SensoryMetrics: re-inventing the User eXperience

There are two ways of ensuring customer loyalty: 1. Provide excellent services so that the customer continually chooses to do business with you, or 2. Lock them in and treat them like inmates if they misbehave. For Microsoft, number 2 is the strategy of choice when it comes to their Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) program. It’s an anti-piracy license validation system that checks you out to make sure you paid for your software. If you haven’t, it locks you out of upgrades, and patches, and disables a few functions. This weekend, Microsoft’s WGA server went down. The impact was that ALL of their customers were treated like common criminals. There have been lots of issues with WGA: false positives, accusations of spyware and turning the MS platform into a time bomb. They even have a blog dedicated to WGA issues. (now there’s fun reading!) The blog’s writer says that he’s disppointed that the WGA crash occurred, yet offers no apology (only excuses as to why keeping this WGA beast up and running is such hard work…)

The main problem with WGA is that it offers absolutely NO VALUE to customers. It only benefits Microsoft. So when the system breaks, the only losers are customers. I guess the “advantage” in WGA refers to Microsoft’s advantage… I wonder why people put up with this attitude.

After reading Alec Saunders’ post this morning it may appear that even die-hard Microsoft fans may be losing faith. Alec quotes ComputerWorld saying that 1 in 6 laptops (correction: SOLD) in the US is now a Mac!

BTW - the terrific pirate graphic by spanish (correction: portuguese - thanks readers!) blogger Freud2004/

Tags: WGA, Microsoft, Apple, loyalty

Popularity: 38%

Filed under: Business, Pirates, Usability, User Experience