<story><title>Google Voice lost my business number. How I got it back, and what I learned.</title><url>http://www.sultansolutions.com/google-voice-lost-number/</url><text></text></story><parent_chain><item><author>silverbax88</author><text>This week I had an epiphany when dealing with both Google and Microsoft on support issues. The issues are this: when you need an answer to a question about something from your bank, such as, say, a fee that suddenly appears on your statement, you can pick up the phone and find someone at the company who will at least give you slow service to answer your question.&lt;p&gt;But with Google and Microsoft, there is no support department. You need to know how a specific service is charged? Good luck. You need to know why a needed parameter is missing on their API documentation? Forget it.&lt;p&gt;Basically companies like Google and Microsoft want to toss their products out into the wild and then go back behind closed doors to noodle on something else. It baffles me as to why enterprise businesses are able to do this.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>qeorge</author><text>Microsoft has always provided &lt;i&gt;amazing&lt;/i&gt; support for our Office 365 account (hosted Exchange, like Google Apps). Its a paid service though ($6/user/month), so perhaps that&apos;s the difference in our experiences.&lt;p&gt;Most recently, I filed a support ticket online and my phone rang a few minutes later. On the other end was an MS support rep who stayed on the phone with me for 40 minutes, including a screen share, until my issue was resolved. At the end of the call he left me with his direct # and email, and said that I could contact him directly with any future inquiries.&lt;p&gt;Really can&apos;t ask for much more than that.</text></comment>
<story><title>Google Voice lost my business number. How I got it back, and what I learned.</title><url>http://www.sultansolutions.com/google-voice-lost-number/</url><text></text></story><parent_chain><item><author>silverbax88</author><text>This week I had an epiphany when dealing with both Google and Microsoft on support issues. The issues are this: when you need an answer to a question about something from your bank, such as, say, a fee that suddenly appears on your statement, you can pick up the phone and find someone at the company who will at least give you slow service to answer your question.&lt;p&gt;But with Google and Microsoft, there is no support department. You need to know how a specific service is charged? Good luck. You need to know why a needed parameter is missing on their API documentation? Forget it.&lt;p&gt;Basically companies like Google and Microsoft want to toss their products out into the wild and then go back behind closed doors to noodle on something else. It baffles me as to why enterprise businesses are able to do this.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tallanvor</author><text>Let&apos;s be honest here.  It&apos;s not that Google and Microsoft don&apos;t have support departments.  It&apos;s that the price you&apos;re paying for the product is too low for them to provide general support on an individual basis.&lt;p&gt;Of course, that doesn&apos;t mean they shouldn&apos;t be working on ways to identify those very rare issues that need manual intervention and provide ways to get the support you need at that point, but that may only be 1 case in 100,000 or so.</text></comment>