> What I'm getting at with my post is the dev teams support has to talk to, which they just forward along their responses verbatim.
But the "support" that the end user sees is that combination, not two different teams (even if they know it's two or more different teams). The point is that the end user reached out for help and was told their own experiences weren't true. The fact that Dave had Doug actually tell them that is irrelevant.
I've never seen the same behavior from any other software supplier.
Almost every software company out there will jump into their customers complaints, and try to fix the issue even when the root cause is not on their software.
I can't say I've seen it with every vendor. Or even internal dev team I've been an internal customer of - but I've seen it around a lot.
You might be lucky in that you've worked at companies where you are a big enough customer they bend over backwards for you. For example: If you work for Wal-Mart, you probably get this less often. They are usually the biggest fish in whatever pond they are swimming in.
I guess I see your point.
If we're going to call it gaslighting, then gaslighting is typical dev team behavior, which of course flows back down to support. It's a problem with Microsoft just like it is a problem for any other company which makes software.