This morning, I set out to file a bug report with Microsoft. All I wanted was a simple form on a web page to file a bug report for Outlook and Outlook Express*. I did a Google search for "microsoft bug". One of the top results is http://msdn.microsoft.com/bugs/default.asp, which has a nice big "Report a bug" link. That looked promising. I followed it and created the required Passport account. After signing in, I got a page allowing me to report bugs, but only for Microsoft's development programs (Visual Studio, Visual C++, etc.). Denied.
So, I Google'd for "microsoft bug report" and found a blog post titled "Mission: Impossible. Submitting a Bug Report to Microsoft". Fantastic. This morning, I'm Tom Cruise. I'm going to file a bug report.
Next, I searched around the Microsoft web site. Starting at http://support.microsoft.com/, I went to the Outlook 2003 Solution Center. Nothing. So, I went back and followed the link to Microsoft Support Services. Then, Personal Support. Finally, I got to the Outlook 2003 help and support site, only to find nothing about filing bugs, only information about contacting a support professional for 35USD. No, thanks. Then, I searched the Microsoft Knowledge Base. Nothing.
Back to Google. One of the other results for "microsoft bug report" is Bug Reporting Information And Links. The page was on members.tripod.com, but I figured I'd try it anyway. I followed a link there to "Visit the Microsoft Bug Reporting Webpage", which took me to http://support.microsoft.com/contactus/. Finally, a Microsoft page that talked about reporting bugs! I followed the link to the bug report page and got... a phone number.
Fine, if that's what it's going to take to file a bug report, I'll give them a call. So, I called 1-800-MICROSOFT. And that's where the problems started. The menu didn't have any option to file bug reports. The closest thing was technical support, so I went with that option. I eventually got a human who didn't understand that I didn't want support, I just wanted to file a bug report. He took down a lot of personal information, including a Windows XP product ID. I don't actually use Windows XP at the moment, so I had to borrow the product ID from another computer in the house. Then, he told me that I'd need to talk to someone in customer support. After explaining to him again that I just wanted to file a bug report, he said I'd have to get talk to customer support to file a bug report even if I didn't need support. And it'd cost 35USD. If they agreed that I'd found a bug, they'd refund my money.
By this time, I was already on the phone and it looked like I had no other option, so I said OK, I'll pay the money. He took my credit card information and transferred me to customer support. I explained the issue to someone in customer support and he said I should talk to someone in Outlook support. Fine. The guy in Outlook support started by asking for my Outlook product ID. Luckily, the Windows XP system I borrowed before also has Microsoft Office, so I borrowed the product ID from there. Apparently, you're entitled to two free support calls if you have a retail version of Microsoft Outlook. Unfortunately, we have an OEM version, so he told me again that I'd be charged 35USD and that I should talk to an Outlook technician. Optionally, I could send the bug report by snailmail**, but I opted to talk to the Outlook technician. So, he transferred me to the Outlook technician.
I described the problem to Kim (she was the first person that had a name I could pronounce), the Outlook technician. "Let me see how I can solve this for you," she responded.
"You can't solve this. I just want to file a bug report," I said.
"Ohh! OK, I'll file a bug for you."
"Is there any way I can track the bug?" I asked.
"Well, no, but I can have someone e-mail or call you later today."
"That would be great."
She took down a description of the problem, then we said our goodbyes. Fifty minutes, 35USD, and four humans later, I'd filed my first bug report with Microsoft. I don't think I'll be doing that again. Since I started this process, I've received six e-mails from Microsoft: one describing my new Passport account, one asking me to activate my Passport account, two receipts for 35USD (I hope that doesn't mean I paid twice), and two form mails from Kim, one saying she was taking charge of my case and one saying my case had been resolved by filing a bug report. I hope that means I get my money back.
* Curious what the bug was all about? Outlook and Outlook Express don't support RFC 2231, which describes how to send file attachments with international or long names via e-mail. If you send such a file attachment from a program supporting RFC 2231, such as Opera, Thunderbird, Kmail, or several other clients, the attachment name comes out as "ATT#####.dat", where "#####" is some random number.
I don't actually expect to see this bug fixed in any of the Microsoft's current products, but if they could at least read the filenames correctly in Windows Mail (which replaces Outlook Express in Windows Vista), that'd be a step in the right direction. Several other clients, such as The Bat! and many web mail systems (including Gmail) also don't support RFC 2231, so I'll be filing some more bug reports. Hopefully they won't be such a hassle.
** To send bug reports to Microsoft via snailmail, send a letter describing the problem to:
Product Name Development Group Microsoft Corporation 1 Microsoft Way Redmond, Washington 98052
where "Product name" is replaced by the name of the product you want to report a bug about. In this case, I would have used "Outlook".
Update (2006-03-22 9:51pm): A lot of people are giving me flack for calling this problem a bug and not a feature request. First, you probably only say that because I provided the solution. If I had just said that Outlook isn't displaying file attachment names with international characters correctly when sent from certain MUAs, you wouldn't be so quick to judge. And that's what the end-user sees. Software developers need to keep the user's perspective in mind when deciding if something is a bug report or a feature request. That's why I called it a bug.
I also could have said that Outlook is violating RFC 2045 - 2049 since those RFCs forbid the use of the =?charset?Q/B?text?= syntax in filenames, which is what Outlook sends and receives. RFC 2231 is the only way to encode such characters in MIME headers. Is it still a feature request? I say no.
And all that is beside the point. The point here is that I couldn't find a way to just file a bug report with Microsoft. I could have described another issue, but it would still have been just as hard to file a bug.
