General information
Category:
Conferences & events
Another letter:
'******************************************************************
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Eric Garza [mailto:eric.garza@usa.net]
> Sent: Friday, October 22, 1999 9:20 AM
> To: carlpr@able-consulting.com; support1@microsoft.com;
<snip>
> Subject: Re: The MVP Program Has Been Cancelled
>
>
> Carl and rest of MVPs,
>
> With all due respect and without knowing the reasons for the
> MVP program cancellation.
>
> I feel very disappointed by Microsoft, just like you.
>
> I'm not an MVP but I was applying for the program and as far as people
> tell me, I was doing a great job; I was working from 8:00AM to 11:00PM to
> bear with the time spent helping peers. I think most of you were doing
> something similar, sometimes failing your deadlines because of this, it
> feels good when people tell you "Thanks" and it feels good to have a title
> rewarding our hard job, it also feels good to know we help mankind in
> someway and not only going through life in a selfish manner
> getting what you
> need from others and not helping anyone on the path, it feels good to
> receive some goods from MS like the MSDN Subscription (3k value).
> And it feels good to know that Microsoft is cancelling the
> program since
> I will make more money now and have a better life, I will continue to post
> and help peers, but I won't give my life for it.
>
> It's not the money, it's the fact, the MVP program costs we
> much more in
> man-hours than Microsoft spends on it, having the program cancelled maybe
> means that Microsoft is going to offer something else, or they
> might want to
> spend much more having their support personnel answering the questions and
> this way trying to increase the quality of the service.
>
> If there's a company in the whole world that is making loads of money,
> you are that company, we are making you the richest guys over the earth, I
> really don't think that the program cancellation was due to economical
> problems.
>
> I am sure of one thing: Support costs need to be paid by the
> Manufacturer of the product to keep the customers happy and assure that
> customers get quality, responsive support.
>
> I am sure of one other thing: 50% or so of the people posting in the
> newsgroups need training badly, 30% need up-to-date training and more
> experience, 19% need some reading and searching before they post, 0.9% are
> well trained, did look for answers on help files, readme files, msdn, faqs
> and the web but they are reporting bugs, and the rest 0.1% are MVPs.
>
> I live in Mexico, Microsoft gives free support here, but know
> what? it's
> pretty lame, you make a long distance call if you aren't in Mexico City,
> wait on the queue from 5 to 10 minutes and get attended by a guy who knows
> nothing on programming, knows nothing on Microsoft products and
> only does a
> search on the KB and tells you the article number, well, that after the 10
> or 20 minutes you spend explaining the problem, tell me if you think using
> this kind of support is anything good, maybe they should cancel
> that program
> too, it's worth less in quality than the newsgroups are. On the past year
> and a half, I used to call that line around 30 times until I
> realized i was
> getting nowhere with their help, so I started looking for other
> choices and
> found the newsgroups, I spent some time reading old posts to see if my
> questions were answered, I posted one question there and in less than an
> hour, Carl Prothman had answered giving me very good hints about what was
> going on and how to solve it, I had upgraded to MDAC 2.1 and my
> whole system
> was unusable, and in three hours, the system was up again thanks to one of
> the MVPs helping me, I've been developing software in all kinds
> of languages
> and systems for over 12 years so I thought I could contribute to the
> newsgroups to make it work, at the time I knew nothing about what
> an MVP was
> until Carl told me I was doing great and would be good to apply for the
> program, which I accepted and see what happens now, one month later, I'm
> dumped before being in, isn't that great?
>
> If they plan to have MS support guys answering the posts, why not keeping
> the MVP program so that everyone is happy, that costs a few bucks to MS
> budget and gives people a reward for helping free.
>
> If the reason was economical, I think it was a mistake.
>
> Best Regards,
> Eric Garza
> Telinet, S.A. de C.V.
> Monterrey, Mexico
>
> cc. Carl Prothman MVP, President, Able Consulting.
> Joseph Lindstrom, Director of Business Development, Microsoft.
> Eric Kfir, Head of Development Team in IDF, Israel.
> Alberto Borbolla (Coatl) MVP, Tecnologia en Sistemas Mexico.
> Visual Basic Group, Mexico.
> Users who e-mailed me a "Thank you" message for answering a post:
> Roland, Exacting Craft Design
> Vitaly Gorbenko,
> David Gregg,
> Tim Jones,
> Owen Southwood,
> Larry Garcia,
> Shelley Locke,
> MHyrman,
> Rick Kolesar,
> Andy Ranoe,
> Mayank Pincha,
> Zvi Danovich,
> Vassilis Dourmas,
> Ilene LaBarbera,
> Morgan Leppink,
> SNS Computing Services,
> George Padvorac,
> Suneel K Piduguralla,
> Ralph Framke,
> Andrew Connell,
> Nezih Duzen.
'******************************************************************
Previous
Reply
View the map of this thread
View the map of this thread starting from this message only
View all messages of this thread
View all messages of this thread starting from this message only