I understood the intent of your post.

"Mark Backup & Restore Meyer"
<MarkBackupRestoreMeyer[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:0056B1A9-BFE1-4EFB-B2EB-01FF5BD44072[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

Thanks Dick, but you missed the intent of my posting. This posting is
intended to communicate the lack of integrity to a community of users and
warn them about the quality of this product in language they can understand.
Like some, I don't always assume everyone on the face of the earth
understands the OSI model and end user computing.

I also do not accept any company's Tier one response as Gospel.
Unfortunately, I do have to access their Tier 1 to get to Tier 2. I simply
choose not to waste my time any more given the lack of attention MS lends to
its software development issues.

My message will hopefully prevent others from wasting their time on this
product as well.



"Dick Watson" wrote:

- quote -

MBR> I'm moving on to other alternatives.

Good luck... if you discover an alternative that is any better, please drop
a line... as I understand, today they all "stay competitive" this way -
probably that's how they are tought in today's business schools. From my
point of view, Microsoft is still much better than many others. It also
clearly depends on the company size: the bigger it becomes, the more
irrelevant customer satisfaction becomes for them.

Vadim

Thanks Vadim. I put up with the Tier 1 response because I refuse to spend
any more of my time on a poorly developed application or fighting overseas
Tier 1 techs on an annual basis to get access to Tier 2.

The main purpose behind my posting is to communicate to others in the
community who are not PC savy how unreliable this product is.

I really appreciate your response. Best of luck. I'm moving on to other
alternatives.

"Vadim Rapp" wrote:

- quote -

As an IT professional, you of course know that the best backup strategies
involve diversity of form and type and testing to verify that your backups
really are before you need them to be.

You also surely know that IT consumers are best off when they don't
passively accept whatever any vendor tells them.

"After opening a trouble ticket with MS support, they informed me"

"backed up following the technical guidelines provided by MS"

"Against my better judgement, and after seeking advice from Microsoft, I'm
currently using MS Money 2005 Deluxe and was instructed via the technical
support pages"

"I did as instructed"

"financial data is once again corrupted"

You provide very little information to give a hint what's happening, but if
a reinstall of M05 is involved, surely the information in
http://umpmfaq.info/faqdb.php?q=177 may be relevant.

BTW, if you are new to the newsgroup and think I'm just a shill blindly
defending Money, you need to read more posts.

"Mark "Backup & Restore" Meyer" <Mark "Backup & Restore"
Meyer[at]discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:5091CC98-21B6-4EB2-A3C3-21B13ABAA156[at]microsoft.com...
- quote -

Hello Mark:
You wrote in conference microsoft.public.money on Wed, 16 Feb 2005
18:57:02 -0800:

MBR> Last year, I had Pentium III machine w/ plenty of RAM and storage. I
MBR> stored my backup on my hard drive. They infered it was my equipment's
MBR> fault.

I forever remember a case that happened long ago. One of the tape drives of
the mainframe was obviously malfunctioning, but the technician was doing his
best to convince me that the drive is fine, and it's a bad tape media. The
following dialog took place:

Tech:- It's a data error. Perhaps a cosmic particle flew over and changed a
bit on the tape.
Me: - If it was data error, there would be data error message. Every byte
has crc bit, if the data was corrupted, crc wouldn't match which would
manifest itself as data error.
Tech: - but perhaps another cosmic particle changed the crc bit as well.


In your case, equipment fault would manifest itself as unreadable data. No 0
in the data can change by itself to 1 ever.

When I hear similar "explanations" from their Asian "support", I ask them
their name; hang up; then I call Microsoft customer service (not tech
support) and politely explain the situation. On the next day, the issue is
escalated to civilized people, and handled professionally.

I wonder though, why did you trust one word they told you: if you have 20+
years in IT, you should had realized what's going on in 1 minute of the
dialog. It's very likely that your backup files were not damaged at all, and
were perfectly OK. There's zero correlation between what 1st level support
tells you, and the reality. Especially offshored support - it's 100%
possible that the same "support representative" is simultaneously
"supporting" Microsoft Money, insurance claims, bank accounts, and credit
reports on different phone lines, for different companies that "try to stay
competitive" this way.


Vadim

To whom it may concern, and to all those who'll find and read this as it
becomes posted at Quicken's website, Newsrooms/Blogs and Communities of
Interest across the Internet:

The purpose of this correspondence is to convince anyone who reads it to
stop using Microsoft Money and find a viable alternative before they suffer a
similar experience.

I've purchased almost every release of Microsoft Money since it became
generally available. My problems began when we converted from MS Money 2003
to 2004. After opening a trouble ticket with MS support, they informed me my
backup files were corrupted and could not be restored. I lost several years
of financial data and untold days if not weeks of my time to restore what
financial data I could salvage. My files were backed up following the
technical guidelines provided by MS each and every time.

Against my better judgement, and after seeking advice from Microsoft, I'm
currently using MS Money 2005 Deluxe and was instructed via the technical
support pages to uninstal and reinstall the application due to recent
problems with downloading bank statements.

After backing up my 2005 Money files, I did as instructed. Another year
later and all of my financial data is once again corrupted.

Last year, I had Pentium III machine w/ plenty of RAM and storage. I stored
my backup on my hard drive. They infered it was my equipment's fault.

This year, I have a new Pentium IV w/ External drive connected via Firewire.
When the backup file wouldn't restore, I followed the MS Tech Support site
instructions to copy the file to my local drive. The repair/restore utility
still didn't work. They inferred it was my equipment again.

In a nutshell, Microsoft continues to distribute and sell defective software
without any concern for the devastation and frustration it causes to families
who are trying to manage their financial endeavors.

I am an IT professional with over 20 years of industry experience working
for SBC. I understand PCs, Servers, and related networking functions.

In my opinion, this application is completely unreliable in many functional
areas with a special emphasis on the low integrity of their backup and
restore function.

If anyone at Microsoft is truly interested in improving the quality of
Microsoft Money, they should invest some resources to resolve their
outstanding bugs and known problems prior to issuing new releases. You can
reference my latest Microsoft case number SRX050216607652.

Unfortunatley, like many American companies, Microsoft outsourced their
Customer Support function overseas making the technical support experience
even more frustrating.

Forever QUICKEN,

Mark "Backup & Restore Meyer"