Note: Comments with a light blue background were made by the site owner.
No no no.
You don't get it, you're only supposed to submit bugs when the application crashes on you. ;) However, I'm surprised that she did not point you in the direction of their massive bug database and wish you a good day.
Maybe you could point me in
Maybe you could point me in the direction of the massive bug database? :P
Well..
To some extent. There is the knowledge base which is essentially a collection of error and problems that they have picked up on but you're right, there is no concrete "Bug/Glitch" database. None that I've found anyhow.
Ahh, I see what you mean.
Ahh, I see what you mean. Yeah, I searched the KB, but there wasn't anything I could find. Plus, I wanted to file a bug report, not find a solution.
Do you have an MSDN account?
Do you have an MSDN account?
Not that I know of.
Not that I know of.
smart
We should do this aswell to keep me from drowning in bug mails ;-)
File bug
File bug here:
http://connect.microsoft.com/
I'll have to check that out
I'll have to check that out later. One does wonder why none of the four people I talked to sent me there.
Connect is for beta programs / early adopters
Microsoft Connect seems to be for beta testers and early adopters of unestablished products, such as OneNote. Since Outlook Express is a well established product, Microsoft Connect does not offer it as a program. In addition, for any programs that are offered, you have to apply to participate in them. You can't just file bugs instantly.
Bloody customers
Fortunately they go away if you ignore them long enough.
I've gotten this treatment before. Microsoft is a bunch of willfully incompetent assholes. Now they haven't seen a dime in years. I won't even buy systems with XP Home preinstalled.
dude- you have integrity
I think I'm about there though myself. I am now excited over Linux systems and Mac systems. In the former case, at least the community is appreciative enouph to accept the gift of informed, concientious bug reports from a user base without CHARGING THEM!!, and if you are dealing with a free distro- your distro will be at least worth as much as you paid for it.
In the case of a Mac, my feeling is that will also be true- haven't gone there yet- though their laptops have me slobbering on my bib.
No charge to submit to Apple...
https://bugreport.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/RadarWeb.woa
You do have to sign up as and ADC member, but that is free, and hooks you up with the latest development tools.
Ask for a refund.
Microsoft, like most companies, charge for support on the front end of the call. If the problem turns out to be a bug they will refund the money. Just ask for your card to be credited. I've done this several times when I ended up needing a hotfix to resolve an issue.
I plan to. Kim said she put
I plan to. Kim said she put in a request to have my money refunded.
Another option is
... to call the CC company in time and request them to remove the billing from M$ then, because their product is faulty and doesnt work and on their support line you were sort of blackmailed and forced to agree to their biding otherwise the issue wouldnt even have been stored with M$. Then M$ has to write a letter to the CC company explaining in detail why they think the still have the right to charge you 35$, and under which circumstances they will refund you the money themselves. Since this involves more overhead than is worth (as the whole subject is questionable to being worth 35$) you might get your money back. Anyway, it is still questionable if M$ fixes or implements this.
Choice
"By this time, I was already on the phone and it looked like I had no other option..."
Sure you did. Hang up. While it makes sense for users to report bugs so that the product can be improved, it makes no sense to pay for the privilidge--especially since they aren't even promising they will fix it. There is no good excuse for Microsoft not having an easy to use web interface for this if the cost of humans is the issue. Clearly, if it took 4 humans to take your bug report, they also need to improve their processes.
Anyway, I have had similar experiences, so I do sympathize.
Michael
Yes, I could have hung up,
Yes, I could have hung up, but that wouldn't have gotten the problem solved. I filed this bug on behalf of Opera users, as well as Thunderbird, Kmail, Pine, etc users. Read through the Thunderbird and Kmail bugs reports.
So, there's no way for an end-user to report bugs, but there's also no way for a collaborator to report bugs either.
M$ Customer Service:
Hehe
Thats good :)
--
Welt-Blick
Bug?
You need to understand the difference between a bug and a feature request.
A bug is a documented feature of the application that does not work as documented, throws an error or causes the application or system to crash. What you are describing does not fit in this category.
A feature is something new that you would like to see added to an application.
Just because an email system doesn't support a specific RFC or only supports a subset doesn't mean it is a bug. In fact I am sure they will tell you this is not a bug and it is working as originally designed.
Of course you can argue that an email client should support all of the standards / RFCs that have been published... but I think this is unreasonable.
There's no place to send
There's no place to send suggestions on the Microsoft site, either. :P
Seriously, though, this issue is reported as a bug for several MUAs since the attachments don't show up correctly in Outlook. And Outlook users see this as a bug since they don't get the attachment names correctly.
The only reason I'd could lean to saying this might not be a bug is because I know the cause. If I didn't, I'd just say the my attachments aren't showing up right = bug.
And it's a good thing they charged you, too
Does Outlook's documentation state that it supports RFC2231? If it doesn't, then you didn't file a bug, you took up a lot of people's time (and wasted your own) to file a feature request, and the $35 was pretty cheap.
Imagine you're a freelance PC repair/install guy and you sell someone a computer with specifications that don't include a sound card. Then they call you up and want you to come over and diagnose why their computer doesn't play music. Then they want you to put a sound card in so it will. Are you going to do all that for free?
I think you got it backwards
He isn't demanding they include a new feature, but merely suggesting an idea. In your example about the computer tech, he knew it didn't have a sound card and called you up and suggested that many of the other computer brands have sound cards and that you might want to consider putting one in as standard. Why should the computer tech say anything other than 'thanks for the suggestion'? I mean, listening to your customers shouldn't be that hard.
