so be prepared to be a bit patient when on a 3G connection. I use it and love it, although the speed at which it resolves some of the images does occasionally leave something to be desired.
SnapTell (free) – The promise of this app is great – find the book, DVD, CD, or video game you’re looking at in a store more cheaply online. It’s got great reviews in the iTunes AppStore but I’ve never actually used this. I think the reason is that I very rarely buy books, DVDs, CDs, or video games and when I do it’s always online. Come to think of it, that very logic might cause me to uninstall this app and clear out some space
Shovel (free) – Digg news aggregator. Works pretty well, but I’m not a huge fan of Digg so I don’t use this app very frequently. I have another news aggregator I prefer – Mobile News. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with this app, its just that I tend to think that most of the stories which get to the top of Digg are terrible and in general, a waste of time. But that’s just me. I also don’t like that you have to click the story twice to get to the story, the first click takes you to people talking about the story, but that emulates Digg itself.
TED (free) – Unfortunately I have been unable to devote the time I’d like to this app and the associated website. Basically this presents a very compelling UI for access to the video and audio content of the TED convention. The TED convention is a gathering of the best and brightest in the world discussing solutions to real significant problems. The problem is that I’ve never been able to sit around and watch stuff on my mobile devices. Maybe someday, perhaps in an airport.
NPR Mobile (free) – Do you listen to NPR? Do you like the stories and perhaps want to be able to listen to them at your convenience? Would an easy to navigate set of categories help you find what you’re looking for? If you answered yes to these questions, this app is for you! Some content is audio only, some is text and audio, and all of it is pretty darn good. I still tend to use the AP Mobile News app more frequently, but I do like this one b/c I can find the programs I like and see what I’ve missed.
Pandora (free) – Personalized radio on your iPhone. Brilliantly easy and familiar to anyone who uses the desktop version. I’ve never really been a user of this app on the iPhone or desktop b/c I have my Zune with me, but if I need it, I’ve got it.
Shazam (free) – This app is pretty remarkable. It’s able to listen to a song (radio, TV, restaurant background music, whatever) and identify it. It can get a bit screwed up by loud ambient noise, but when the area around you is quiet enough, Shazam is dead-on accurate. Very cool. Once you’ve identified a song, the app will bookmark it for you with a tag which you can refer to later or use to find the song in iTunes for purchase. This is slightly cooler than the Zune FM purchase capability b/c this app recognizes songs from anywhere, not just songs which are coming from a radio station broadcasting RDS.
BargainBin (free) – This app scans through the iTunes AppStore to find the apps which are free or have been marked down. I’ve been able to download at least one application for free which otherwise would have cost me about $3 so it’s been a worthwhile addition, although in general it’s of dubious value in that it mostly reveals applications I don’t care about.
More apps
Other apps I’ve installed and just ran out of patience trying to write a paragraph description for. I’ve included links at least!
Stephen, Ken and I wandered down to the SweetWater Brewery for their weekly tasting event yesterday. I was blown away by how many people came out for this – maybe 200 to 300 people in total.
Stephen and Ken
Backstage tour of the giant brewing tanks
We even witnessed a couple getting engaged
Why is this significant news? While there, with Ken’s help, I managed to secure a donation from Sweetwater Brewery to the Atlanta Code Camp – 1 free keg of beer! This wonderful sweet nectar will be available for all comers to the after Camp dinner
I bought an iPhone game today – an awesome game called Crayon Physics Deluxe. This little app is incredibly cool. You get to draw shapes and lines with your finger and have these amazing Rube Goldberg Crayola machines spring into action. I showed this to a few co-workers and they’re off to grab the desktop version of Crayon Physics (free demo available here). This is really worth a look.
Now imagine this thing on a Microsoft Surface table!
