Torture By MSDN

As might be expected, the gripes about Microsoft and its new product offerings centered on Vista are mounting up. Before we start working our way through those, however, I'd like to relate one reader's experience with the seemingly simple task of renewing his MSDN subscription, as it's a story that may help us put some of the other issues we'll be discussing in proper perspective. The reader first wrote me in De

After weeks of tag-team emails and phone calls among different groups at Microsoft, Dell and the reader's organization, some progress was made in at least understanding what the reader's options were and how discounts for their Microsoft volume license agreement would apply. Just before the holidays, it appeared a solution that met the reader's needs had been found. "Keeping the cost over the three years of our Enterprise license in the neighborhood of what the Universal subscription had been for the last five year, is possible if - as I've opted - you get one complete media kit shipment up front, and then download updates rather than getting the monthly DVDs. That is something I can live with, but the extra $1,400 Microsoft wants for the DVD updates is outrageous. And any additional staff member buying in fresh will have to kick in $3,000 - $5,000 for the full three-year license price. Ka-ching."

"The most amazing thing has been the utter round-robin confusion and misunderstanding between Microsoft, Dell, and our purchasing people. The poor guy here who is designated as the coordinator of our volume license contracts is ready to throw his hands up in utter disgust. It is honestly the biggest debacle with a vendor I have ever walked through, and has been the hardest to clear up. Frankly, I will believe it is cleared up when I get that license number issued to me and the MSDN web site accepts for the new subscription period that kicks off the three-year license."

Such skepticism was foresighted on the reader's part, because it turned out his ordeal was far from over. When he returned to work in the new year, the access codes for his new MSDN subscription was waiting for him, but he found it impossible to log into the MSDN website with them. Phone calls and e-mails to Microsoft for help kept him and his license coordinator going in circles for days without solving the problem. And, to top it off, when the package that was supposed to be his complete media starter kit arrived, it was for the wrong Team Edition.

"It would be really nice if, just once at some point in this process, something could be done right the first time," the reader wrote in early January. "I have struggled to think back over the past couple of months of this process of ordering and accessing these licenses to see if I could identify one single point in time at which someone on the Dell side or the Microsoft side did something correctly the first time and I actually got what I was asking for. Unfortunately, there is no such point in time. What will it take to get this straightened out? What will it take for Microsoft to structure their service delivery so that the right hand knows what the left is doing, and product purchases are actually available, and delivered? Is there any chance this will happen before I retire in three years, one and a half months?"