I wonder how many Microsoft employees get paid to come up with ideas and innovate. I would imagine it would be something high on there list of priorities and free ideas should be welcomed. They should have a program set up to pay (perhaps with product) for the top ideas that get implemented in the next release. Paying $35 to suggest something is just not right.
Nope.
He wasn't suggesting an idea. He was filing a bug, which means that he is saying that Outlook is not performing a function it is intended to perform. And he's wrong, and Microsoft charges people who call the support line to "report a bug" for precisely this reason.
It's not listening to customers that is hard. Customers have many ways to contact Microsoft and give them feedback, not the least of which is the feedback box at the bottom of every single page of Office documentation, both on the computer and on the web. When you choose to call the personal support line and insist that you have a bug, which the tech cannot fix because the software in question doesn't support what you want it to do in the first place, you end up paying to have the tech listen to you.
Outlook is meant to display
Outlook is meant to display attachments properly. That's a feature it's meant to perform. It does not do that for certain attachments attached in a certain way. Therefore, Outlook is buggy.
MS's bug reporting is hit and miss. The ladybug system for Visual Studio/.NET Framework/related technologies is quite good. It's also easy to file a bug if you're an MSDN subscriber (post to the newsgroups under your managed identity; posting to their newsgroups with an unmanaged identity can be successful, but it's quite dependent on the product you're complaining about). Or on a beta programme. But if you're not using one of the products which has a sensible bug policy, it's far harder than it ought to be.
I can *sort* of understand it. They not unreasonably don't want every Tom, Dick, and Harry filing spurious bug reports, because it will cost them money. But still, it ought to be easier for legitimate reports.
I have to agree with DrPizza
I have to agree with DrPizza here. Outlook is meant to show file attachments correctly and it isn't.
Microsoft charges for support because people will call them because there mouse isn't rolling smoothly when it's dirty if they're given the chance. That isn't an excuse for not having a good place to go file a bug report. I work in a bug tracking system all day. No, all the reports aren't actually bugs in our software, but a good deal are. We're fixing bugs from end-users every day. We value those reports. Why wouldn't you want to be able to easily fix the problems users are having? This is just one of the sets of hoops users have to go through to report bugs in Microsoft software. That's the issue here.
Attachments
Not true. Outlook is meant to support attachments in formats it knows. There are hundreds of RFCs out there, and new RFCs are being published every day. And not every product claims to support all of them.
If Outlook claimed to support all possible attachment formats (even future ones) you might call this a bug. But it doesn't, and Outlook is behaving as expected, so it's not a bug.
You are right about it being reported wrong
You are right about it being reported as a bug and not a new feature. It took some digging but I found this website.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/contactus.aspx?Sitename=0
It has a link to "Use our Make a Suggestion Wizard to submit ideas for any Office product or Office Online feature." I did follow it back. From www.microsoft.com, click Office on the left side, then click Assistance, then scroll down a bit and on the left hand side click Contact us.
I think this is a conflict of methods to solve bugs and add new features. In many open source projects, bugs and new features are put in the same place. Have a look at http://www.bugzilla.org/ and http://www.bugzilla.org/installation-list/ It’s a good model, IMO. The problem is that many people are now expecting a similar level of support from the older companies who have a different ideology.
Take a step back and think
Take a step back and think like a typical end-user. You receive an e-mail and you can't click on the attachment to open it. It always happens when you get mail from a particular person. That's what's going on here. I bypassed all that stuff because I know what the problem is and instead of getting support for fixing this issue, I told Microsoft how to fix it.
And that right there....
is why they charged you:
"I bypassed all that stuff because I know what the problem is and instead of getting support for fixing this issue, I told Microsoft how to fix it."
My issue, frankly, is with the misrepresentation you've made in your blog, in submitting it to digg, and in propagating the half-truth. It is not a bug from a software company's point of view, and if you really do work with bugs all day you should know that. If you know enough to be aware of that, using their SUPPORT system to file a BUG that is in fact a FEATURE REQUEST was your own intentional end-run around the system, and you've surely gotten more than $35 worth of press for yourself out of twisting the facts.
Please, for a second, forget
Please, for a second, forget that you know the issue I called them about. I was looking for a way to file a bug. Every indication was that bugs could be filed by calling 1-800-MICROSOFT. I talked to tech support. They said I could file a bug by talking to customer support. And that's what I did.
If you have any problem with these facts, please do the same Google searches, follow the same links, call the same phone number. All the information you need to verify my story is available in my post. There is no half-truth here and I'm not twisting any facts.
The nature of the issue is completely beside the point despite some people's insistence in dwelling on it.
Bad analogy.
I think your analogy is flawed.
A more correct one would be that you sell a system with a soundcard and they call you up saying that only the left speaker is working.
If Outlook says it supports other than US-ASCII (which it does) and it says it supports attachments (yes), then it certainly need to support funny filenames too. So this is a bug, not a feature request.
Could not quickly find on MS site anything on outlook and standards other than that one article says Outlook Express uses common internet email standards. This would include this bug too.
Feature request isnt the same as a bug report
$35 is cheap considering you were not even using a Microsoft product. Although if you called then and asked to make a suggestion for adding the standard to there product they would have taken that info for free ... and tossed it in the same garbage bin as your $35 request went.
To an Outlook end-user, this
To an Outlook end-user, this is a bug, not a feature request. I just know what the problem is.
