Technical support Ethical behaviour??? 8

[PalmStrike]

Hi all, i am just curious to peoples opinion about chargeable technical support from the big software providers.

Namely... actually, no names lets keep this wide.

I personally go on the net a lot to try and find answers to problems, as a lot of you will have noticed (a big thankyou to anyone who has answered any of my threads in the past)

But sometimes, the answer is so elusive for so simple a problem. And more often than not, it is an answer people don't think of giving because it is so obvious that you assume that has already been looked at.

I personnaly resent sending more money to a big corporation for a three minute phone call (well 20 minute phone call, 17 mins to get to the techy). Maybe it is just the anarchist in me, but there are a lot of modest people out there that are so willing to help, it is a shame we are being held to ransome by big corporations.

I am willing to accept that I might be missing the point.
Gis an opinion.

 

[sleew]

OHOHOH you can't imagine how huge discussion your question is opening.....it's like you buy egg and than "pay upgrade for glair" philosophy take place. Or you buy rotten egg and than you pay to egg-vendor to be learned how to eat it without being poisoned. Srdjan Katic
Microsoft Department Manager
Compaq & Microsoft TS
sleew@infosky.net

 

[carrr]

IMHO, business is business...insert unnamed company's name(s) here are going to make money off tech support as long as there are users who run straight to the phone whenever a problems rears its head.
"Support for $", however, is one obvious reason that forums like Tek-Tips are jammed full of pros who live for swapping info and ideas for no other reward than the occasional pink star, the more frequent "thanks it worked", and the most prevelant [null] response.
I hate to think what the tab would be were I billed a mere dollar for every useful tidbit, let alone fix, I've picked up here. On the flip side, I'd probably be able to rub that same tab out if I, in turn, received a dollar for every person I'd helped out.
I think - in a pollyanna-ish way - that "support for $" is ultimately a good thing, in that it spurs hordes of us on to become better techs so that we never have to rely on such entities for our help. My tight-fisted nature when it comes to those greenbacks has pushed me learn more and plumb the depths of new problems deeper and deeper...making me a more knowledgable user. In turn, I get a kick out of sharing something that works.
I'm realize that I might be admonished that the following is narrow-minded statement, but...paying for your tech support is really just deserts for lack of industry on the part of many users. Look at how many queries are made in the forums here by persons who haven't the initiative to try a Google search first. Similarly, many users fork over cash for support before really looking for the solution...perhaps out of general laziness. The sad thing is...I've found solutions in online forums that weren't found yet in nnamed corporate entity's knowledge base.

...haruummmpph!

 

[Kjonnnn]

I think ransom is the wrong word. Today, you can find a good number of answers on the net by looking and doing a simple search as someone stated. You are really paying for the convenience of being able to just call one number, ask your question, and get your answer ... thats how its suppose to work anyway. I know sometimes support doesnt give the correct answer. But you don't have to do the leg work.

I'm am amazed of the number of people who won't even pick up a simple book to just learn the simplest things about their computer. (The power button should be ON for your monitor to work.)

I've also done phone work. Some many people can't even communicate what the problem is, and get frustrated and angry with you if you asked them "Any error messages?" "What do they say?" They think by paying the support fee, all they have to say is "It doesnt work." and you can figure it out from there ... but I digress.

 

[greyted]

Kjonnnn and carr,
Agree with most of your comments.
My concern (anger)is when certain companies release new software with very obvious faults and then expect customers to pay another fee to find a fix.
Tek-Tips is a very good example of pooled knowledge covering a broad range of subjects with expert advice, long may it continue.

One question for you guys. If software is purchased and found to have errors, is it fit for purpose? If it is not fit for purpose then why should we pay for help to overcome those errors?

PalmStrike,
No, you are not missing the point. In business today time is money so I think the amount of time and money wasted must be enormous.
The software industry must be the only one in the world that can sell you a license to use their products with an EULA so anti customer. Can you imagine a garage selling new cars with a EULA written the same, don't think they would sell many?

 

[TheVampire]

I just heard that MS is going to stop supporting win 98 as of next January, even on their paid support line.

That's like the car example, but saying, "Your car is over 5 years old, so we aren't going to fix it if it breaks, or make replacement parts for it anymore."

Robert

 

[skiflyer]

Not really,

it's a pretty common thing in technology companies, it becomes too resource intensive to keep people around to support old systems. You divert talent from the new and useful projects just to help the 5% or 10% of people who didn't bother to upgrade for one reason or another.

Win'98 will be over 6 years old by then, it's upgrade (ME oh god, ok it's reasonable upgrade 2000) will be 4 years old... If I'm remembering right, the fasted computer that shipped with them new were 700Mhz machines. (Maybe even 550)

You're going to have so few people running it, and those that have will probably have been running it for ages and are in a more or less stable state. So you're going to staff how many people at what salary who have how many machines with the software loaded at their desk for these individuals?

Just not worth it.

-Rob

 

[dogbert2]

To look at this from another angle, how can a company
expect to support a product when the vendor of said
product won't even support it (Example, Windows 95 isn't
even supported by MS anymore, and it's 8 years old).

