Surface Go - Broken and Horrible Customer Service

I got my Surface Go at the end of last year. It’s still under warranty.

But recently it developed a problem where a strip 5mm across the screen refuses to respond to touch or pen.

So I submitted a repair service request and dutifully downloaded their diagnostic tool and ran the tests etc.

The repair service got successfully created. But here comes the start of the troubles.

  1. I need to package it for shipping, the courier is to pick it up from me.
  2. But the shipping label refuses to print. Their website crashes and gives me a blank screen with a literal “[]” when I request for a shipping label.
  3. I started chatting with the customer support. Over a period of 3 days, 3 different support personnel gave me the ran around, not bothering to look through their support logs, making me repeat the same information every time!
  4. They sent feel good emails like “I’ll be following up on this. This is the ref #” but I get zero replies when I reply to their email.

It’s day 4, the shipping label is still not ready. And guess what? When I log in to request for an update today, I found myself blocked from asking for an online chat. The last customer service personnel apparently “escalated” my case and now I am blocked from asking for customer service!

What an awful load of crap. This will be the last Microsoft Device I’ll ever buy. It’s just horrible, the way the treat people. Zero human decency.

Jesus.
Sorry to hear that. Sounds frustrating as all hell.

Thing is, if the problem is on their end, you can’t possibly be the only one experiencing this. In which case, it’s weird that after this many days, they still haven’t straightened out their website.

Best wishes to you. This is the very definition of frustration.

Thanks pal.

It’s sickening that Microsoft does not have a single physical repair center or customer service center in the whole of Singapore…

Maybe try tweeting @panos_panay. Doesn’t always work, but I’ve found executive escalations to be surprisingly successful on occasion.

Thanks! I didn’t think to realise that they’ll respond on twitter!

I’ll try it as soon as I get stuff at the office sorted.

I’d email him too. [email protected] or firstnamelastinitial@.

This is eerelie similar to my own experience with what happened when MS made up issues with my Skype account and preventend me to use it.
I went through the fake web fronts, the crashing pages, the helpless customer support numerous times before finally being banned from asking anything.
I was told to reach to them through twitter: I created an account and tried that, but didn’t get a reply either.
I learned as well, and switched out of Office, before being subjected to a similar humiliating treatment in my work.

Microsoft Games For Windows Live and Surface Pro 1.0 support was like that.

A update. The courier came and told my wife who’s at home that the shipping label is missing in ALL the shipments she had ever handled.

She persuaded us to pass the package to her and she’ll key in the proper information when she reached the service center.

We handed over the package. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to get it back. Well, it’s 700 dollars down the drain if that ever happens. Whichever way, I’m prepared to write it off.

Sorry to hear that. I was still considering to get an Office 2016 upgrade from my Office 2011. That’ll never happen now. I just downloaded Open Office in fact and was considering Mellel as a permanent solution since I’ll be needing to work with Hebrew fonts anyway.

It is shocking that they can actually ban people from customer service. Unheard of.

The smugness of Windows/Office only people is more than I can bear sometimes. I’ll just send them pdf when they ask for docs nowadays.

FYI, LibreOffice is a fork by everyone but Oracle that has a lot more features - even a ribbon now!

You say that like it’s a GOOD thing!!

700 dollars seems high for a surface go. My Pro 6 with pen and type cover was only 799…

Oh, it’s 700 SGD which comes to about 400+ USD. Sorry for the confusion.

Update:

  1. The courier came as the courier unable to reschedule in time.
  2. When the courier turned up, she divulge that in all her pickups, most of the customers were UNABLE to generate a shipping label.
  3. We took a risk and let her have it.
  4. After 1 day, I received an email that the device had received at the repair center.
  5. On the same day, I received a message that the replacement device had been shipped out.
  6. The next 2 days were quite nervous for me because Microsoft’s website removed the original device, and I was unable to track both the old unit and the new unit even when I have their tracking code.
  7. Without announcement, the package arrived with a replacement Surface Go. It came with a simple shipping box, it’s not a retail boxed unit.
  8. I’m reinstalling everything now.

All’s well that ends well. I find it hard to believe that the whole process is so painful. Nothing works as expected, still I am thankful I got a good outcome.

Wow, that’s great that you got a replacement device. Given that story, I give a D- to Microsoft Customer Service for communications and process, but they get an A for the bottom line result.

Yea! I learnt some stuff from this. Even with bugs in the process, work can still proceed with 1 or 2 key people in place who are willing to go above and beyond their job description.

The courier saved the entire process by having a willingness to 1) admit flaws in the process 2) go beyond what a typical worker would be willing to do and complete the steps in a flawed and broken process.

We would all be in a better world if everyone had the work ethic she has.