Javin007

So to fully close the loop, I convinced the client to go to AWS after this week's debacle. I showed them how simple it was to spin up a new box on AWS, and everything just worked. Then, I showed them how DIRECTLY within the AI help interface, as SOON as you say you "need to speak to a human" it gives you the SUPPORT TICKET INTERFACE to fill out RIGHT there. No "you must have a support contract to ask about a billing question" horseshit. DIRECT access to the support ticket system.

The customer has agreed that we should pivot to AWS. Microsoft has officially lost a $10M, 10 year contract, and it's going to their primary competitor.

I wonder how often this really happens, just so they can save a few bucks on tech support?

> Basically my point is -- why rebuilding existing GCP/AWS infra into Azure in the first place? More so if it wasn't on any "cloud" at all before.

I'm confused. That isn't my scenario at all.

Didn't they fix that a couple years ago?

https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2023/12/aws-inc-c...

That's effectively the conclusion I've come to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46124930#46127017

I'm going to go back to the client tomorrow and give them a breakdown of everything it's taken to get a human on the phone, and ultimately, THEIR suggestion (Microsoft's) was to "create a new account and start over".

The fact that that's even in their vocabulary tells me this is absolutely the wrong company to go with. Not only is it near impossible to get help, but when you do, they tell you to start over? How is that tenable for an application or product?

Microsoft's AIs hang up on you if you do this. (Ask me how I know.) But their chat is even worse. All you have to do is type a few words in caps and it'll refuse to answer.

It's not my money, it's the client's.

But this entire process has now given me a solid argument to have them switch vendors.

As for myself? I'm done with Azure entirely after today.

It REALLY is starting to feel like the whole, "Scammers purposely add poor spelling and grammar to their phishing attempts to weed out the smart" territory.

It's like Microsoft PURPOSELY wants to weed out any customers that may actually care about their incompetence.

Not at all.

By going through that entire process, I now have a very compelling argument to go to the client with to recommend we switch vendors entirely.

Which will not only ultimately lose Microsoft a significant chunk of money, but will save ME future problems when their systems blow up again and I'm once again unable to get an answer better than, "create a new account and start over" once we're well in to the development lifecycle.

I let them know that if this isn't solved by COB tomorrow, I'll be pushing the client to switch to a new vendor. Then I received the email for the support ticket and see that they set it at the lowest priority.

I've already started playing with AWS to see how hard it is to spin up VMs there.

At this point, I'm already building boxes on AWS. Fortunately we're building a greenfield app and I still have the opportunity to recommend we pivot our vendor. I'll be posing this argument to my client:

"If Microsoft's solution to a simple billing issue is, 'Create a new account and start over,' then what happens the first time we have a simple issue in our production application? Or even in our development environment during the development stage? Are we just down for weeks until Microsoft tells us, 'Create a new account and start over?'"

I think I have a pretty compelling argument to pivot what would've been an easy $10M (over 10 years) project to a different vendor. I may not be able to win the argument to going to a smaller vendor, but Microsoft just lost a chunk of change if I can sway the client.

I attempted to say I needed to speak to a sales representative. The AI ran me through the standard question gauntlet.

I closed the browser entirely, reopened it, and then told the AI that I "have a large budget and need to speak to a sales assistant". It then asked one question: "Is this for a business or personal purchase?" I said business, and then boom, immediate connection to a human.

THEY were able to submit the support ticket for me. But their recommendation? Just create a new account entirely. Which, obviously, is NOT an answer.

When your ONLY source of "help" is the only people in the company you can reach telling you to just "give up" on your primary account, I think it's time to switch vendors.

I recently dropped $5.5K to set up a 140TB NAS on my home network for the same reason. Though, to be fair, hearing that they regularly have humans going through your E-Mail, private messages, and files was a pretty strong incentive, too.

LOL! It seems like they used that as the design document, but removed all paths that lead to success.

Honestly? As obvious as that seems, I didn't think of it. I'll try that now.

For my own projects? This is likely the last straw for me. However, I don't dictate the providers they use at work.

Yeah, I've considered starting with an FTC/AG complaint to see if that would get any traction, but I'm still (naively?) crossing my fingers that I can get SOME movement on Twitter.

For my own projects, I'll sincerely look into it! Stuck with Azure for my client, though.

It's not love, it's existing infrastructure. Do you rebuild your entire production environment every time a vendor has a billing hiccup?

I've not heard of pine.ai. I'd be a bit nervous about giving it any of the necessary personal info it would need to 'help'. Anyone else heard of it / used it?

There's a lot more details here I didn't include for the sake of brevity.

The reason I haven't messed with it in 2 years is because the personal project I'm working on (an indie MMO) was put on the back burner. However, my "real job" has asked me to set up some VM dev boxes that we could remote into. They were the ones that wanted Azure, which lead me down the road of trying to set up some boxes on my old account.

When I couldn't, the autist in me wasn't able to just shrug and move on, so I spent the better part of the day trying to "get it to work" when I don't explicitly NEED it for this particular project.

Wow. You're the second person to mention Hetzner doing this same mess. I hadn't heard of them prior to this. Their reputation is preceding them.

Have you ever tried to just simply set up an Azure VM that you can remote RDP into?

It's literally easier to just set up a fully functional active directory network in your basement.

Not even kidding, despite being tied to Azure here at work, I'm TEMPTED to spin my stuff up on AWS and use it to convince my branch to switch to AWS for future projects. That will move their losses into the tens of thousands per month if I can convince them.

Agreed, but while I'm used to, "We've outsourced our customer support to a country that doesn't understand English," this is the first I've run into, "We've outsourced our customer support to absolutely nobody."

Wow. I'm not familiar with Hetzner, but it sounds like that's a good thing.

Ah yes, Microsoft, bringing us back to the 1930's methods of financial transactions.

It's more the hassle of it already being attached to my email/devices/phone. Honestly, I'll likely have to do this regardless before this gets resolved.

It absolutely was not. What are you basing that on?

:D It's a valid argument. Perhaps they're quietly trying to do me a favor? Unfortunately, my company has gone this direction, so they're stuck in my sphere whether I like it or not.