IP: credit card information extortion by Microsoft support & .NET

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Mark Laubach <laubach () inconvenient net>
Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2002 11:34:19 -0800
To: farber () cis upenn edu
Subject: credit card information extortion by Microsoft support & .NET

Dave,

IP'ers might like this.  This past week, I finally decided to stop my
hesitation of using Max OS X and decided to take the full time plunge.
Part of the new marriage involved installing Microsoft Office v.X.  At
first blush, the applications worked beautifully.  Now, the honeymoon
is over. When I try to start up Word, PowerPoint, or Excel, the programs
all just abort on startup.  OS X, give me a little information that the
abort was "unexpected".  Big help.  Microsoft also doesn't drop any
log files around that I can easily find.  So I have no clue what is
going on.  Ok, there's their support website.

FAQs and such don't detail this problem, so I start the process
of filing a technical support problem.

First problem: you can't file a report unless you have a Microsoft Passport.

Ok, well I do have a hotmail account, so I enter that information.  Turns
our for some reason, my password isn't working anymore.  So I follow the
the links for forgotten password.  There is this form that asks me my
secret question, new passwords, *and* a question that asks me to "Type the
last five digits of any credit card stored in your .NET Passport wallet.".

Second problem: I don't have a .NET Passport Wallet and don't expect to set
up one
in my lifetime.

Third problem: There's no way around this.  Even the .NET help doesn't
mention this
requirement.

So here you are.  A fat bald ass offensive intimidation for me to have to
register
personal credit card information just to obtain support on a product that
ain't working.

Mark






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