Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system is now the number 3 mobile platform in the world having switched places with BlackBerry OS. However, Windows Phone is still far behind iOS, which is now ranked number 2, after Android.

One may think that the achievement was made after hard work, many hours of training for those who sell Windows Phone devices and huge amounts of money for marketing campaigns.

Well, some of the reasons may be true, but it looks like Windows Phone’s Achilles’ heel is support. If you are a customer in the UK who wishes to purchase a Windows Phone handset through the official retail channels of a carrier, you should pray that you don’t have any issues with the phone.

UK publication Mobile News did a survey called Mystery Calling where some of its employees called on support lines to all major carriers in the UK to ask about various things they wanted to know about their presumably recently bought Windows Phone handset.

What they have found is hilarious, to say the least. Most of the support staff did not know anything about Windows Phone and couldn’t be of any help to surveyors.

While we don’t know all the questions they were addressed, we know that they were also asked how to back up data and how to transfer data from a Samsung smartphone to a Nokia with Windows Phone.

The folks over at MobileNews received the most helpful support from Vodafone and Three. According to them, the answers they got from Virgin were abysmal.

O2 and Orange showed some compassion (read helpfulness), but almost zero knowledge about Windows Phone, which is why they have been scored slightly higher.

Anyway, here are the results of this Mystery Calling survey. Check it out and judge for yourself:

6 – Virgin Mobile: Manner – 3/5, Understanding – 3/5, Knowledge – 1/5, Helpfulness – 1/5, Clarity – 1/5, Overall – 2/5, Total – 11/30.

5 – O2: Manner – 3/5, Understanding – 3/5, Knowledge – 1/5, Helpfulness – 4/5, Clarity – 1/5, Overall – 3/5, Total – 15/30.

4 – Orange: Manner – 4/5, Understanding – 3/5, Knowledge – 2/5, Helpfulness – 3/5, Clarity – 2/5, Overall – 3/5, Total – 17/30.

3 – T-Mobile: Manner – 4/5, Understanding – 3/5, Knowledge – 2/5, Helpfulness – 4/5, Clarity – 3/5, Overall – 3/5, Total – 19/30.

2 – Three: Manner – 4/5, Understanding – 3/5, Knowledge – 3/5, Helpfulness – 4/5, Clarity – 3/5, Overall – 3/5, Total – 20/30.

1 – Vodafone: Manner – 5/5, Understanding – 3/5, Knowledge – 2/5, Helpfulness – 5/5, Clarity – 3/5, Overall – 3/5, Total – 21/30.

For a platform that wishes to gain more traction on all markets, this is a total fail. Perhaps carriers are at fault here, but either Microsoft or Nokia should have checked these things from time to time if they wanted more customers.

Now that Nokia is no more, the blame is fully on Microsoft for not putting some pressure on carriers to properly train its support staff. Who do you think is to blame? Let us know in the comments section.