I'm of the opinion that if the company that makes a
product won't support their own product, how can
consumers be justified in asking for paid support
on it?

 

[skiflyer]

Oh I think just the opposite.

MS won't support Win 95 anymore, Win 98 soon.

So now, if you want support, you go find someone to pay for it. Simple as that, MS isn't going to support you, either figure it out yourself or pay someone to specialize and fix it.

To continue the before analogy...

I have a car which is 41 years old.

When something goes wrong, either I fix it, or I pay a mechanic a rate to work with it, and I take my shop manuals with me... but there's no shop I go to where someone has all the parts lines up on the shelves and the books to work with it and once'n awhile they can't even order the parts, so they have to hand fashion them.

-Rob

 

[MadTown]

vampire,

Going with the car analogy, try taking a car say a 75 Chevy Nova to your local Chevy Dealer odds are they won't be able to fix it or find replacement parts for it. Software just ages faster than cars.

greyted,
With your car analogy the major difference here is that you can't take a car make a copy of it and give it to your girlfriend to use. The main purpose of a EULA is scare people into not doing that Most wouldn't stand up in a court of law. Of course how many people have actually read a EULA all the way through unless they were trying to write one themselves.

The real truth is software companies charge for tech support because they want us to look at all other possible options before calling. Technical support is a very large expense. The Software company has to pay large sums of money to staff to answer those calls or they have contract out to another company. Also,if you dial an 800 number then the software company is paying the long distance charges.

The more tech support calls that come in the more money it costs the software company. When technical support is free people have a tendency to abuse it. It's not uncommon for someone to hit a wrong key and not get the desired result and immediately assume there's something wrong with the software. If the person is given a reason like a charge for technical support odds are they are going to try a second time before picking up the phone.

Sorry for the long rant

Ken

 

[skiflyer]

To support Ken's last statement...

Just ask anyone who works for a company that charges a yearly service contract for unlimited service... glad it's not my job, but I hear those phones ringing all the time.

-Rob

 

[Tarwn]

I am somewhat tired of people getting upset for MS not supporting OS's that are more than 3 generations old.
I have no problem with them charging for support, they have to keep those people their whether or not their is work for them and I actually had to call them earlier this week for a non-downloadable, very specific patch. Compared to a certain third party application vendor that develops most of the software I develop with and on, MS was extremely helpful, extremely nice, and didn't even charge me due to the nature of the call. Thats the only time I have ever had to call them. This other, much smaller, company gets 3 calls a week from me. Todays fix? I was installing some software (all week) and it wasn't working as promised (after I followed the instructions, tweaked the registry, added the correct windows users, added the SQL Server entries....than double clicked the install). It turns out that the SDK that the software uses is the same exact version that I installed (released a month earlier) but only a couple builds earlier. The solution was to update to the latest and greatest version, there were no fixes.

So basically when people complain about not being able to find support for windows 95, 98, etc. I say to bad. I have trouble finding support from small companies for software released even one build before the current software.

And lets not even get into the guys who do technical support from their garages.

-Tarwn ________________________________________________
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[skiflyer]

Favorite Tech Support Conversation this month:

Him: "Is it displaying an error message."
Me: "No."
Him: "I'm not sure I believe you"
Me: "Uh-huh."

... We setup a webex metting ...
Him: "Well lookit that, no error message, that shouldn't be."

-Rob

 

[Tarwn]

Heh, I know that one well
I think the SDK thing was a last minute "we gotta tell him something" fix. No error, no error log entry, no log entries in the internal log, no communication in the firewall log, no excessive run time in task manager, install from scratch starting with an fdisk, every direction followed perfectly, MS JVM instead of SUN JVM, and everything


I think that there isn't much to talk about here, I have yet to meet a support group that fixes my problems for me which kind of leaves the whole ethics thing in the dust. Although I think I am making records for getting to 3rd level support with roadrunner (1st level once tried to convince me it was my network that was a problem... turned out they had hardware issues in my area they didn't know about)
-Tarwn ________________________________________________
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[greyted]

MadTown,
The girlfriend can drive your car at no extra cost to her, you have purchased the automobile with no restrictions. The point being if there is a fault on a new car it is fixed free of charge.

Some good points coming up here guys, keep it going.
This thread is very interesting.

Tarwn,
You are upset for people complaining that M$ does not support software that is three generations old. What time span does a generation cover? Here in the U.K. it is twenty years! Joking, honest.

MadTown,
Steer clear of a Chevy Nova then!

skyflier,
Bet your software is not supported forty years later.

Still think that PalmStrike has a fair point, there are people who purchase the software who are not techs, programmers or in fact have no computer knowledge. What are they supposed to do?

Goodnight guys.

 

[skiflyer]

greyted

That's my point, my car isn't "supported" 40 years after the fact, but there still exist people who will work on it.

40 years from now, windows 98 won't be supported, but there'll be plenty of us left over who'll support it for the right fee.