User Interface design sessions typically start on a white board if everyone can be in the room together, but what's the next step? How do you capture that UI mockup effectively and modify it according to user feedback? Some folks turn to Visio for some deep and deeply complex user interfaces. Others turn to drawing tools in Office programs like PowerPoint or Word. Photoshop is too pricey and complex to really be useful. Now there is a better option! Balsamiq Mockups has become a tool which I can not live without. Whether I'm trying to communicate simple concepts or complex concepts, the ability to quickly whip out a representation of a user interface is invaluable. The best part is that the mockup is clearly that, a mockup. The layout is implied but design is not. I don't have to have conversations about "can we change the color of this box" but I can have conversations about which elements should be where on the screen or if the user is requesting so much data that it can't live on the same screen in a readable format. Thanks to the ease of use of this tool, every document I write which attempts to discuss a technical topic will likely feature a mockup generated from Balsamiq. I'm also going to see if I can't get a copy or two to give away at user groups or at the upcoming Atlanta Code Camp.
Here are a pair of mockups I've generated with the tool to illustrate simple concepts:
This simple mockup illustrates a Proof of Concept application which can translate text from one language to another.
This sample mockup represents a fictitious organization's Intranet home page
During this time of year it is always nice to thank and give thanks to the sponsors who make this site possible. We would like to thank MaximumASP for their continued efforts to make this a great community.
The recently announced a new offering for their MaxV program to support Microsoft HyperV so I thought the least I could do was post the info and let everyone know. Here is a press release from PDC.
MaximumASP Launches “MaxV” Virtual Dedicated Hosting Accounts
Free 30 Day MaxV Introductory Accounts Debut at Microsoft Professional Developer Conference
LOUISVILLE, Ky.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--MaximumASP, a Microsoft Gold Certified Provider of web hosting and IT services, today announced that it will provide free 30 day introductory accounts on their new MaxV platform featuring Windows Server 2008® Hyper-V™ virtualization technology. The introductory offer will debut at PDC (http://www.microsoftpdc.com/) October 27-30 in Los Angeles.
PDC attendees from around the world will receive sign-up information for a MaxV account free of charge at MaximumASP Booth #1018 and at various locations throughout the show.
The MaxV Virtual Dedicated Plan is hosted on either WS 2008 or 2003 Operating Systems with 32- and 64-Bit Editions, Recurrent Backups, Remote Desktop, 1 GB RAM, 30 GB Disk Space, and 200 GB monthly bandwidth. MaxV supports SQL Server 2008 and 2005 or a high-performance Shared SQL server is also available.
MaxV provides a quantum leap in server virtualization features and resources, while still providing the same high level of Superior Support for which MaximumASP is known in the industry. High Availability, Intelligent Monitoring, Recurrent Backups and Scalability are already included on the MaxV platform.
MaxV Virtual Dedicated Servers are isolated and secure “server instances” that occur on a single physical server, enabling better server utilization while also ensuring that applications do not conflict with each other. Each MaxV instance performs and executes exactly like a stand-alone server; MaxV can be rebooted independently and provides independent root access, users, IP addresses, memory, processor utilization, files, applications, system libraries and configuration files.
Silas Boyle, Managing Partner of MaximumASP explains, “The MaxV virtual dedicated server provides a lower priced alternative to our dedicated server offerings without making any compromise on quality of services.” Each MaxV virtual dedicated server performs and executes exactly like a stand-alone server for its users and applications. Boyle also said, “MaxV is an outstanding way for customers to take advantage of many of the benefits of a dedicated server at a lower price point until they are ready to upgrade to a truly dedicated server.”
The light overhead, efficient design, overall completeness and proven performance of MaxV also make it the right virtualization choice for server consolidation, disaster recovery and production servers with live applications and data.
Dominic Foster said, “As a managed hosting partner focused solely on Microsoft technologies since 2000, we are uniquely qualified to provide the superior support that our business is built on. Our unmatched expertise with Microsoft technologies lead to direct involvement with Microsoft as first to offer IIS 7 and SQL 2008 betas in a hosted environment; partnering in the Go Live Program for Hyper-V; and product co-launches built on WS 2008 with Hyper-V technology.”
MaxV Key Benefits
- Revolutionize your infrastructure! Don’t waste valuable time rebuilding applications and rewriting code.
