Managed newsgroups - what am I paying for, exactly? (2026 Update)

OK - I forgot the body of the original post...

I posted yesterday morning a question about a custom receipt formatting problem. I was under the impression that unanswered posts would get some sort of official Microsoft response.

Even if the official MS response is "too bad, so sad, you're on your own with this one buddy" at least it'd constitute a response.

I am paying for 'support' and what do I get? Hot fixes I'm responsible for finding out about on my own. Nobody at MS e-mails me to say 'hey, there's a hot fix available'. In fact, getting a hot fix is quite a process - you need to give MS a CC# to get one.

If I didn't follow this group, I'd *never* hear about hotfixes at all.

Regardless, I would really appreciate some insight with regard to my unusual receipt printing issue.

Sorry for the rant.

Tom

OK - I forgot the body of the original post...

I posted yesterday morning a question about a custom receipt formatting problem. I was under the impression that unanswered posts would get some sort of official Microsoft response.

Even if the official MS response is "too bad, so sad, you're on your own with this one buddy" at least it'd constitute a response.

I am paying for 'support' and what do I get? Hot fixes I'm responsible for finding out about on my own. Nobody at MS e-mails me to say 'hey, there's a hot fix available'. In fact, getting a hot fix is quite a process - you need to give MS a CC# to get one.

If I didn't follow this group, I'd *never* hear about hotfixes at all.

Regardless, I would really appreciate some insight with regard to my unusual receipt printing issue.

Sorry for the rant.

Tom

Thanks prompt response.

In my CustomerSource profile, I see this: Display E-mail address: If you enter your real e-mail address, you will likely receive unwanted messages (spam) because spammers regularly gather e-mail addresses from public communities. We highly recommend that you use a modified version of your e-mail address.

On my Managed Newsgroups Maintenance page, it appears as though only a valid e-mail address is acceptable.

Which is it? Should I use a dummy e-mail address like MS suggests on one page or should I put my unadultered e-mail address out there for the world to abuse?

As for this part of your reply "you will receive a response from a Microsoft Dynamics support engineer if the answer benefits the larger community." Well, that seems pretty arbitrary now doesn't it? Who determines the value of the question? IMO, if the problem is real and the answer is correct the the answer has value.

With regard to the hotfix thing: I know how to get a hotfix. My point is that these hotfixes come out practically weekly but MS does absolutely nothing to advertise their availability. MS has a reactive policy regarding hotfixes when a proactive policy would better serve their customers.

Tom

"Todd Berger [MSFT]" wrote:

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Good morning Mr. Berger.

1. Apparently the GO_FISH portion causes a conflict. Underscores aren't allowed. I have switched to GOFISH, which should solve this problem on future posts. Hopefully, this post will have a mangled & managed e-mail address in the header.

With regard to the actual issue... My receipt formatting question has now been posted twice, once on Wednesday at 11:11AM PST (nearly 48 hours ago) and again yesterday (7/20/06) at 4:38PM PST. The second post was made after you informed me that the first post wasn't being monitored. I thought I had saved my altered e-mail address on the Managed Newsgroups Maintenance page, but the underscore prevented the changes from being saved. Am I now required to post the same question a third time?

1. MS response. Is your response generally an attempt to resolve the issue? For example, I am using a non-MS receipt format. Does this leave me out in the cold here? Will your response be 'sorry, your receipt template = your problem' or will you try to figure out why the same XML produces different results on different pages of the same receipt where all other portions of the receipt are identical on al pages?

1. Excuse my cynicism, but I've seen more 'Suggestions for MS' on this group than I can count. Some I've made and others I've voted on. I have yet to see a single customer suggestion implemented in RMS. I've only been doing this for about a year, so maybe I should wait a few more years before giving up on the whole suggestion process.

Maybe I'll make a suggestion that when a customer suggestion gets a 'good idea' from the RMS team that MS posts an announcement to let us (the customers) know that you've heard the suggestion, agree with it, and will start working on implementing it for the next version of RMS.

Thanks for your resp> Good morning Tom,