In April I blogged about an issue I was having with Microsoft regarding a questionable past due invoice. I’m happy to report that the issue has finally been resolved. Microsoft owned up to the mistake and will be issuing a refund for full amount paid to the collection agency.
Long story short, the payment I made in December 2004 was applied to the December 2005 invoice. This basically resulted in me getting the first year of service for free, though I didn’t know it. And I never received the December 2005 invoice because it had been paid with the money charged in December 2004. Also, when the billing system was moved from Placeware to Microsoft, a mistake was made to my account which caused the December 2006 invoice not to be sent to me. Because I never received invoices for December 2005 and December 2006, it’s logical to see how I thought the account was canceled after the first year of service, which started in December 2004.
Thanks to the blog post in April, Microsoft did in fact contact me regarding the issue. If not for the attention received by the posting, I would have remained bitter towards Microsoft. Instead, an extremely helpful Julie McNamara-Dahl from Microsoft went above and beyond to get to the bottom of the issue. Julie’s efforts have single handedly restored my trust in Microsoft’s customer service. And best of all, with the help of others at Microsoft, she was able to get to the bottom of the matter and answer my question, “What happened?”
I hate that the matter blew up like this, and I hate that it was something haunting me for years. But in the end, the whole affair proved to me that Microsoft does listen and does strive to provide excellent customer service.
Finally, I want to say a big thank you to Julie and those who helped her. THANK YOU! This matter is definitely closed.