- Don’t compromise on your preference of development platforms, software, or security options. Install and run the applications and services you want without server and infrastructure management worries!
- Add capacity as your business needs it to reduce costs and minimize energy consumption.
- Manage from anywhere in the world utilizing Remote Desktop.
- Don’t worry about it (whatever IT is. . .) – with MaxV it is probably included.
- High Availability clustering
- Scalability
- Intelligent Monitoring
- Recurrent Backups
- Superior Support
- Never worry about failed hardware again – Rely on MaximumASP for around the clock, superior support.
About MaximumASP
MaximumASP based in Louisville, Kentucky. was founded in 2000 as an outsourcing firm for Microsoft Windows based hosting and IT services. The company currently hosts more than 48,000 domains for customers in over 60 countries. With a strong focus on hosting solutions that combine advanced monitoring and management tools, MaximumASP has become a top choice for Microsoft developers seeking a robust hosting platform for mission-critical web applications. For more information visit www.maximumasp.com
I make not secret of the fact that I'm a Microsoft fanboy. I use a Microsoft Zune. I have several Xboxes (I kept 1 and gave 2 away). I use a Windows Mobile phone. This morning, my Microsoft Life got updated.
I fired up my Xbox 360 and downloaded the new Xbox Experience - an entirely new dashboard which introduces the "twist" style navigation familiar from the Zune and Windows Media Player. Now I have dozens of screens to look at and a generally improved way of navigating through the content. I spent all of about six minutes playing with it b/c I was excited to set up my most anticipated feature - integration to my NetFlix Instant Queue. Unfortunately I didn't get to demo that functionality as the NetFlix device activation web site was down. I'll hit that when I get home tonight. I also created an avatar, which I'd show you but apparently the Xbox Live site is still being worked on - I can't log in or look at my stats and friends.
I checked Twitter and saw Mike Gannotti talk about why he loves the Zune, including that he just got an update to the 3.1 firmware. This update includes new games like Soduku and some new listening features which I have yet to explore fully but anticipate loving the hell out of!
I'm thrilled with the new updates and can't wait to waste unbelievable hours of what would be marginally productive time listening to music, watching movies, and playing games. All I can say is that if the NetFlix integration is as awesome as I hope it is, I'm going to cancel HBO and ShowTime (and save a bucket of money). Next up - Windows Mobile 6.5. Rumors indicate we may finally see Zune software integration on handsets which will give me yet another way to kill my battery superfast. Yay!
Ryan Housley, one of the Atlanta community members that helped start and run MOSSmosis, a SharePoint user groups, is now going to help another great cause. He is helping HeroBox.org to send custom care packages to American soliders. Help support him in his cause.
You can find out more at their site:
www.herobox.org
http://heroboxblog.blogspot.com/
If you want to have lists of items to track that you can make public and private check out
Remember The Milk
http://www.rememberthemilk.com/
It is funny they have a very similar logo to ours. The great part is that it is available from many different sources and all you have to is send it an email.
Anyone else have any good sites for keeping up with lists?
If anyone doesn't know, the DevCow calendar is actually manually updated every month. I have been updating the calendar for about 3-4 years now every month. The process I take is to go directly to the websites of the user groups that we list on the site and make sure they are having a meeting for the month. Sometimes if the web site is not updated but I know the user group leader personally I will update the calendar based on what they tell me.
Recently I have been busy and the calendar has been one of those things to get behind. I have always wanted to automate some of the calendar, but that would still require a person to enter information at some point in time so it can only be as up to date as the knowledge or the group.
The reason I am letting you know this is because many of the groups have mailing list you can subscribe to. This will allow you to make sure from the user group leader the exact details of the meeting. I will get the calendar back on track now and hopefully we won't get behind again. Sorry for the delay.
