A customer email : Part 3: The response to my email
I've been posting a conversation I am having with a member of the community, who happens to be a Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT), and who had a few issues with Microsoft.
Initially I posted an email I received, then I posted my reply, and now what follows is the response back to me...
-----Original Message-----
From: Stephen Russell
To: Frank ArrigoHi Frank.
Sorry if my first contact with you has come across as negative. But over
the last few months, I've been having some "issues" with Microsoft dev
courseware and getting little/no support from them. So when I got an MSDN
flash which says how great everything is, I had to let off some steam.
Thanks for not flaming me back ... though I deserved it ... :-)
I note that your current role is dev platform evangelism in Australia, and
that you liaise with customers and universities. But I note that you don't
mention MCSD MCT's and CPLS's? Given that I'm one of the few MCTs training
dev courses in Sydney, it's a pity we've not met along the way.
But this is indicative of the poor communication between MS and CPLS's in
Australia, in my opinion. I've always felt that I've been operating in a
vacuum, with little or no support from MS Australia. Every week we MCT's
are pushing the dev products, but getting no help from MS. All we get is
buggy, badly written courseware. When we point out the problems, nothing
happens. And we don't even get discounts on the software -- we have to pay
full retail, whereas Linux-using professors and students get it for "free"
(details provided on request).
This might all be my fault, of course, but I've never felt I had any
channel into MS to get support. The few times that I've had to interact
with MS were not pleasant or encouraging. You would have thought that when
I became an MCSD trainer a few years back, someone like you might have
contacted me saying "Welcome! How can we help you?"
Don't get me wrong. I'm not totally anti-MS. I like a lot of the new MS dev
products. .NET, VS2003, BTS2004 -- they're great products. Not perfect, of
course, but more than competitive. My main issues at the moment are the
lack of quality control with the supporting courseware. Hence the Bcc I
sent you.
As for publishing my e-mails, I won't stop you. Admittedly, my first e-mail
was very rude and blunt, so I don't mind if you tone it down a bit by
editing out the bits that might incriminate me ... :-)
Thanks.
Cheers,
Steve.
PS. You do know that "evangelist" is a pejorative, right?
S.
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