Complaint Review: Microsoft - Redmond Washington

I have been using MS products from their start, I have been involved in beta testing their OSs going back to the early days of NT, as well as Office, Live and Server.  I am in their MS Partners program.  I have believed, until recently in one of their vaulted statements
 "Our Values

As a company, and as individuals, we value integrity, honesty, openness , personal excellence, constructive self-criticism, continual self-improvement, and mutual respect. We are committed to our customers and partners and have a passion for technology. We take on big challenges, and pride ourselves on seeing them through.

We hold ourselves accountable to our customers, shareholders, partners, and employees by honoring our commitments , providing results, and striving for the highest quality."
Which have recently been proven false, I set up a net Domain through Windows Live when it was still in Beta and advertised as Free for Life through MicroSoft, then came Aug 17 of 2010, went to check e-mail accounts from my domain that I use for business and couldn't access them, checked my URL and it was gone also.  Found an email in my Hotmail account from MelbourneIT.com.au saying that either I or a manager had closed the Domain and that I was now responsible for maintaining the account and that I had to renew it through them for 1 to 5 years at a cost starting at $35, of particular note here, it was shut down on the 17th but the expiration wasn't till the 19 th .


Tried contacting Microsoft and got nowhere, posted it on a MS forum and got nowhere, finally contacted MelbourneIT and renewed through them after getting nowhere with MS.  Then it took another few days to get the site the site back up and my email restarted......only to find all my email had been deleted.
 

Again went to MS Support, only to be told that I had received 3 notices of the upcoming expiration at 45 days till and 15 and 10 days till, of which I had not received any, and told them so, even gave permission to check my e-mail on the hotmail account, which was ignored.  Told them I needed my email restored, in particular about a $2,500 contract that was to be closed on....nothing.
 Lost the contract, but continued to go to MS Support and Melbourne support trying to get all straightened out.

Melbourne simply ignored my multiple e-mails and MS continued in their stance that I had rec'd at least 3 notices, which of course I didn't.  Sent one e-mail suggesting they actually do their job and check the automated servers logs and find the emails to see if they bounced, were undeliverable, etc, which one person did and replied that, in fact, NO emails had been sent to me as promised by MS (when they decided to start charging $14.95 for domain renewal in May of 2009....for this FREE FOR LIFE domain).
 Then it was back to the same old thing, their people telling me that the one guy made a mistake and yes, I WAS SENT THREE EMAILS, which I wasn't (more lies).

Finally got it elevated to a Matt, who explained yes there was a problem, they had gotten it fixed and he would get me a refund of the difference between Melbourne ($36+) and MS ($14.95), which never happened, that he would check on moving the Domain back to MS (never happened) and he would send me a copy of MS Office 2010 (never happened), and look into getting me a subscription to MAPS (MS Action Pack) as I had planned to use the money made on the lost contract to buy the Action Pack and build a new system/server  (you guessed it..never happened).  Got disgusted, asked for an address for whoever was above him in the chain or addresses for corporate, i.e. CEO, etc....was told he's it, that I was at the top of the executive level for handling things.
 Dug around and found some email addresses for a few of the upper hierarchy @ MS and sent a message/complaint and was refered to yet another MS 'problem solver', and it's just more of the same, she did send a copy of MS Office, but says no to MAPS - even though I had qualified for the purchase....and IT COSTS LESS THAN A SINGLE COPY OF OFFICE PRO 2010, yet comes w/ 10 copies of Office Pro and a whole lot more.  The other items she is taking her sweet time about and I doubt if anything comes of it.
 Further after all this and being told the problem is "FIXED", just had a couple people reply to a post I put on a board early on seeking help that two others just had the same thing happen to them, long after this FIX was put in place.

So, MS doesn't CARE that their problem has cost me and others money, in fact in their last e-mail they called this canceling my domain, deleting all my email and the loss of money an INCONVENIENCE - meaning they don't care about their customers, they refuse to live up to their claims that they are accountable to their customers and partners as well as their commitments to providing results (no notifications, being ignored, lying to customers ), striving for the highest quality (calling customers liar, no follow up, not fulfilling promises). 




Since filing this they have sent two emails both of which are basically them trying to cover up their lack of action and taking responsibility.  One email tells me that on the forum item that they had posted the correct contact point several times, when in fact it was twice, and both the postings were made in the 12 minutes prior to the email they sent.  The other claims they are trying to get money from MelbourneIT..the question here is why, and why should Melbourne pay anything....this is all directly MicroSofts fault and problem, yet they want to lay it on me, MelbourneIT and anybody else rather than take the responsibility for their own actions.