It has been a rough week or so for Kim and I recently. It started a week or so back with Kim's car. I took it in to get the oil changed and found that the car needed a bunch of expensive fluid changes. I spent a bunch of money on that, took the car home, and the next day it wouldn't start. We called AAA to come out and jump the car in the garage and I drove it back to the mechanic where we determined that the battery was completely dead. A new battery later and this morning the car wouldn't start again. This time AAA came out and got the car started. The problem now appears to be something to do with the fuel line. Who knows what that repair will eventually cost me, although it appears not to be an emergency as Kim now knows how to get the car to start if it's being stubborn again.
Last Friday a terrible storm blew through the area and for 30 minutes or so we had what felt like gale force wind gusts blowing rain sideways. During the storm we had a significant water leak through one of the window frames in the kitchen, a minor leak through another window frame in the kitchen, and at least two and perhaps up to four leaks in the roof. Part of the roof is under warranty and will be fixed for free, but the roofing company was so busy they couldn't even estimate the costs to repair the rest of the roof. The roof is covered with cedar shake shingles and is going to be expensive to repair. I went into the attic and found and "fixed" one of the leaks but it had already damaged the ceiling drywall, which had actually just been repaired and repainted. Now there is a nice little hole which needs to be patched in the kitchen and I think that the ceiling in our master bathroom is about to need to be replaced.
Monday, Memorial Day, I went outside and did five hours of yard work - mowing and trimming all things green. When I came back in, I noticed that the A/C was making funny noises. Downstairs in the basement, I noticed ice on some of the lines coming out of the furnace and the motor running the blower in the furnace was not able to start, although it kept trying. I managed to get a repair guy to come out and look at the unit. He declared the blower motor dead and in need of replacement. Of course, he didn't have a part to fit and getting a replacement would be hundreds of dollars. Kim and I knew when we bought the house that the furnace was over 30 years old and the air compressor outside was over 20 years old. It didn't make a lot of sense to cobble it back together so we just bit the bullet and replaced the entire set. Now we have a nice new Lennox furnace inside and quiet new air conditioner outside, both of which should be WAY more energy efficient. Even so, the cost was enough that I could have purchased a Toyota Yaris.
Kim and I have decided that my mother is the jinx and she's probably not going to be allowed back! She's been staying with us for these past few weeks and has been helping us with the baby. The baby who is now sitting comfortably in efficiently conditioned and cooled air. When he turns 16 I'm sure he'll wish we'd bought him a Yaris instead...
Now I can say most of what I used to say here in a far more immediate and visceral way using Twitter. You should all be using Twitter and Twhirl! Go forth and tell everyone what you're doing.
What is Twitter?
How do I get an account?
What is Twhirl?
Got all that? Excellent - now check out a neato mashup of Twitter and Google Maps.
I've been playing around with Camtasia recently as I record videos for the SharePoint course of the Dot Net University. The tool is totally AWESOME! I'm about to become a video blogging fool!
If you are from Linksys give me a call and we can talk, I just might put you on hold for 5 hours and resolve your issue in 2 days!
Where do you start with any customer support call? Well I used to think that Linksys was one of the best brands on the market, but I will look around before buying another one for a while. This all started when the $150 WCG200 combo wireless router and cable modem would not connect to the internet. I purchased the unit in January of 2007, but only started having the problem when I moved in June. I started out by blaming the cable company thinking that they were dropping my connection. So they sent a person out to the house and sure enough there was nothing wrong. The problem wasn't happening everyday so I let it go for a while, until one day it wouldn't reconnect for a long time. At that time I became upset and looked on the web only to find out that other people were having the same trouble. The problem appers to be because of a bad firmware version from Linksys that the cable company pushes down to the modem.
Check out the full problem here: http://forums.linksys.com/linksys/board/message?board.id=Cable&thread.id=11&view=by_date_ascending&page=3
A month or so ago I contact the online support person to see if they could quickly resolve my issue, but with no luck I gave up for the time being. Then the problem got worse and the device wouldn't connect for hours. So just the other day I started down the path of trying to call Linksys to fix the problem. They made me go through common troubleshooting that I had already done like resetting the modem (which obviously removes all of your custom setup so you have to do it again). Keep in mind this is causing major problems on the home front because my wife works at home. She can't get to the internet and since I'm the first line support while at work all day, I can't deal with the issue very well. Anyway this is how the conversation goes.
