Update: A positive outcome as resulted from the blog post below. See the blog post Score One for the Little Guy and Kudos to Microsoft for the latest news.

It’s no secret that my dislike for Microsoft has grown in recent years, but today that dislike skyrocketed to a new level of anger that is rare for me. My growing dislike for Microsoft is centered around my belief that Microsoft’s operating systems are not as good as the alternatives, their developer tools are not as good as the alternatives, and their productivity software programs are not as good as the alternatives. But today I’m angered not by Microsoft’s technologies but by their unacceptable customer service. I’m upset because I’m left with no other option than to pay for a mistake caused by Microsoft, and after dealing with the issue for years, I have yet to receive a single reply from a Microsoft employee.

The story begins in the fall of 2004. Microsoft acquires Placeware, Inc and its online meeting solution now called Live Meeting. I had recently started working full time for White Peak Software and was looking for an online meeting solution. Microsoft ran a special in December 2004 for it’s newly acquired solution Live Meeting, $99 for a 1-year, 5-seat subscription. For me it was a no brainer. I signed up as soon as I heard about the offer.

Jump forward a year later to December 2005. Turns out I rarely used Live Meeting during my 12 month subscription so I canceled the service. No harm, no foul. I tried the service and it wasn’t for me.

Skip forward to 2007. I received an email from an Accenture contractor working on behalf of Microsoft. I can only assume he was working in the Accounts Receivable department. The email said I owed for a past due invoice. The invoice was attached to the email as some funky Word HTML format that I could not view.

I asked that the invoice be resent in a viewable format, preferably as a PDF. I also stated in the reply email that I was unaware of any past due invoices related to Live Meeting. I explained I signed up for the service in December 2004, for 1 year then canceled in December 2005. I also included proof of payment for the 1 year subscription (dated December 28, 2004 and paid to Placeware), and I tried reaching the person via the phone. I left voice mail.

I did not heard back from the Accenture person acting on behalf of Microsoft. No reply email or returned phone call. I assumed the matter was resolved. Then in December 2007 I received email from another Accenture person acting on behalf of Microsoft once again saying I was past due on an invoice, which once again I could not view. I asked that the invoice be sent in a viewable format, something other than this weird Word HTML, and I provided dates and proof of payment for my 1 year Live Meeting subscription dating from December 2004 through December 2005. No surprise that I got zero responses, so I once again thought the matter had been resolved.

Now we jump ahead to July 2009, a year and a half since my last contact regarding this matter. I got yet another email with yet another non-viewable attachment from the same Accenture person who emailed me in December 2007. Again I explained I could not view the invoice and asked that it be resent. I also resent the proof of payments, dates, etc for my 1 year subscription started in December 2004 and ending December 2005. Of course I got no reply, no viewable invoice, and again I was left with the assumption the matter was resolved though deep inside I knew better.

Today I got a voice mail from a collection agency regarding a past due invoice for a Live Meeting subscription. A collection agency? Seriously Microsoft? After not returning my phone call or emails over the years, you turn the matter over to a collection agency?

I promptly called the collection agency back. I talked with a friendly gentleman name Dan who shed light on the situation, something Microsoft and their Accenture contractors failed to do.

First, he tells me I am past due on an invoice date December 13, 2006 for a 1 year subscription to Live Meeting. The subscription is for the period between December 13, 2006 and December 12, 2007, a full year after I had canceled my account. Not only that, he said his records show I started the account in December 2005, not in December 2004. Of course my credit card statement says otherwise, showing a payment to Placeware, Inc on December 28, 2004.

It turns out the past due invoice that has been in question for years and I was unable to view is from December 2006, a full year after my account was canceled. Not only that, Dan told me the invoice was mailed in December 2006 to my office address in New York City. I relocated the company to Salem, MA in March 2006, so that explains why I never received the original invoice. (Side note: He also email me a copy of the invoice, in PDF format. I was finally able to see the invoice for the very first time after all these years.)

Best I can tell the whole mess is due to an error on the Microsoft side, and if I had to guess it has something to do with Microsoft’s acquisition of Placeware, Inc and the switch over in billing systems. Remember, my payment was to Placeware in 2004 and my account was canceled in 2005. I was never asked or invoiced for the period between December 2005 and 2006. Then out of the blue comes an invoice in December 2006, sent to the wrong address, for the subscription period between December 2006 and December 2007. And remember the collection agent said according to his records the account started in December 2005, yet there was no record of payment for the period between December 2005 and December 2006. That because the account was actually canceled in December 2005, not started.

It is obvious to me that there was some accounting error on the Microsoft side in 2006. Despite the error by Microsoft, I have no choice but to pay the outstanding invoice. I asked the collection agent if there is a contact at Microsoft that I can talk to about this matter. Short answer, “No”, and past attempts to talk with Microsoft representatives also failed.

