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Microsoft Store online experience

clrokr

New Member
Hi guys,

just wondering what your experience has been ordering from the MS store online.
Their support has no problem lying to me and I'm now 100% I will not get my Surface Pro 2 on time even though they keep claiming that it will.

What are your stories from the MS online store?
Specifically: Has anyone ordered a Surface Pro 2 128GB in Europe after the pre-orders but before they changed it to Dec. 15?

I'm really interested in both.

clrokr
 

deldalton

New Member
clrokr. I can't fault my experience with the online Microsoft Store, at all. But, I appreciate that there are some differences in our scenarios.

Location: UK
Model Ordered: SP2 64GB
Date Ordered: 2nd October
Date Told It Would Be Shipped By: 22nd October
Date Arrived: 22nd October
 

mjgerrard

New Member
I ordered from the UK MS Store on pre-order, and was given a date of 29th October. They attempted to take payment from my card, which Barclays refused as fraudulent (Lot's of stories of this, in EU and USA). I called them up and they informed me that if the card was refused a second time, the order would be cancelled. I then called Barclays and whitelisted MS for payment.

I realised that John Lewis in the UK had stock so purchased from them online, had no problems with payment first time, and took delivery of Surface on the 25th. I then cancelled my MS order because I wasn't going to wait, and secondly I received another sms about attempted payment failure from MS. It just wasn't worth the hassle and I'm fairly confident the problem with payment was nothing to do with Barclays (JL went through first time). I didn't want to end up in a situation where I'd have to wait till December.

I've called them up since then and they were fairly useless at giving me dates for release of the Wireless BT dongle for keyboards in the UK. I was just told "end of the year".
 

oion

Well-Known Member
Besides the fraud checks that really throw a wrench into things due to MS' limited stock, exacerbated by whatever is causing the high-end Pro delays, the estimated release dates are also messed up. The dock wasn't supposed to be released until next year--the launch and all the media reported this. Yet on week of release, there were docks at retail. I'm half-expecting the much-talked-about battery keyboard to be available next month at this rate (or next autumn instead of early 2014!).
 

kristalsoldier

Well-Known Member
I ordered from the UK MS Store on pre-order, and was given a date of 29th October. They attempted to take payment from my card, which Barclays refused as fraudulent (Lot's of stories of this, in EU and USA). I called them up and they informed me that if the card was refused a second time, the order would be cancelled. I then called Barclays and whitelisted MS for payment.

I realised that John Lewis in the UK had stock so purchased from them online, had no problems with payment first time, and took delivery of Surface on the 25th. I then cancelled my MS order because I wasn't going to wait, and secondly I received another sms about attempted payment failure from MS. It just wasn't worth the hassle and I'm fairly confident the problem with payment was nothing to do with Barclays (JL went through first time). I didn't want to end up in a situation where I'd have to wait till December.

I've called them up since then and they were fairly useless at giving me dates for release of the Wireless BT dongle for keyboards in the UK. I was just told "end of the year".

Wow! Lucky I did not buy through the MS site then!!!! I got mine from PC World/ Currys.
 

xbilly

New Member
I ordered SP2 256 and was told delivery on October 29.

Was delighted when payment was taken on October 21 and was delivered on October 22 so MS Store exceeded my expectations !
 

CrippsCorner

Well-Known Member
No problems here in the UK (apart from the fraud warnings) in fact mine actually came earlier than they estimated.
 

eltos_lightfoot

Active Member
Online MS store worked great for me. I can't complain at all. I guess a minor quibble would be that no one at Microsoft told me to register or how to get an extended warranty. I found that information out here. :)
 

Atomic Walrus

New Member
Had to register just to post on this. My experience with their online store has been horrible. It's amazing that MS thinks what they're providing now as a purchasing experience is equivalent to what their fruit-flavored competitor presents (regardless of what you may or may not think about the products in question).

I managed to squeeze in an order for the Dec 15th batch of 256 GB models before they went completely out of stock yesterday. I received the usual "your order has been submitted, a confirmation email is on its way" message from the site that you'd get from any store. 16 hours later I still have no confirmation email and no sign of the order on the store's account page, however my card has been charged for the full amount (I thought we weren't charging until it shipped?).

I call them, figuring it's better to talk to a real person. Provide nearly all of the info you'd need to place an order in the first place over the phone (name, address, phone number, last 4 digits of CC, account email) just to get them to look up the order. They want an order number even though my issue is that I didn't get any order confirmation. I get past that. So far so bad. After some time on hold I'm told that my order is in the system but it's "in review." This is sounding like all those pre-orders that got cancelled now, right? I'm told I should contact my CC company to confirm the charge (which has already gone through according to my CC account site). I talk to my CC company, who inform me that the charge was successfully processed and they have no idea what MS is talking about. As far as they know there's no "review" in process as the charge has already gone through and no one there having any interaction with the MS store about the order beyond that.

So MS is clearly making this up; the system flagged the charge for review, which means something obviously, but no one can explain what exactly. The CC company has already processed the charge and is not involved in this supposed "review" in any way. At this point my theory is that the MS store, being extremely dysfunctional in general, is using these "reviews" to drop orders that exceed the capacity they were supposed to sell. When I placed my order yesterday the 256GB model had already gone out of stock once, then back in stock. It went out of stock again about another hour later, which is how it's stayed since. If I had to speculate I'd say I'll be getting a cancelled notice (even though my card was already charged) and that the reason is actually because they weren't supposed to go back in stock, so the orders are being canceled. The CC security review may be a smoke screen to prevent backlash from canceling orders due to accidental overselling.

If I actually do get a confirmation email and my order goes into the system properly I'll definitely report back, but I'm not hopeful. The rep I talked to said that I should get my confirmation email "within 6 hours of placing the order." I pointed out that it had been 16 hours, but there was no point in pushing it; he's at a call center in India and it's not his fault that MS can't operate their store properly.

Standard MS experience: I want their product, they make it hard to get what I want. I'm tempted to just go get a 128GB from BestBuy, forget about the educational discount or the extra RAM and never deal with MS's store again.
 
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jtheile

New Member
I had orderd the SP 2 with 128 GB and wanted to know the shipping date. So I called the hotline and they are absolutely clueless about shipping dates. Sorry, but what could be the most important thing for myself as a customer to know? The timeframe for delivery? I then managed to talk to the supervisor who gave me two options: wait until Dec 15 or cancel the order. I had him confirm this in written because I wanted to share this with someone at MS who cares a bit more... But fortunately 30 min after the call the shipping note came.

For me this is one of the worst examples of customer management and service. I know that the guys are located somewhere in Easter Europe, probably not even MS staff and they can only work with the information they have. But is this really what MS wants?

Finally my SP2 arrived on Monday, after ordering the Wednesday before and shipping on Friday. Not the fastest but still ok. :) And I'm quite happy with it and it replaced my aged Lenovo T61.
 
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