And about the people who don't have any computer knowledge... odds are what they use won't push any of the limits out of the box, and they won't need help. Sometimes they do, they can follow the help links that every major distributor includes with their systems now, or they can pay one of us who can fix it a fee to fix it.

They have a wide variety from the neighbor kid down the street who'll probably do it for a 20 dollar bill and a meal, or a professional with insurance and the abilities to handle the really hard stuff. (There're quite a few door to door repairmen for comp's nowadays).

-Rob

 

[cdogg]

greyted

There are several points being made here, and I think we are trying to blend a few that don't quite go together.


Question #1
Should a software company offer free support for a product that is still considered 'new'?

I tend to agree that any product you purchase should offer free support initially, for a specified amount of time. 60-90 days should be the minimum for any product. That would give you enough time to work out any bugs or incompatibility problems in your environment. Sound reasonable? This is hardly controversial.

I must also make the point that Micro$oft does offer the first 2 incidents free for online email support - had to say it since this thread appears to be going in that direction.


Question #2
How long should a product be supported?

I have to agree with Tarwn. In the software industry, the product you purchased has to interact with other components on a system that is constantly changing. You cannot expect any company to support aging environments forever. Perhaps we may differ as to how long is too long, but we should all agree that it is not practical to offer support indefinitely. Your $100 only goes so far...


Question #3
Is the EULA for software unfair?

Certainly not. Back to the car analogy, you are loaning the use of your car or selling the rights to own that car. I don't see how this relates to making an illegal copy. If your girlfriend came over to use your computer (similar to driving your car), you would not be in violation of most EULA's. EULA's are mainly there to help enforce copyright and protect distribution rights. I'm not sure where you were going with this...


Question #4
"...there are people who purchase the software who are not techs, programmers or in fact have no computer knowledge. What are they supposed to do?"

Everyone is paying the same price - techies and non-techies. Say you bought a kitchen table from a furniture store, but it didn't come assembled. You could pay the company or a 3rd-party carpenter to assemble it for you, or you could do it yourself. The point is that given the parts and manual, the effort to assemble it is on you. There's no free handouts and you should know what you're getting yourself into.


Now that we have the topics separated, perhaps we could focus on one at a time.


~cdogg

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- A. Einstein

 

[CajunCenturion]

I'd like to add one additional question to cdogg's list.

Are we talking about training, or are we talking about support?

From the perspective of the software vendor, there are lots of customers who refuse to pay the tuition to attend a formal training class for a particular piece of software, yet expect to have the same material provided for free on a 1-800 phone call.

With respect to software bugs - Far too many users feel that a bug is when the software does not do what they want it to, and believe they have the right to have the software fixed at no charge. This is not the vendor problem, therefore, when a customer makes it the vendor's problem, the customer should pay for it.

In reality, a bug is when the software does not perform in accordance with published documentation and specifications. In this situation, then it is the vendor's responsibility to make it right.

When the user community restricts all of their phone calls to only bugs as defined in the preceeding paragraph, then there would be no need to charge for support.

But as long as customers insist on defining bugs by their own standards, then they need to pay for the time incurred by the vendor to handle the situation. When they call for training purposes, getting support on how to use the software, or how some function in the software words, then this is a service being provided by the vendor, and they are well within their rights to charge for this service. Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[lionelhill]

The last 2 posts make some important points, and so does greyted.

Very important is the difference between free service to help users get round faults in the product, and free service to get round faults in the user! Greyted is right to demand that software should be fit for its purpose. Normally the act of removing the celophane wrapping is regarded as accepting the product. And at that stage we can't possibly know that the product doesn't do what it says it should do. So if we paid real money for it, under those circumstances the manufacturer should still be under an obligation either to give us our money back or to make the thing work according to specifications at his or her own cost - not at further cost to the customer.

It's good to make analogies to other products. Developing a washing machine is just as difficult as developing a space invaders game, and no washing machine manufacturer would respond to complaints their machine didn't fill with water by demanding cash for a retro-fit of a tap they forgot to put in the original design!

On the other hand, if the problem is merely that the user bought something about which they had no understanding, then hard luck on them. You can't expect a car manufacturer to pay for your driving lessons.

 

[wolluf]

Some things that bug me.

Windows 95, 98, 98Se and ME are the same operating system - windows 4 (all crap) - ie, if you bought 95, in my book you should have been able to upgrade for a very small amount of money to all the others. Its just marketing.

Windows NT, 2k & XP are also the same operating system (ok) - same point.

M$, because of its monopoly can get away with reinventing the same operating system every couple of years and charging for it (upgrades cheaper than new, but still expensive).

An operating system should be a pretty big deal - expect it to last at least 10 years (even with today's pace of change), with free/cheap upgrades. Vendors still get full price for new sales.

Also - M$ hides information about said operating systems (which is one reason why forums like this exist). I suspect you could spend a lifetime in the nooks and crannies of M$ products and still not find all the features (I'm also sure M$ don't actually know). So where does that leave the customer. Car analogy - you have to go to 'third party' garage (who've spent time 'playing' with car to find out what manufacturer haven't divulged) to find out how to put fuel in, set the air conditioning, lock it...