That's a pretty silly
That's a pretty silly comment. To an end user, lots of things look like bugs but aren't. I can't receive an Outlook meeting request in pine, does that mean it's a bug? The simple fact is, if it's not a supported feature, then it's not a bug that they don't support it, whether YOU think it's a bug or not.
Your example is a bit off.
Your example is a bit off. Outlook supports file attachments, right? So, it's a bug when it doesn't show the file attachment name correctly, no?
No.
No. Outlook does not support long international file names for attachments, therefore it's not a bug. It's like saying "Outlook supports sending meeting requests, so it should support sending meeting requests to pine too".
"Attachments" is not one big feature. It's a set of features one of which is unsupported.
Actually, it does support
Actually, it does support international file names for attachments... if the mail is sent from Outlook, The Bat!, or some other MUAs.
Microsoft Does not have "support"
I have called 2 times in the past. Frist time, i wanted to complain about
the defect in the first xbox that were sold in the first few months, first lady i talked to , Did not know what the xbox was. When i said microsoft game stuido, (she looked at her script) and transfered me. Where the guy i talked to said a bunch of bull. Second time i called, i was formatting a computer for someone, and i needed a cd key for XP home. I was not using the one on my cd. So the laptop had a OEM key. I did not have an oem cd, so it would not accept the cd. I called microsoft asking to trade the oem key for a non oem key. after waiting, they said they could not. I should have said, "fine, ill just pirate a key. not like you care." So i ended up haveing to download an oem cd and was able to use the key on the backside of the laptop.
try this...
http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/productfeedback/ - click 'Report a Bug', signin with your new-found passpord account and all should be well....on the other had it would make your life allot eaiser if you just bought a Mac. free bug reporter at bugreport.apple.com 8-)
I got a MacBook Pro last
I got a MacBook Pro last Monday. ;)
Incidentally, that page is a
Incidentally, that page is a redirect from http://msdn.microsoft.com/bugs/default.asp, the first site I went to. You can file bugs about Microsoft's development tools there, but not Outlook.
There is a send feedback
There is a send feedback under Outlook Express' help menu. May be you could've used that instead ?
Yeah OK
I don't know about you, but I get a 404 error from that nice gem of advice.
Ha!
Have you tried it on a mac? Worked fine for me! :)
yep,
i'm with anonymous up there. my family's long been fond of the phrase, "what? that's not a bug! it's a feature!" that microsoft seems to like. a lot. and i do think that they don't provide the support 'cause they'd get a bazillion e-mails a day.
WHAT?!
So you mean that microsoft DOES NOT support some international/internet community standard???! Stop the presses! You took four hours of your life and $35 to report a "bug" like this?
I feel your pain
You're lucky it was only a bug with Outlook Express. If it had been a critical bug with the actual OS, it would have cost you $150.
I've spent the past few months irritated that this comment somehow managed not to get selected for the Ask MS' VP of security interview, despite being modded as high as all the pathetic questions that did get asked:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=174307&cid=14501221
here's another 'bug'
XP Firewall does *not* (always?) promt you if you want to allow a port that has just been opened by an application to receive traffic from outside,
(stick with me for a minute) ...note that the application* is already opened, and listening, hardware firewall is properly set (VNC ports, same ports before the format), and I just finished installing the OS + basic apps and left for home, hoping I can continue the rest of the basic tweaking from there using VNC.
What programmer though it would be fun to pop up a windows firewall query to let half life 2 listen to ports beneath the launched game (-after- the game has launched, also happens to other games), and NOT query for allowing a port for a service you just installed.. (it doesnt ask several reboots down the line either).
of course it's all my fault I didnt just replace XP FW with zonealarm or TPF.
In your case I hope you get your 35, or.. 70 bucks refunded, else it's point blank robbery.
* RealVNC server. (Virtual Network Computing (VNC) is a desktop protocol to remotely control another computer originally developed by AT&T)
Not bug
I have to agree with what other people have said in regards to this not being a bug but a feature request. RFCs are guidelines and while implementing them is reccomended it's not required. Sure, I think they could have implemented this in Outlook but the fact that they didn't doesn't make it a bug.
I also agree that if you could submit and track bugs online there would be so much crap posted that real bugs would never get fixed.
The other thing is, you could have given up way before you did... If you don't use windows then you either:
I've already replied to a
I've already replied to a couple of those comments, but I'll write it here again: if I were an end-user, I'd think this is a bug. I know the cause, so you could argue that it's a feature request. If I hadn't written what the issue was, would you have posted the same comment?
Many open source projects have online bug tracking systems. Yes, there are reports that aren't bugs, but the majority are. At Opera, our bug tracking system is invaluable.
I need this implemented for Opera users, which is what promted this whole thing. Thunderbird, Kmail, Pine, etc. users will thank me, too.
Dude, wasting your time,
Dude, wasting your time, Microsoft doesn't give a fuck.
Been there, done that, couldn't afford the t-shirt
This has been standard operating proceedure for some time. I had the same experience trying to submit a windows bug. They told me that if it really was a bug that I could get my money refunded, but it never happened. They pretty much admitted that it was a bug, but they still kept my money. Needless to say, I've never submitted another bug report since. MS can spend their own money to find bugs, not get paid to let me find them.
You need to get some quick
You need to get some quick dope on what is a bug and what is a feature. Nevertheless, I'll be really disappointed if they refund you 35$.
Please read my replies to
Please read my replies to others saying this was a feature request. Frankly, it's worth the $35 if it gets fixed.
It's a feature request.
It's a feature request.
But, why??