So here we have it. The big, mighty Microsoft with piss poor customer service chasing $99 thought to be owed to them by a small business and why? Because of an accounting mistake they made.

I would love to talk with someone at Microsoft regarding this matter, not an Accenture contractor, not a collection agency, but a real live person from Microsoft. I would love to hear the reasons why my emails were never answered years ago. I would love to hear why the records show my account was re-opened in 2005 and was never charged (obvious proof they screwed up). And I would love to hear why out of the blue I was invoiced in December 2006 for the period December 2006 through December 2007 despite having canceled my account in December 2005.

I doubt I will ever hear from Microsoft. Meanwhile I paid the invoice. I guess Microsoft needs the money more than I do.

A few weeks ago I renamed the iPhone developer meet-up from NSiPhoneDevs to NSHappyHour. When I announced the name change I said I would follow up with the reasons behind the name change but I totally spaced and forgot. Thanks to @jlbruno for reminding me to explain the reasons behind the change.

I came up with the name NSiPhoneDevs back at the beginning of the year. I like the name because it’s a good play on words, or rather a good play on prefixes. “NS” is the class name prefix in the foundation framework used by iPhone and Mac developers, but “NS” also stands for North Shore. For those who don’t know, Salem MA is located in Boston’s North Shore area. So NSiPhoneDevs is short for North Shore iPhone Developers.

While I like the name it is not without it’s problems. First, NSiPhoneDevs doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. I for one am guilty of saying “NSiDevs” on more than one occasion. Another issue with the name is some may believe it excludes iPad developers. This is a stretch I know but I’m sure with the release of the iPad there will be more new developers entering the space who consider themselves iPad developers.

The third, and most important reason for the name change, is the name NSiPhoneDevs excludes a major developer group, the Mac developer. I talked with many Mac developers who said they are not interested in the group because it’s iPhone only, and this includes Mac developers who also do iPhone development. My intentions were never to exclude Mac developers. On the contrary, I want more Mac developers to come especially given that I’m doing more Mac desktop development these days.

The iPhone has attracted a large number of developers who come from other platforms including Windows, .NET, and Java. The reasons for moving from another platform to the iPhone varies by developer. Some are interested in mobile development. Some are interested in joining in on the gold rush. For others, including me, the reason is out of love for Cocoa, Objective-C, Xcode, and OS X.

I switched from Windows and web development to work in the world of Apple because, in my opinion, it provides the best developer experience. Programming on my Mac, whether for the desktop or for the devices, is way more fun for me then in Windows, and I find the developer tools to be far better than anything else I have used in recent years.

So back to the NSHappyHour name change. As someone who is also doing Mac development I did not want others in the Mac developer community to feel excluded. After all, we all use a Mac for programming, we use Xcode as our developer IDE, and we work with many of the same core frameworks.

This point hit home for me at NSConference 2010 where I met a lot of people who share the same passion and love for the developer experience provided by the fruit company. It was at this time I realized NSiPhoneDevs is the wrong name.

The NSiPhoneDevs name is good because it builds off the hype that is the iPhone, but at the same time the name is bad because it does not recognized the development community as a whole. At the end of the day we all work with pretty much the same tools and we can learn a lot from one another whether you are writing iPhone/iPad only apps, desktop only apps, or doing all of the above.

So the group is now called NSHappyHour. After all, that’s what the group is really about. Getting together with fellow Cocoa developers to talk shop over a few beers. So if you are writing code and producing apps for the iPhone, iPad and or Mac then NSHappyHour is the perfect gathering for you to socialize, learn, and network while enjoying tasty adult beverages.

For more information about NSHappyHour, visit http://nshappyhour.org.

Today was the last day for 360idev and what a great 4 days it has been. Catching up with friends, making new friends, listening to great talks, and yes, having a beer or four. This 360idev was extra exciting me for because I got a chance to talk.

My presentation “Building Web Service Powered Apps” didn’t start off great. There was a technical issue with my laptop and the projector that cause the talk to start late. Then as I tried to show an example of a web service call using the Twitter API I got a request limit reached error.

Despite the bumpy start and the shorten time frame, I think the talk was okay. Not great but okay. I wasn’t able to talk through some of the points I had hoped to cover and I had to skip a couple of the demos. My plan is to record the skipped demos as a screen cast and post them here soon.

Thanks to all who came to my talk, and big thanks to the 360idev team, other speakers and the attendees who made the last few days in San Jose great.

Hey Peanut version 1.1 has just been released and is available in the App Store. I’m very excited about this update because it adds support for the new iPad, which will be available for purchase tomorrow. Best of all the update is free to existing users, so if you already bought Hey Peanut and you are getting an iPad then you will get the iPad version of Hey Peanut for free as well.

Haven’t bought Hey Peanut for your toddler? No worries. The price will remain $1.99 and will include both the iPhone and iPad versions. It’s like getting 2 apps for the price of 1.