I initially wrote this a few weeks ago, and there have been a few changes since I wrote it (nothing major).

* Microsoft is now monitoring the forums a little bit better. I posted something up on another customer service issue, and a few days later someone responded... they told me to use the support form.

* On that same issue, I *did* submit a support form (a day after my forum posting, because no one had responded yet). I got a response the next business day, but it was not inspiring (basically ignored my entire message other than the initial statement of the problem, and responded with something that was clearly not the right answer if they had read my message). I responded within a few minutes that I needed someone to actually investigate my issue, but I haven't heard back since (that was mid-day Friday).

* There are rumors and hints that the app capability detection is not working in-house, so your app may say that it uses functionality that it doesn't. Oddly enough, the phone capability usage detection tool they realized publicly works *just fine*, but for whatever reason, apps submitted to them seem to be listed with incorrect information (this is what my support issue was about).

So, while there is at least *someone* from Microsoft scanning the forums and offering basic levels of support (it looks like 1 person at the point), the total support process is still completely unacceptable, at least for anything without an easy, slam dunk answer ("is your caps lock key on while typing in your password?" kind of stuff).

What's truly aggravating and baffling to me is that I have talked to a lot of people (MVPs, Microsoft employees, even an App Hub moderator!) who have been involved in WP7 and XBox Live development (App Hub merges the two) and this has been a known issue for a very long time! They know the forum software is buggy, they know the support sucks, they know it's a disaster. They've reported it a million times. So Microsoft is well aware of these issues.

I can't explain how/why these known issues have not been resolved, but it speaks volumes.

J.Ja