News MSI tells customers to RTFM

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/bits/2010/03/29/msi-tells-customers-to-rtfm/1

Hardware manfuacturer MSI has told 97,000 of its customers to RTFM in a bitter e-mail which went out to registered members of its support site last week.

 

"Sadly for MSI's credibility, the e-mail went out on the 25th of March - rather late for an April Fools' gag."

Shouldn't it be soon?

 

Ooops. Badly scheduled.

 

E-mail sent on the 25th, thread about it posted in GD seconds later:

http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=185346

[edit]Hang on a minute... didn't the article originally link to The Register's report and now it links to the above forum post making it look like I'm just repeating the article [/edit]

 

uh, yeah, like did Bit-Tech invent the time-continuum and are visiting the past from the future?

 

Why do I get the feeling this was a pissed off employee that sent the email without authorisation.

 

I thought exactly the same thing. An M$ employee did it some years back by adding a page to microsoft.com called 'How to RTFM' and going on to tell you in lot's of detail just how you could read your manual. Turned out he had just been fired and M$ removed it within 2 hours but still.

Most companies nowadays have a policy that says you cannot go back to your desk and must leave the building within 15 minutes, at least in the banking sector.

 

Anyone who has ever taken a look at MSI's forum knows the post was, at least in most cases, complete justified.

Nevertheless, bad publicity.

 

I actually think this is funny and shouldn't be taken in any other way other than a pinch of salt.

Niceone MSI for having a sense of humour.

 

Could have been an angry support person who knows, I find it funny. I wish I could tell people the same thing, but hey, its fun to get paid to read the manual to people who are too lazy to read it themselves .

 

This is terrible for MSI if they did do this on purpose then it shows a massive contempt for their customers issues. They may field a lot of daft support calls but so does everyone else. If it was an angry email from a member of staff then MSI trying to cover it up shows a massive misjudgement of the damage this could do to their reputation. Either way it seems like a decision made by second rate ebay trader not a large multinational company, Imagine if Sony did this!

 

I am far more likely to buy an MSI product as a result of this, as it goes. People *should* RTFM.

 

As reported by who!? You broke the story! "Oh, we don't really have a news story here, so let's make something up!" It wasn't a strongly worded email, nor did it explicitly tell anyone to RTFM. This is pathetic, childish journalism.

 

Users were unimpressed, complaining that "much like their press release, the manual they're telling me to consult reads like it was written by copying and pasting bits of Engrish.com." MSI were too busy outsourcing translation to Babelfish to offer further comment, despite the obvious truth that their company's products will not be taken "for serious" until they start to sound respectable in the language of their biggest markets...

 

In the email it says (at least in the quote in talladega's thread) that people will be banned on "the first of next month" which is, of course, april 1st.. I would have thought that gave it away for most, but apparently no-one has noticed?

Anyway, sending a mail like this out to ALL of their almost 100,000 subscribers, and not expect someone to get pissed, might have been a little optimistic

 

what a stupid thing to do

 

Looking around for a motherboard atm, MSI just won themselves a customer.

 

MSI do have a point though. People are more inclined to ring a help line or go to a forum and ask a question than to spend 5 minutes with a manual. My favourite example is a guy we'll call Helpless Middle Class Guy #1.

HMCG1 owns a BMW5 series and oh lord! He's run out of screenwash! From here *I* see 1 option, read the manual cause it's bound to tell you where to put the screenwash...No. He sees another. Ring BMW customer support and ask them to give him a step by step guide to filling up his washer fluid. Wasting 30 minutes of his time being diverted over call lines till having a technical support guy tell him to read the manual.

Long story short: READ THE ****ING MANUAL!

This was a publicity failure on MSI's part (100k people seeing that message = bad) but it's stupid to hire technical support staff to sit on a forum and hand out information easily available in the manual! I think it partly comes down to consumers not giving a damn how things work anymore and rather just wanting it to work.

On another note, I don't think this will damage MSI as a business. The reason you buy from MSI isn't because of their English or their attitude. It's their god damn hardware. MSI make hardware, not press releases. They have to pay other people to do that for them.

It's like judging your next Chancellor of the Exchequer based off how well he handles the public, what a retarded notion. I'd rather have some aspergers badger eyebrow man who can crunch numbers than some shiney **** polisher who has no idea, but boy can he give a press release!