Start Conversation
6:15 PM - wait 15 minutes someone picks up and then hangs up on me. (not a great start if you ask me)
Call back (6:30 PM) - Talk with first line support who can't help, then talk with second line support who makes me do only the standard troubleshoot just to tell me the modem is not online. Exactly what I have been saying for the last hour.
7:30 PM - Get transferred to manager because the linksys forums suggest replacing my combo with two different devices or else you will continue to have the same problem. This is because there is a bad version of the firmware.
7:45 PM - Manager tells me he needs to look into the issue and he will call me back in 30 minutes.
10:15 PM- I call back, no manager, nobody called back at all and to top it off I get a front line person that says they are too busy and someone will call me back in 30 minutes.
At that point I am pissed because I have already fallen for the 30 minute routine. I argue with him for a minute and he tells me they have 1 or 3 shifts working right now and that is why it will be better in 30 minutes. He also tells me there are 300 front line support and 50 managers that are working at the moment all that have calls waiting for them. He tells me that there are 54 calls in front of me and that it might take some time.
So I give up.
But not for long.
10:25 PM - About 3 minutes and James answers. James was the best person I talked to. James fixed the date of purchase from November 2006 to the correct date of January 2007. He told me I would be on hold for 2 minutes and exactly at 2 minutes he came back and asked if it would be ok for another 2 minutes. Before the end of the second 2 minutes he had someone on the line. Amazing how James works.
10:41 PM - I finish explaining the problem again to the third person I was transferred from and I am now on hold once again. So the real issue is that I need to replace my modem with two different devices to get it to work, but no one can understand that.
10:50 PM - My final tech got the 2 device swap changed out for my original expensive device. But there is a catch, I have to call back tomorrow from 8AM- 5PM EST (maybe) and get customer service to replace the device.
I will let you know tomorrow at 8AM.
Next day
8:50 AM - So I call back and press the right buttons and it tells me they are not open yet. I also get informed that the operating times are from 9-6 and 8-5 with no timezone. Because I am good at waiting I call back and press 0 like 5 times until I get an operator. When I talk to the technician he tells me it is PST so they will be open in a few hours. Just so you know there are some wonderful people on the helpdesk - it is the process that sucks.
11:39 AM - I call back to customer service and talk to a nice person that tells me they can only replace the unit for the same device type, not what I was told last night and now I have to pay shipping to send my unit back. I am starting to question if this is really worth my time for this device. So to get the RMA processed I have to go online, which I can't because the modem is the problem, but she was kind enough to take my information and place me on hold to take it. (I guess they can read your minds at Linksys).
11:55 AM - She came back and told me that they can only replace the unit for the same unit, which makes sense, but that device doesn't work with my service provider based on bad Firmware from Linksys. So I push her enough for her to tell me they do follow policy and that she will respect my request to transfer me to a manager.
12:14 PM - She came back on and wanted to see if I wanted their help to call Best Buy and push this issue onto them.
12:16 PM - Finally I get a manager at customer service who doesn't listen to my problem but starts to tell me that there is nothing I can do and brushes off anything I say and continues to tell me that I need a senior level technican to approve my return. I push back as usual and she tells me a senior technical engineer will have to call me back in 2 days to verify the problem. So I tell her I did that last night and she tells me that those are not senior level technicians and that everything I did last night for 6 hours was not valid. Last night was ONLY for determining that the device is not working correctly. I could have told them that in 2 minutes! grrrrrr. Her name was Janet and her id is (13717) don't use her if you can help it. She was the worst person to deal with out of the entire group, but it is because she is standing by company policy. Which again I understand, but you could be nice doing it. She didn't even care to listen to my problem or understand the actual problem, she just stood behind the policies and told me that is the way it is.
