Categories
Technology

Ah dear, I didn’t have a good experience with Office365 this evening

The Pursuit of Quality is now ‘live’, albeit in ‘beta’ (that is, I’m not talking about it on my other channels as yet). This means that email is now arriving and I think I need a dedicated email bucket so I can keep things separate.

I don’t like having all my email in one box. For me, it makes it difficult to focus. I have a Google Apps account for personal and another for Mobile Industry Review.

I’ve been itching to try out Microsoft’s all new Office365 service and this evening I sat down and created an account. I went for the E3 plan — £15/month — that came with Office Professional Plus. That was quite attractive as it’s basically every single Office app. Yes please, I thought.

I’ve got Office for Mac standard version, but I thought £15/month for both the standard 25GB account and a monthly license for all the Office apps was genius.

But.

And there is a but.

I thought I was signing up for a month-to-month term. It’s only when I completed the transaction that I noticed it was a 1-year agreement. Whoops.

Screen Shot 2011 11 22 at 20 52 29

That, I can deal with, given the fact you’re getting the Office suite included.

The next problem? I went to download the Office apps (or, get the license key to unlock Office Professional) and got a bit of a shock. It’s for PC-only. The whole deal is PC-only. The control panel instructed me to go out and buy a copy of Office for Mac!

Right. No, that’s not acceptable.

So I looked for the cancel button. Cancel, cancel, cancel. My expectations were totally blown.

And..arse, there’s no cancel button.

So I created a support ticket. I hope they’re efficient, I hope they don’t make me commit to a whole year.

And goodness me, how wrong could I have been? I just assumed..

I think it’s over to Google Apps for The Pursuit of Quality email hosting then.

Microsoft: I tried!

Categories
Services Technology

1&1 Internet: I can’t believe I was fake-sold email services!

I use Google Apps for all my email. I’ve been considering swapping to Microsoft’s Office365 because they’re now offering BlackBerry services and I find that particularly attractive.

However I’m pretty much sold on Google Apps. Collectively, across all my accounts, I reckon I’ve got about 20 gigabytes of email content hosted with them. I really, really like the powerful search capabilities.

So when I got a call out-of-the-blue from 1&1 (or One & One or One and One) asking if I’d like to upgrade to their mail package, I said no.

I let the chap do his pitch then I explained that I had no reason whatsoever to use their email service.

He carried on regardless.

This, I think, is becoming a bit of a trend with organisations desperate to sell stuff. Only last week my mother in law was ‘force-sold’ a mobile contract by a fly-by-night agency pretending to be Vodafone. Thankfully the team at Vodafone have reversed the damage. The salesman blatantly lied to my mother-in-law, saying he was her Vodafone account manager, then blinded her with a bit of tech speak before saying he’d send her a cheque and put her on a better price plan. Before she knew it, she’d had another line activated on her account. Bad news.

Imagine my shock to find out I’ve been a victim of this too. I thought I knew better.

The 1&1 sales chap described the amazing benefits of their MailXchange service.

I could have a free trial. No thanks. He could send me some more information if I liked, the chap said.

“Sure,” I said.

“Ok I’ll get that activated for you,” he said.

I did wonder.

The arse. Why? Well, I’ve just had an email through from 1&1 thanking me for my recent order!

“You what?”

Yup. It appears I’ve ordered MailXchange. And it’s now active on my account. Whether it’s billing me anything, I’ve no idea.

I logged into the contracts section of 1&1 to see what was going on. I couldn’t locate this new service to deactivate it.

Either way, I’m rather annoyed.

This is what it takes nowadays, I suspect: Bullshit. WHY would I want to buy another email service, especially when I’ve told you’ve I’ve already GOT Google Apps and that I’m utterly delighted with it? Do a bit of a ducking and diving and activate the service anyway and see what happens? 😉

Not good.

Perhaps I’m not going to get billed until I set up an account?

Or maybe I’ve unconsciously agreed to take out a raft of MailXchange services that I don’t quite know about?

I’ve emailed their support straight back to say “Switch this shit off” (I used nicer language) but I now fear I’m going to get stuck in service-level hell. (i.e. “No, you need to do this-n-that Sir”, “We can’t actually help”, “Have you spoken to some other department?”)

We shall see. My expectations are set.

I think it’s time to move the last of my domains away from there. I just couldn’t be bothered up until now.

Thanks very much for the hassle, the ambiguity and the mis-selling 1&1.

Not quite a quality experience.

1&1 MailXchange email

Update: I just did a search for 1&1 to locate their sodding front-page (quicker that typing www..) and found this rather helpful domain transfer instruction page from 123-reg.co.uk. I’ve got hundreds of domains hosted with them so I think that is most definitely the way ahead. Note to self: Sort this out soon.

You know what, I wonder what 123-reg would charge to login to my 1and1 account and sort out the transfers for me so I don’t even have to think? That would be useful.