Unprofessional & Irresponsible Support System of Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure Microsoft Azure Support

TrackingID#2205070030000124

The issue was raised on 7th May 2022

Status as of 13th May 2022 - Open & unresolved.

Experience - Unprofessional & irresponsible way of handling the request.

Issue:

Azure system stopped its services where I hosted my entire application. My application is down for the last 7 days & no one at Azure is even concerned with its quick resolution or even intimating in advance that they are going to be suspending the services. The impact that is created because of the unavailability of the app, to the customer is huge. How my customers can rely on the app & how we can rely on Microsoft. Can we?

The decision of hosting & availing cloud services from Azure was based on the promise that they claim to have 99.9% uptime, but even after making all the dues clear on time, they can turn down your service without even informing you in advance & later on when a support request is raised they even don't know how to turn the services back again.

Their system shows the subscription of my Plan (Pay as you go) is disabled & I can reactivate it manually by removing the spending credit limit that is set in the account.

I try to reactivate the subscription by following the steps mentioned in their documentation & receive an error repeatedly.

"There was an issue in updating the spending limit. Please try again."

When contacted support they said it's because you have invoices overdue on your account. You should clear the dues then you would be able to remove the spending limit?

Fact:

There are 11 invoices raised by Azure.

Out of 11 invoices, 3 invoices were due as per the portal.

Two invoices were already paid to Azure via Wire Transfer, on 19th April 2022 & the remittance was shared as well, still, they were shown as outstanding in their system. Definitely a backlog of allocation of payment on their part.

We refurnished all the payment details and asked them to be marked as paid so that the outstanding balance for the subscription account can be removed & we can get our services & our application back up & running.

The third invoice which was reflected as due was the most recent invoice which was definitely not paid by us as their portal itself showed the due date of the invoice as 28th May 2022, so I fail to understand how an invoice that is not due, needs to be mandatorily be cleared in order for us to keep using the services. Since the issue was that our services were terminated by Azure apparently for no reason as per the advice of the customer support executive we made the payment for the invoice raised recently, not due, just so that our services can be resumed & our customer need not suffer because of unreliable system/policies of Azure. The payment was made on 11th May 2022 & the payment remittance was immediately shared with the Microsoft Azure support people. Till date, there is no resolution to the case.

Problems Faced:

1. Issue still persists

2. Services are terminated without intimation/failure on our account.

3. So far discussed with 9 different customer executives for one ticket raised.

4. There is no way you can reach to customer support executive apart from emails.

5. They all work as per their shift timings & expect you to be available 24 *7 to receive their calls since you are customer right so you have to - coz you are having a problem. They are calling at ungodly hours 6:50 am in the morning 11:30 pm in the night & expect us to answer, if we don't they just perform their duty by sending a standard email stating we tried reaching you but can't connect. By the time you realize & that you want to connect back to them on call, you can't because they have a policy not to share phone #. You have to reach them via email. When you reach them via email, they send the email once at the beginning of their shift time & go unresponsive till the time their shift ends & the case is handed over to some other person who exactly does the same thing again from scratch. These loops keep playing as if it is some kind of joke or game going on.

6. No coordination internally happening at Microsoft - they keep passing on the responsibilities from one team to another - it is either the global finance team, subscription team, or engineering team. I am surprised - how come all the teams combined can't resolve one issue in 7 days? Is Microsoft hiring such non-professional under-qualified staff for addressing customer queries? Big Surprise?

8. They lie on emails that the email is sent wherein no email is sent.

9. No escalation matrix.

10. There is no way as a customer you can decide the severity of the case. However, since it has directly impacted my business I asked the customer support executive to change the severity to "A", this is all scenario after setting the severity to "A", and I don't know what they would do with a normal request.

Severity Level - Severity A

Your Situation - Critical Business Impact – your business has experienced a significant loss or degradation of services, requiring immediate attention.

It's like playing dog & the bone keeps chasing keep looping but with no final conclusion drawn.

I never use Linkedin/any platform to express/share negative feedback/views. But the experience that I have had in the past seven days is extremely disturbing & nerve-wracking.

I am writing as a highly dissatisfied customer who has been traumatized in the entire episode as well as to bring to the notice of all the associated professionals of Microsoft & Azure that there is a high level of improvement needed in your customer support section. & If there is any person knowledgeable enough who can update their own back-end system to help resolve this issue which their support executives are not able to resolve for the past 7 days please help.

I am seeking immediate attention from responsible people through this to come forward & offer help to resolve the case as it has caused a Critical impact on my business & my brand value & trust with the customers at stake with non - performing the app without prior intimation.