12:28 PM - After I push back and explain that I did speak to people I ask her to go over my phone records. It appears they are going off old calls and my orginal case online where the person was not helpful at all. I can post that entire conversation later. She comes back after reviewing the case again and tells me that they might be able to process the request as stated by the senior technical engineer last night. So we wait. =)
12:40 PM - So somehow she finds the call logs from last night and the fact that a technical engineer did look at the problem. So she tells me that she will be able to do the unit model exchange that is approved. So one last time I check with her to make sure that it is for the two untis and she tells me the units it will be. I ask if I will have to pay shipping and of course she says that I will have to. To make sure I ask if it will be new or refurbished and of course it is refurbished and they are going to put a hold on my credit card for $150 bucks which is more than those units are at the store new. So we have to fill out an RMA form and she has to help because I can't go online. And you guessed it - we wait!
I actually had time to make up a song based on customer service hold song.
"Down in Georgia we call Linksys support,
we call Linksys support,
so angry waiting so long,
sooooooo weeeeeee
wait, we wait for Linksys,
we wait for Linksys,
we wait for Linksys,
With no end in sight,
we wait for Linksys
Boy I wish I had internet to mail the big cheese,
but we wait on hold and try not sneeze,
upset with the time it takes,
soooooooo weeeeeeee,
wait, we wait for Linksys,
we wait for Linksys,
we wait for Linksys,
With no end in sight,
we wait for Linksys"
1:03 PM - She was able to process the RMA request which has free shipping and will take 3-5 days to get here. I asked her if it can come quicker because I don't have internet and she said it will cost 15-25 dollars more to do that but she advises against that because 1. she already processed this RMA and would have to start over 2. she can't promise the time it will go out so I may not really get it quicker and 3. they took so long today that it is past the time today where they do those requests. We would have had to do this by 9AM PST, which I explained to her was what time they opened and took my first call today.
Wrap up
So in the end it worked out, kinda. I am without internet for 3-5 days because the modem has gotten worse for some reason. Probably the 300 restarts a day that they asked me to do. And now I have to pay 30 bucks to ship the old one back. I will get used units that we hope will work and they have 150 bucks on my credit card for now. All this stress and time for a unit that cost $150. $150 bucks is a lot but it is amazing that you start to think of options when you have so much crap to deal with from customer service reps. Remember they are being paid to lower costs and follow policies that don't always apply. In fact this is their full time job and you have other responsibilites. We actually need a company that charges a fee to handle this kind of problem with customer service for people.
Question: do you think that Mr. J. Michael Pocock - Sr. Vice President and General Manager, Linksys would have this problem? I seriously doubt it so why am I having this problem? I think a good challege would be to give top level executives a scripted problem and have them call to resolve the problem. That way they can see what it is like from our point of view. No offense Mr. Pocock, but your award winning support didn't win any awards for me. You might want to look into it and if your team says they will call you back, then they should.
I would also work on your URL's at Linksys - they aren't very easy to use. Might I recommend something like SharePoint 2007? I could even help you put it in place.
J. Michael Pocock - http://www.linksys.com/servlet/Satellite?c=L_Content_C1&childpagename=US%2FLayout&cid=1160628765198&pagename=Linksys%2FCommon%2FVisitorWrapper
If you wonder if I really did talk to so many people, check this out. Please forgive me if I spell your name wrong. I did write down all of their ID's, but I'll spare those in this list.
- Maricel
- Pete
- Cheryl
- Janit (never called back after they told me they would in 30 minutes)
- James
- Airashee
- John
- Leon
- Kathy
- Janet
Totally off subject, I just got my coupon in the mail from Taco Bell for a free item for one of the resturants charging me 50 cents for water in the drive through. I will say Taco Bell customer support was 100 times better, but they don't have to set up a wireless router on Vista. (That is a poke at that recording on Linksys that says they are having trouble because of the number of Vista users). I think this shows the higher the value of the item you're having a problem with, the more effort you must put in.
Let me know good or bad if you have had a problem like this or if there is a website that maintains these complaints from a third party point of view.
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