"Dear Peter,
"Thank you for using Web Support. My name is Jenny, and I'll be assisting you with your case today. "
So far so good.
"After viewing the case log, my understanding is that when trying to sign into Money with your Passport, you receive an error message similar to the following: "The sign-in name you entered is not associated with this file. Please enter the correct sign-in name or open another file." If I have misunderstood, please let me know."
That's accurate. One can imagine the panic I felt as I couldn't open my financial file, particularly as it contains historical data back at least five years, if not more. The Money-generated backup wouldn't open either. My rotated backup would, but I'd been lax in that area and it's two months old. Shame on me! I reorganized the computer setup a couple of months ago and eliminated the auto backup routine I had. Been meaning to get to it, but hey, my important things are backed up manually, like my Money file! Argh!
"If this indeed is the situation, I would like to apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused. We have received feedback from other customers reporting a similar behavior. This matter was immediately reported to the corresponding team for investigation."
Yeah, before I decided to go into hyperventilation mode I checked Google and the MSFT newsgroups. There I discovered that I was far from alone. Although still very annoyed, I felt much better after discovering that it was widespread. Not because I wanted to share the pain, but because I knew that meant that a> it wasn't just me and b> MSFT would work on a fix sooner rather than later.
"Based on their recent feedback, what happened is that on Monday afternoon, we updated one of our servers. This affected the authentication process which caused problems for users who attempted to connect to the server on Tuesday morning."
That jibes with what I've read on the net. I'm amazed that they allowed such a thing to happen, though. What a PR nightmare, assuming this gets more visibility than it currently has.
"I would like to reassure you that we are resolving this issue and it is a top priority for our Product Team."
Well I would hope so! In fact, I'm wondering why the hell it's now five days later and there's no fix. Five days, they know what happened and why it broke, what's the issue? Perhaps this is:
" Please be assured that this error will not affect any of your financial data, and none of your personal information has been compromised. In fact, the result of the situation has been that your information is even more secure."
I laughed out loud at this one. Yeah, it's more secure all right, so secure that the proper owner can't get into it! That's not security, that's, that's, um, er, that's inaccessibility. It's locked and the key has been thrown away.
"Considering the current situation, no action is required on the end user side. Once I receive an update from our Product Group, I will send an email to you immediately. Your patience is highly appreciated."
Good, I don't have to search to see when a fix is posted, they'll email me directly. I'm guessing the delay is because they have to somehow crack the security on the file in order to open it up. This should be interesting. As for my patience, well, I'm doing better than the folks screaming that they're going to move to Quicken, but I'm still in the land of annoyed. However, this is the first issue I've had in 5+ years of use, so I'm inclined to let them fix it and take steps (read 'backups') to avoid such a thing in the future. If it's not resolved by Sunday, though, I'll get annoyed again. 1st day of the month and all.
"Again, we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience and frustration this has caused.
"Best Regards,
"Jenny Zhou
"Microsoft Customer Support Services "
Good closing, appreciated. They've gotten much better since their canned response days. This probably still is one, but at least they hired an actual writer to edit them.
