Ok... it's quickly nearing mid-night and I still find myself making an effort to catch up with last week's emails, industry news, and Blog content. The funny thing is... I have already published 2 times earlier today (1 an hour ago and another an hour before that) featuring a couple of new things going on with Google. So why am I Blogging again when my attention is obviously needed elsewhere? Well, because I feel that now is a great time to rant and share with you all my personal feelings towards the Microsoft AdCenter team. Point blank... they're all a bunch of INCOMPETENT ASSES!
I'm going through my stack of emails and come across one titled "Microsoft adCenter Survey". Now I usually never look at shit like this, especially when I have so many other emails to check into, but today I felt different and left it in my inbox to decipher through later. Actually, to be perfectly honest, I kind of wanted to fill it out and provide feedback to MSN regarding their ad-platform. You see, I want Microsoft to succeed in the Pay Per Click search industry mostly because Google and Yahoo! need competition... and we all know competition breeds better services and products for end-users.
Up to this point, Microsoft has done a lot to implement a new way of managing paid placement ads, but they've also failed in many ways... mostly, in my opinion, in their customer service efforts and with their platforms design and usability. I'm assuming that Microsoft understands that they have many kinks to work out and soliciting the feedback from advertisers and adCenter users is apart of their ongoing attempt to better themselves.
So I go back to the email just a few moments ago, after spending all of this time deciding whether or not I really wanted to take part in their survey or just trash it, and begin reading it again.
Here's what it said:
I thought cool, and to top it off their going to give me a $10 gift certificate to Amazon. So I start filling in my information as shown with this screen-shot:
I clicked the action button to proceed and got the following message (I'll quote it because the screen-shot is fairly large):
"Thank you for your interest in this study; however, this survey is now closed. We appreciate your willingness to share your opinions with us and hope that you will participate in future surveys."
Are you kidding me? After all that time deciding whether or not I should participate, I finally decide to do so (which is not typically the case with surveys) and I get that B.S. message. I was even promised a $10 gift certificate... damn you people!
To be perfectly honest, I'm more frustrated at the fact that Microsoft closed the survey after only a day. Forget the fact that they wasted my time. Forget the fact that they promised an Amazon gift certificate that will never be delivered. How do they ever expect to top Google and Yahoo! if they can't even do a simple survey.
I wonder how many surveys they were able to collect in the past 24 hours. 1000? 10,000? Whatever the number is it's not nearly enough. Their team should be willing to receive feedback surveys for as long as a year from now if they're ever going to get their ad platform on par with that of Google's and Yahoo's.
Addressing the Microsoft adCenter Team:
Simply put... don't ask for my opinion/feedback if it's not worth waiting 24 hours to hear. Had I been able to take your survey I would have informed you that your call-center sucks and is lacking the necessary knowledge to take phone calls. Also your platform is very confusing and often does not let me make changes to my ad's creative and/or keyword's list... a big problem if you haven't yet realized it.
There... said and done with.
Labels: commentary-rants
5 Comments:
Boooooo Microsoft! Those slimy bastards. Hooooray Karl!
By
drew, at August 17, 2006 7:08 PM
Wowza...that is terrible. It almost appears as if they truly didn't even want the information that would have been disclosed in the survey but actually they wanted to appear to be a better company then they are by offering a 'free $10' gift card.
By
jackie, at August 23, 2006 12:20 AM
It sounds as if you are primarily upset with MSN because they stiffed you out of the $10 amazon gift certificate. The fact the ad manager and customer service is not very good seemed secondary. I got the impression you were bad mouthing them because of the survey and not the service.
Also, having a survey open for a year is not very realistic. I agree they should have run it for a few days minimum, unless they realized a mistake and will re-open the survey after a fix. But they just need to get a sample. A new survey could be run to obtain fresh results.
Just my opinion.
By
Michael Roebuck, at August 23, 2006 8:16 AM
Hey everybody... thanks for your comments.
Jackie - It did appear that Microsoft's adCenter team wasn't at all interested in conducting a quality survey, but rather they just wanted to plug their "generous" $10 gift-card give-a-way instead. Obviously that wasn't their intention, but than you have to wonder what was.
Michael - It's a toss up really. I'm upset about the survey (which sparked this Blog post in the first place), but I do feel that they are doing very poorly on the customer service and ad manager front as well.
My frustration lies with them asking for my help, me deciding to help them, and then they not willing to take it. The point I was trying to make is that their program has many faults and they should be willing to take feedback at all times... not just for a 24 hour window.
Thanks for your input.
By
Karl Ribas, at August 23, 2006 8:46 AM
How about their stupid requirement for a privacy policy lately?
After waiting about 2 weeks to get my keywords approved, I was informed by a MSN rep that my pages are missing the required "Privacy Policy". When I actually looked at my client's website I found that policy, right on the landing page. After I showed that to the rep, he said he would get back to me. Few hours later I received an email stating that "In order for us to approve your ads we need you to post a stronger privacy policy"???
What now, my policy is not strong enough??
I don't know about you but I will take my business elsewhere.
By
Foreman & Pike Consulting, at November 20, 2007 6:25 PM
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