I just don't understand, why do they charge $35 (or any amount) for that? I mean, they sell you a product (which by the way, I don't consider to be cheap), they are supposed to test it (I know, bugs will always be there, no matter how hard you test, it's understandable), but WHY do they charge you for telling them "Hey! I (think I) found a bug."
If it's a real bug, you'll get your money back, if it is not (that is, if you just wasted their precious time), then they'll keep your money). In short: You're guilty (of wasting their time) unless proven contrary.
The problem is that there's
The problem is that there's no place (I could find) to file a bug report without filing a support request for $35.
Slick
Hey way to post your own blog article to digg. I use Windows, and I run the Opera browser and I can't believe company that makes such a great browser would hire you, and let me just say that you are a pathetic human being in about 30 different ways.
They charged you $35 so that people like you don't call up reporting FALSE bugs.
Stop spamming digg and get off your soapbox. Please.
No, really.
Ain't a bug. Period. If you get your $70 back, that'll be a bug.
And if you write software.. Oy!
Go Pea-eat, it's your birthday...
Gonna big-ups yer comment like it's your birthday.
Go pea-eat!
Go pea-eat!
Go, go, go Pea-eat!
I'm new to digg, so I wasn't
I'm new to digg, so I wasn't aware that was bad diggiquette. I won't let it happen again.
The Solution
The simple and effective solution to all microsoft bugs and problems is:
1) take your Windows PC and throw it out the window
2) Go to you nearest computer store
3) Buy a Mac
Bah
STFU Fanboi.
Just call the line up and
Just call the line up and explain that all you wanted to do is report a bug and get a refund. If anything ask to speak to a manager and ask for a refund.
Moron
You sound like a full blown moron. Why don't you develop some personal skills and then get a girlfriend. Get out a bit more... Donate time to a charity... Join a choir... get a hobby....
$35 for some pissant bug that nobody cares about. A fool and his money are soon parted. Why don't you spend another $35 to report that Outlook doesn't have voice recognition support. Or won't install natively on RedHat linux. Dickhead!
Contrast with Open Source Bug Reporting
About a year ago I filed a bug report with openoffice (they do have a
very easy to use bug reporting system, and they don't charge to use it).
The problem had to do with dates in a spreadsheet. In less than 24 hours I got an email from a developer asking me to send him a sample file, which I did. In less than another 24 hours I got an explanation - the problem was caused by a bug in Excel - my spreadsheet was originally created in Excel and the date was actually stored incorrectly - and an explanation of how to fix the spreadsheet. It took 2 minutes once I knew how.
Wow - shouldn't we ALL pay lots of money to big corporations so that we get "support" for important applications rather than using the hit or miss system of open source?
No thanks!
It's nice when software
It's nice when software developers can have that kind of interaction with users. I fully admit that the bug reporting experience at Opera Software could use some improvement and I hope we'll be able to open up our bug tracking system one of these days.
Opensource is great, but...
Opensource is great and very often the bug reporting is much faster that corporate products. However, not many open source companies dominate the computer industry and have hundreds of software products.
I use alot of open-source products, Firefox (which I'm using now), Open office, Thunderbird, Apache, PHP, MySQL, Audacity... The list goes on. I am in no way against open source (just want to make that clear).
However, Open-source is a very different game. For one, I know that I am one in about 50 odd people I would class as friends that use open office. There may be another one but most use MS Office... A while ago I managed to convert one other person to using OpenOffice when word was playing up. Clearly, Open Office isn't running the mass-market for Office software. So if all my friends filed a bug to do with their office program, MS would receive 48 reports and Open Office would receive 2.
As well as that, alot of people seem to want to hate MS for various reasons. Yes, Windows is overpriced, yes IE sucked, but I can imagine an online bug reporting system would receive thousands of duplicate bugs for people who dont take the time to look up whats there, thousands of fake bugs that MS haters want to try and fool MS with, thousands of fake bugs posted by people who have no idea what theyre doing and thousands of "bugs" like this which isn't even a bug.
Say 100 bug reports are filed for a product, its going to take the operator a long while to filter the crap, and then to respond to each bug. Also, becuase MS has such a broad software range, many people would be needed to filter through all the different software packages.
The way I see it, calling a phone number and being charged before the bug report is a good way to go about it. As long as you get your money back at the end if you reported a bug then yeah, its a good system.. People wanting to joke around with MS will not be able to (lets face it, paying $35 to report a fake bug is hardly a joke on the company), and those with real bug reports will have no problem.
I agree with the other person who said "I would be upset to see you get your money back.".
There might be alot of useless bug reports
It may be true that there would be a lot of useless bug reports. However, we are talking about the largest computer software company in the world. It isn’t a question of man power or money. They make a lot more money with there Office suite than Open Office does. I found this on IBM’s site:
Take a look at just a few of the 394 companies, organizations, and projects that use Bugzilla, including NASA, Apache, Eclipse, GlaxoSmithKline, Novell, Sandia Labs, W3C, Wikipedia, and IBM
My question is why can’t Microsoft step up to the plate on this one?
.
RFC = Request For Comment
from my understanding it is NOT somthing like an ISO or other standards body mandated standard.
No, it's a recommendation
No, it's a recommendation for doing something in an interoperable way. The way Outlook handles attachments isn't interoperable with several MUAs.
Customer Service Is Dead...
D E D Dead
Good read sir... I feel your pain. You reminded me of my own customer service nightmare I had with McAfee. HERE is the story.
