Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!bloom-beacon!athena.mit.edu!dgg
From: dgg@athena.mit.edu (David G. Grubbs)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Losers - Taurus, Acquisition, Haitex, me
Keywords: bad-software
Message-ID: <12024@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Date: 15 Jun 89 03:44:08 GMT
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: dgg@athena.mit.edu (David G. Grubbs)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Lines: 55

The following may amuse or anger those unfortunate few who purchased the
Acquisition database, but I hope it might benefit the rest of you.

Six months ago, after reading a review in Amigaworld, I bought "Acquisition",
a database produced by a British company named "Taurus Impex Limited" and
distributed in America by "Haitex Resources Inc."

Though no expert in database internals, I am an experienced user of Ingres
and Informix.  I wanted a relational database to play with at home.
Acquisition's claims seemed to cover exactly what I wanted.

My test, what I thought was a simple address database, uncovered 70 distinct
bugs ranging from reproducible system crashes (on more than one machine),
through misfeatures (such as a macro editor which removed spaces even from
within quotes), to outright fabrications (such as the package's claim of
"fully relational".)  In truth, there is no hint of the relational model
anywhere in the beast.  Once I opened the package, I found a misleading
manual, a clumsy set of programs, a cartoonish visual appearance and a reek
of amateurism.

Over a period of 2 months I tried to get through to "Haitex" during their
normal working hours.  In all that time, I got through twice.  The first
contact produced a "normal" response: "You should soon be notified of the
newest release."  My current problems?  "I'll have Biff Studsworth call you
tomorrow."  Great, except no one called or left a message on my recorder.  My
second success was of the, "Acquisition?  Taurus?  Who are they?" sort.

Frustrated, I sent a flame letter to Taurus in "Guilford, UK".  It not only
listed the technical problems, but also contained some anger at how badly
they had fooled me.  They replied with a short letter saying, in essence,
"Sorry you're troubled.  If you prove to us that you actually bought our
product, we might help."  I sent them my registration number.

Two months later, I got tired of waiting, so I sent an "OK, forget it.  Just
give me my money back."  In response, some turkey, who didn't sign his name
legibly and who didn't have it printed on the letter, sent me the most
pompous letter I've ever received.  It told me how glad they were I had given
up on them as they didn't care to have a customer like me anyway.  And if I
wanted my money, go talk to their distributor.  These guys don't want any
American business, apparently.

This evening I randomly called Haitex again and I got through.  After 5
months of attempts, I caught someone there after hours!

I gave him my story.  He gave me his.  I heard of litigation, of a stack of
pompous letters three feet tall, of dumping the last copies at cost, of never
doing business with the British again.  Whether it was true or not didn't
matter any more.  I had finally found someone who, with no prompting from me,
understood exactly what position I was in.  Because he was in the same boat.

There you have it.  I don't know about any of you other victims, but I expect
to build a little bonfire of unreadable documentation and to add one more
floppy to my hard-disk backup collection.

Are there really any relational databases, "Amigaized" or not, for the Amiga?