... or "I hate microsoft"
... or a story of how I tried to get help about a broken service of theirs
For the longest time I wanted to have a controller. Not that I need it, but some games are just nicer to play with it. And so recently I've been reminded that microsoft sells let's say "queer colored" xbox controllers. After thinking for a short while, I've decided that I'm allowed to spend my money on it and I went to the website, not knowing what circus is awaiting me.
The site that sells these custom controllers (you can change colors of different parts and stuff) uses SSO through Microsoft account (obv), so I've logged-in into my microsoft account. Then I ordered the controller, re-checked "my orders" page, next day received a confirmation email, all was good.
Since I was reminded that I have a Microsoft account, I decided to change the email associated with it1. This was a bad idea. BUT in my defense, in no world should changing an email break anything. And yet, it did.
What did it break, I hear you ask2? Well... I could no longer see my order on "my orders" page. Weird... but not a big deal, probably, after all, I received the confirmation email, so it should be fine...
The problem seemed to be that the site used SSO incorrectly β instead of storing some kind of account ID or something, it stored my primary email as the login, so after I changed the email, a new account was created for me3. So this is stupid...
Okay, well, surely a company as big as microsoft, has support that can help me clear things up here. Turns out: no, microsoft does not have a helpful support. support.microsoft.com only has answers for questions I don't have, if you click "contact support" you have a choice of these products:
Clicking on other products just redirects you to answers.microsoft.com, where again, there are only answers for questions I don't have.
Okay, I can choose "Xbox" as the closest thing, it redirects you to support.xbox.com where there is a contact button, horray!
But again, they don't have an option for my problem. I don't remember what I've chosen the first time, but it did not give me the contact details, so I had to choose a reason even less similar to the problem I had, and only then they gave me a link to a web chat with support.
I've described the problem as well as I could, shared the old and new emails (including the uuid, which was awkward), waited a lot (everything was moving very slowly, as the support tried to do something), then they asked screenshot of the confirmation email (for some reason order number wasn't enough??), eventually they said that my order still exists (yay!), but they can't help more because the problem is in another department.
They gave me US and Russian phone numbers of sales, which I would need to contact for further help. The problem is that I'm currently in Armenia, so calling neither US nor Russia wouldn't be cheap, I told the support that, after which they gave me the supposedly Armenian number... but the region code seemed off and turns out this was Azerbaijanian number... Alright, I told them that too, after a short while they gave me actually Armenian number and also told me that it doesn't matter which number I call β they all proxy to the same thing and I'll be able to choose the language when I call. Cool!
After that I received an email telling me that my order has shipped. The email included "Click the track shipment link below to follow your order", there was no track shipment link. The only meaningful link in the email was a link to "my orders" page... which still doesn't work for me. This was quite worrying, because I'm using a proxy service4 and to register the shipment there I need the tracking number.
First thing I tried is to send them an email5. Then I figured out that if the problem is the changed email, I can change the email back. And so I tried, I changed the email, re-login-ed on the site that sells controllers and... nothing. The site was still using the email that had no attached orders. Then I thought that maybe changing to a new email could change things, so I created a new alias, changed email in ms account to it... still nothing. The site still uses the wrong email. I've tried to change the email again to the first one but... I reached a rate limit on changing primary emails. Next time I can change primary email is in a week. Cooooool. So not only I still can't see my orders, the email is not even the one I wanted! Only then I noticed the "It can take up to 48 hours for your new primary alias to appear on all Microsoft products and services. [...]", welp.
Wellll, this is annoying. The only thing I can do, is to call the sales. I call and... a robot says something in Armenian. Uhhh? Oh! Right, the number that was given to me included both the outside code (+...) and the internal one (0), after removing one of them I was greeted by a microsoft robot. It first asked to press 1 to record or 2 to not record this dialogue, I pressed 1, but it said it won't record it (?). Then it asked some other questions, but did not understand my replies (how can it not understand number choices??), after a few different questions and robot repeatedly asking me to try again, it concluded in a "microsoft support moved online, go to help.microsoft.com" and ended the call. Trying to call again resulted in the record question and then straight up forwarding to help.microsoft.com67. Welp, this is a dead end too, it seems like I have no options to do anything.
To recap:
- Site that sells controllers implements SSO badly, such that changing email changes your identity
- Changing email doesn't work immediately (and the warning about that is hard to notice), and is rate limited
- Tracking number is only shown in "my orders" (I assume), to which I don't have access
- Support is hard to find and pretty useless
- There is no way to reach anyone who can help/no other way to manage orders other than through ms account with the right email
- AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
The ending is good though, after a couple of days I received an email from the proxy service that they've received my order and that I need to fill declaration immediately, so that they can ship it. So, in the end, I will (likely) receive my controller, but I still hate MS (or they hate me, idk).
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I recently started using riseup.net as the email thingy, it allows making arbitrary aliases and seemingly doesn't have a limit for them. So, I've started using
{service}-{random uuid}@riseup.netas emails for logging in to services. For example for microsoft account I havemicrosoft-3ebabcbd-aff6-49be-a198-e3371d42ca3e@riseup.net(but, with a different uuid, this one was made up for the post) -
I did not actually hear you. The only thing I currently hear is the sound of my keyboard8
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I still don't know for sure if this is the real reason, or it was something else, but I'm fairly certain that this is it
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Microsoft doesn't ship controllers to Armenia, so I need to use a proxy which delivers it...
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After a while I received a notification that "Your message wasn't delivered. Despite repeated attempts to deliver your message, the recipient's email system refused to accept a connection from your email system", so this was pointless
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(from where I got to the useless support and then here)
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My guess is that Armenian number forwards to Russia and Russian department was closed in response to the war in Ukraine, although I'm not entirely sure
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It sounds nice (but it's quite loud...)