It's not a bug
What you described is a missing feature, not a bug. If the product's built-in help mentioned supporting RFC2231 filenames somewhere, then perhaps that would be a bug. But it doesn't. You're simply asking for a feature which they did not implement, which is not a bug. If Outlook crashed when it received mail from an RFC2231 mailer, then perhaps *that* would be a bug, but that wasn't your case either.
Want a new feature? Pay up, or wait for them to get around to it on their own.
Of course their built-in
Of course their built-in help wouldn't mention RFCs. Most software users don't know what an RFC is. But the help will say that you'll be able to click file attachments to open them, which won't happen due to this issue.
hahahaha you got 0wned by
hahahaha you got 0wned by Microsoft. They made you their bitch and took your $35~
35 Dollars?
I would be willing to bet that he got taken for 70 dollars with the two reciepts that he got from the $oft.
Are you nuts?
Hey I do bug reporting for a living, you must be nuts to pay for doing it.
Wow. Just wow.
I see valid points on both sides here. HE wasn't actually submitting a bug, he was pointing out that Outlook is a cruddy mail client and encouraging them to improve it. But the article is not about the bug. He is sharing a personal experience that highlights the differences between MS, Apple and how the open source guys do things. If he was a dutiful MS user trying to report a real bug - this is how Microsoft would have treated him (which is the point of the whole article). He was willing to pay for their time and he didn't yell and scream at anyone on the phone. I can't believe how immature and downright hateful most of the people commenting on this board are... I would take a friendly and helpful "fan boi" any damn day of the week over the Microsoft advocates I've witnessed here.
Tim: Thanks for taking the time to share your experience.
You're welcome. I'm glad
You're welcome. I'm glad you got my point.
you guys are harsh
The author makes a very good point in that would you consider this a feature request if he had not suggested a reason. If he simply said when i receive e-mail sometimes i cannot open the attachments and the file names are all messed up(which is how it would seem to your typical L-user), would you consider this a bug? and more importantly how would microsoft have interpreted this if he had not suggested a solution.
plus what's the go with all you guys flamin on the forum, the point of the article was to highlight how difficult it was to report a bug, not to report what the bug was.
Compliance
How do we know that Outlook is supposed to support the RFC, but due to a bug, it's not displaying the attachment correctly?
i think i shud let you know
i think i shud let you know that there is lot of buzz about ur post within msft and hopefully we will improve on our process of filing bugs. thanks for posting it. i dont know nething about ur refund.
A better story?
About 10 years ago I went through a similar thing.
I went to work the day after Thanksgiving. Hardly anyone was there, and I thought it would be fun to try to report an annoying bug to Microsoft. After lots of dead ends on the web similar to yours, I found a form to fill out. (We had a paid support account. And yes, I was going to have to pay if the bug was not a new one.)
So I filled out the form, which took about 15 minutes.
I hit the Submit button.
"Microsoft is closed for the holiday. Please submit your report during regular working hours."
Funny how every one is
Funny how every one is focused on whether it's a feature or a bug.
If not supporting the rfc causes that much of a problem, it's a bug.
If 'bug' is too strong of a word for some of you, use 'problem'.
Either way, the 'problem' needs to be resolved and when you want a problem resolved, one of the things you do is file a bug report.
If the 'problem' you find is that significant and you care about users, you'll go through hell to get the problem solved.
You can also e-mail product
You can also e-mail product suggestions to outwish@microsoft.com, and they'll get read by the Outlook product team (usually). Might be worth sending off an e-mail, even if you don't get a response.
I feel your pain.
Speaking for myself only, it can be hard to get bugs properly reported and tracked.
At home I was suffering a nasty problem - Outlook 2003 SP1 wouldn't send mail over SMTP SSL with a port other than 25. (And I couldn't use port 25, because my ISP blocked that outgoing port.) The symptom was that Send/Receive would stall and never finish, reporting an obscure error code.
After trawling through the relevant bug databases (2003 and 2007), I eventually found that the issue was being tracked. It got fixed in 2003 SP2 and (through a different fix) in 2007. But not because of anything I did - for 2003 SP2, the issue had been escalated by one of Microsoft's premier customers somewhere, and for 2007, other work fixed this bug as a side-effect. If it weren't for those two things, I'd still be stuck working around the bug.
Beta customers have ways to get bugs filed. It's harder for the general public, and it'd be nice if it were easier.
Outlook 2007 features attachment previewing directly in the Reading Pane. However, I don't know (and couldn't say) whether your bug will be addressed or not - there's a chance, just as with mine.
I'm amazed
Frankly I'm amazed that some of the cretins replying here are actually capable of using a computer competently enough to post their venomous bile!
Sadly, Tim, as you say yourself, your mistake in all this was to identify up front that you knew the cause (and potential solution) to the problem. This has confused the neanderthals into feeling superior to you and state so (ahem) coherently that this is not a bug it's a feature request (wonder how they reached that conclusion...oh yes, you told them that!)
If you had simply stated your case as being unable to display attached files correctly, in isolation, these monkeys would have stayed silent. Do you think for one second any of them would have the brains to figure out for themselves that this is not a bug, it's a feature request?
Customer support organisations of any size need to be capable of managing input from customers in all forms, take the information provided in good grace and interpret the situation as bug, user error, feature enhancement or whatever after the fact. To charge from the outset is an insult. With half the planet as a customer, you'd think MS would have a support organisation of appropriate size to handle the corresponding level of feedback!
I hope you get your money back. Sadly I agree that it looks like you were bilked out of $70 in this case.
Ok, What?
