OK, so in a moment of laziness and perceived economy last year, when I bought a new office PC, I took MS up on their Live OneCare product offer. Security for up to 3 PCs for next to nothing…$50. This week, I got notification that my subscription was expiring next month, and that I should update my credit card info. Problem is, my home computer is hardly ever used, so whenever I turn it on, I am plunged into the forced delay of a mandated update…for what seems like an hour. I’m turning it on because I need to use it, now. This inexpensive product takes too much time, for too little benefit. I need a tool that doesn’t nanny me.

But can you cancel your $50 subscription online? No, of course not. You have to call and ask permission. A Microsoft representative then argues with you. “Did you call tech support and ask them to help you with this problem? Do you realize the danger if your computers are left unprotected?” Why does Microsoft treat consumer-level customers like idiots? Unfortunately, I made this call within minutes of an upcoming conference call…no idea I would not be able to extricate myself. Did the “customer service representative” curtail her spiel when informed that I had to get off the call? No, of course not. She wanted to argue with me about why I needed the confirmation number. Hello? You’ve already lost the customer…why make it worse?

Here’s a company that was smart enough to leverage a piece of hobbyist software into a market-dominating software platform, but not smart enough to adapt to a web-centric world, and way too big to care about the individual customer. Apple started out as the PC for the rest of us, and is now the technology company of choice for the young, smart and creative classes. Apple has their successes and failures, in about equal measure, but they seem to really care about the customer relationship. Jobs has attitude, Ballmer has attitude, but between the smart ass and the bad ass, I think we all see why we pull for Apple to win. We’ll gladly pay a LOT more for great design and usability…meanwhile, Microsoft wants to fight us for our lunch money.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 12th, 2008 at 1:29 pm and is filed under seo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.