Vogon Civil Service or Martian Ass Monkeys

This post is rated PG13+

My inner child is dead.

He was brutally slain by Microsoft®.

I am a member of the Microsoft® Partner’s Program, which, among other things,
allows me to receive and install a large amount of Microsoft® software.
Ostensibly, so I can continue to develop and test applications which depend
on these offerings, which in turn my clients have to purchase to run my software.
So it really all works out in the end for Microsoft®.

I pay around $200 a year for this privilege.

So the time rolled around again that I received an email notifying me that
my subscription was about to expire. It came complete with a link to their site.
The link didn’t work. Oops. They misspelled the URL to their own damned website.

So I finally sort that bit out and log in to my account. Oh! I’ve forgotten
the password, since I had to create a **special** login account with Microsoft®
for this purpose. In fact, I had to create a Passport® account that makes
things SOOOO much easier. How? I have no friggin clue. So after about 45 minutes
of (1) trying every password I know and (2) attempting to guess my secret question,
THEN my secret answer - this is turning in to a regular Hitchiker’s-Fucking-Guide
here - I finally decode the mystery of my login and get in to the site.

I’m then presented with a veritable slurry of mysterious navigation
elements and member benefits and packages that have shipped in the past (none
show up…been a member for 3 years now…) and invoices (none there either…).
Okay, so I give….and start clicking around. Oh! I’m in the ‘update my status’
page. Naaah…I just want to pay my money and GTFO. Back. NOPE! "You’ve
started the process….you must finish it."

Cornholed again.

Alright, so I finish that bastard and then I (somehow) manage to decode the
Nancy Drew mystery of "Where’s the Damned ‘Renew’ Button". Then (even
though I’m logged in - remember?) I have to enter in my name and (GASP!) my
Subscription ID. WTF is THAT? WHERE is that? So I enter my partner ID
figuring, hey, they must be running some sort of relational database, since
this is in fact after 1975, and they can probably sort it out.

Nope.

The nice little error message does say that the ID is located in my email reminder
that I got from Microsoft® (remember that one? It’s the one where they misspelled
their own goddamned address) Nope! It’s not in there anywhere. Surprise!

So I dig through my email. Since I never throw anything away, I managed to
find an email with my Subscription ID that was from a time when
the tallest building in NYC was not the Empire State building.

I enter that number with gusto and I’m off to give up some money!

Not yet.

There’s a cryptic pulldown that gives me two options - "Renew Action Pack"
or "Upgrade to Plus!". What the dick does that mean and where
did it come from? Jesus Christ guys, did you farm this shit out to Mars
or something? My gawd. The second item, "Upgrade…" doesn’t even
WORK (?!). So I choose the first, and I get a screen with my contact information
from pre-9/11 as well. Apparently all the info I had to enter before with ALL
my contact info didn’t propagate to this database. Oh of course not.
So I enter all the info in, along with my credit card number and presto! another
$200 down the drain to a bunch of Martians.

</rant>

–dan