Writing to an NTFS volume is unsupported in Fedora Core 2 and nowhere does it say its supported. But a user trying to write to said volume can't do it. It can write to other filesystems. So by your logic, since Fedora can't write to an NTFS volume (it can only read), there must be a bug in the code.
You're just bitching because you hate Microsoft.
Fileing a bug or suggestion is easy:
From within outlook just go to help. Click on "Contact us" and it will take you to a support website. Click "Make a suggestion" which will take you here:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/community/en-us/wizard.mspx?type=suggest...
Just type in the thing you'd like to see fixed/changed/updated/whatever and less than a minute later, you're done (with 35USD still in your pocket).
My point being...
My point being, that to prevent spending extreme amounts of time and money, you should look before you react. This may sound harsher than it's intended, but literally every help-page in Outlook has a support link. And you did check the help to see if it was supposed to work right? Right...? Appart from that Microsoft's site refers to their newsgroups extensively, which is actually really good for support. Their developers check it regularly. I'm no fan of Microsoft (prefer Mac myself) but flame them where flames are due, and not with this stuff, because your arguments are just not correct.
Thank you for the
Thank you for the suggestions. I'll probably go the newsgroup route in the future.
What is the actual user experience
Out of curiosity, what is the user experience when you get a "bad" attachment in Outlook/OE. You said the filenames are different, but is the file intact? If you save it off and open in the app its for, do things work?
My take on the whole scenario is just that its a question of resources. Ite easy (and appropriate) for endusers to expect unlimited and perfect resources from MS, but in everyones heart you should know they are human too. Bugs are written, features are cut, choices have to be made.
What constitutes a problem filename that requrires this RFC support? I just sent an attachment called "This is a long filename with some text.rft" successfully. Maybe there is an INTL common scenario, but I'd rather MS spend time writing support in for RSS feeds than adding code that affects a really small set of mails.
I'm willing to be told I am wrong. Maybe everyone uses filenames that are 130 characters long??
Otherwise, you should have all your MUAs automatically add a footer to your emails saying that the attachments included may not render in the correct filename. If your MUA doesn't have a feature to add headers automatically, thats a bug. ;-)
The Outlook/OE user gets a
The Outlook/OE user gets a file attachment named something like "att12423.dat". Since it's a .dat file, there's no default application and no indication what type of file it is. Most users won't be able to open the file. The file itself is intact, though. If you know what you're doing, you can save it and experiment with file extensions until you get the right one.
You can reproduce this by using a) a filename with non-ASCII characters, such as "test øæå.html" or b) using a long file name (I think it needs to be over 80 characters). Note that you'll need to send the mail from a client supporting RFC 2231, such as Opera, Thunderbird, Kmail, or Pine. You'll see the problem when receiving the message in Outlook, Outlook Express, The Bat!, Gmail, or a number of other clients. Each client will probably behave differently, so some may keep the file extension intact. Outlook and Outlook Express don't.
This problem is unlikely to be seen by English-speaking users. However, if you are Japanese, for instance, you'd run into this all the time.
isn't it similar to other commercial vendors?
Isn't it just similar to other commercial vendors?
Amazing set of responses
I'm amazed at the responses being posted.
Regardless of whether or not it is a bug report or a feature request, the real point is the Microsoft makes you pay for a phone call that is not a helpdesk request.
Most amazing to me is the replies from people who think that it is a good thing. Somehow these people think that it is really OK and even wonderful that a corporation convicted of monopoly practices does not provide any customer service to them. Is masochism so wide-spread throughout our culture that people enjoy paying money to Microsoft yet demand "free" customer service from nearly any other corporation?
I think that an earlie poster said it all when he posted:
"Dude, wasting your time, Microsoft doesn't give a fuck."
and yet people are posting that they feel good about paying $35. These are probably the same stupid end users who paid Microsoft for the "privilege" of beta testing the pre-release version of Windows 2000.
Wow - just think if your neighborhood department store said "Got a problem with the shirt you bought? For $35 we will let you talk to someone at the store and if we decide to do something about it we will refund your money."
Just amazing - $35 for customer no-service and people are posting that they hope Tim doesn't get a refund.
Wake up! Microsoft is charging money because they do not want to hear from you and because they are a monopoly.
Yes, indeed:
"Dude, wasting your time, Microsoft doesn't give a fuck."
all that matters is what they can pump you for.
newsgroups
The average Joe User doesn't even know what newsgroups are.
(after long googling, KB searching, and otherwise dead ends, if Joe User is still convinced he wants to actually take time and report this bug in hopes a future update would fix it..)
...the average Joe would go to microsoft.com, look for some 'feedback' or 'contact us' link and follow it ( there's one at the bottom )
While on the 'Contact Us' page he would look for a 'report a bug', 'send feedback' or similar link, he would notice the "Send us your comments and questions about this Web site." ... but DISMISS it since it sais 'about this website' :puzzled:
then he would follow the "Report a Microsoft product bug." link a few lines under.
this leads to an online ``Dead End'', Joe user now sees this :
"Report a Microsoft Product Bug
If you think you have found a bug in a Microsoft product, contact our Microsoft Product Support Services department.
(800) MICROSOFT (642-7676)"
:jawdrop:
take note that this is a website that promotes/advertisises/explains/etc microsoft products. a feedback form for said products should be mandatory in the design of the site.
also take note that the website design team thought it would be rational to provide an ONLINE way of communication to them from the end users, directly tied in the website.
Does Microsoft(tm) know they have a website?
it's right there, people can use it..
another note on that same contact us page there's a "Use Microsoft public newsgroups to find and share information about Microsoft products." link, which in no way suggests that microsoft endorses use of newsgroups for feedback or bug reports.
note to MS: End user provided feedback is something every developer/manufacturer/designer wants to get for their products, the average Joe knows 'the web' as being the -entire- internet (yes really.), any attemp on your end to make him use newsgroups or Foo.Program.or.Bar.Protocol for something this trivia is bad practice.
I'm totally verified.
I'm totally verified.
It's a useful feature
oh jeeze. stop whining. It's a bug, and darn useful for sneaking in a trojan.
http://www.security.nnov.ru/advisories/content.asp
Now will you shut up? ;)
um,
i just wanted to make the 100th comment.
TADA!
User experience revisited
Just for the record, Intl, ANSI, and filenames over 80 characters all work fine in the OE to OE scenario. So its not right to think that OE doesnt support that feature set. It may not support encoding the data the way that the RFC says, but it does work in general. I think the high order bit characters are always translated to unicode, so that should support even the double byte character sets.
Its an interesting question of perspective. It was argued earlier that if you kept keeping attachments that were bad from one user, you think there is a bug. The real world case would be that 9 mails with long file names or intl would WORK (coming from OE), and then one would fail (coming from the RFC app). The user experience would be to think that was a bug in the one sender that failed, not in the receiving client that worked on 9 other mails with the same attachment.
In the end, I'm sorry that its so hard to report a problem or a bug or a feature request or whatever you want to label it. That should be easier. I am however also interested in the technical aspect of the problem. Because if you are going to argue to have this support added and that costs me my favorite feature being cut, then I want to fight for mine.
FYI, OE to OE works fine
FYI, OE to OE works fine because OE sends and receives mails that violate RFC 2045 - 2049, where they state that Content-Disposition and similar headers cannot contain international characters or long parameter values. That's akin to IE rendering "HTML" output when saving as a web page from Word. It's not valid HTML, but of course IE will render it as the author intended.
The frequency of running into the problem depends on who you receive e-mail from. In our office, most people don't use Outlook. In such a case, someone using Outlook is more likely to run into this problem then at places where everyone uses Outlook. Thus, they'd think it's a bug in Outlook where it works under certain weird conditions. ;)
Adding support for RFC 2231 should be trivial, but you never know what else could depend on the broken behavior, so it's hard to tell if it really is trivial in the end.
Edit (2006-03-28): Scott pointed out in another comment that OE isn't sending international characters, but is using the 'encoded-word' syntax defined in RFC 2047. That is correct and what I meant above when I talked about sending international characters. That RFC explicitly forbids the use of the 'encoded-word' syntax in MIME Content-Disposition, Content-Type, and similar headers.
You are a asshole and a fool
You are a asshole and a fool to pay for bug-reporting, they should pay you!!!
OE to OE experience
"FYI, OE to OE works fine because OE sends and receives mails that violate RFC 2045 - 2049, where they state that Content-Disposition and similar headers cannot contain international characters or long parameter values."
Are you sure? Here is how OE encodes a filename with high order bit characters:
filename="=?iso-8859-1?B?1HNv1y5ydGY=?="
There is no international character or long parameter value there. It may not be per the RFC you WANT support for, but its not in violation of any that I know of. And I've even bet its an approved alternative for encoding different character sets in general if you read enough RFCs.
I'll let the usage numbers speak for themselves. Nobody is arguing that there are pockets and groups that use different mail clients, and I'm not arguing that just because something is the most used or the most popular its the best. Im just saying that its easy to underestimate how many people really like Outlook and OE. They love it and they love to hate it.
Sorry, the problem is that
Sorry, the problem is that the Content-Disposition, Content-Type, and similar headers are not allowed to use the 'encoded-word' syntax, which you quoted. See RFC 2047 section 5.3:
"An 'encoded-word' MUST NOT be used in parameter of a MIME Content-Type or Content-Disposition field, or in any structured field body except within a 'comment' or 'phrase'."
The whole "bug" discussion is silliness IMO
Outlook Does Not Play Well With Others. Just how to play well with others is clearly laid out in a spec that competent software engineers (of whom there are many thousands at MS - let's not have any reflex MS-bashing here) are well able to use. To say that Outlook was *designed* to be broken in no way negates or justifies the fact that it *is* broken. Nor does denominating the solution to the brokenness as a "feature" vs. a "bug." It never should have been designed in a broken fashion; now that it has been, it ought to be fixed. The End.
Word 2003 bug
When someone select 'Save As' in the menu 'File' and want to save document
with a new filename the accident can appear. Say if the user unfortunately
click'ed the 'OK' button the file will be updated with the new text
whithout a message prompt. This to tell user that the filename exist in this folder.
This may discomfort the user.
The easiest way to report a
The easiest way to report a problem for those products that don't have a public bug database is to go through the forums or one of the many blogs of the team members.
Try these:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/community/en-us/default.mspx?dg=microsof...
http://www.microsoft.com/communities/blogs/PortalResults.mspx?ResultPage...
Not able to drag and drop after find in Outlook
I have a frustrating Outlook email problem.
For years I have used the find function to pull similar emails or categories of email together to expedite disposition. I either drag and drop into a designated folder or delete them.
The problem is, after I do a “find”, I can no longer drag and drop email from my inbox to a designated folder. I can still drag and drop the items before and after I clear the find results one at a time. I just cannot move one or a group of emails from the results of the find.
If you have an answer to this problem I would appreciate it.
Many thx jw