Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!rutgers!att!chinet!mcdchg!ddsw1!learn From: learn@ddsw1.UUCP (William Vajk) Newsgroups: comp.unix.microport Subject: Re: Support matters Summary: just the facts mam, nothing but the facts Keywords: A working product is the key Message-ID: <1519@ddsw1.UUCP> Date: 8 Aug 88 05:30:06 GMT References: <294@gandalf.littlei.UUCP> <236@belltec.UUCP> <6475@bcsaic.UUCP> <402@uport.UUCP> Organization: Traveller's Aid, Mundelein, IL Lines: 102 In article <402@uport.UUCP>, plocher@uport.UUCP (John Plocher) writes: > I'm new here at Microport; meetings are one of the only ways I have of > "learning the ropes". Sorry if I can't always jump when the phone rings, > but if I'd spend all my time on the horn I couldn't get anything *else* done. Excuse me for saying so, nothing personal in this at all, but the last time I heard this sort of thing was from my new life insurance agent, who 'was gonna be around for a long time', and the time before that, by perhaps 6 months was from his predecessor, ad infinitum. Each was to set the world on fire by reviewing 'my plan' and making things better (read sell a hot new product and earn a commission, while dumping everything the guy before did.) I must have missed it, listening to new promises from uport can make people behave this way, but are you engineering, customer support, sales, partner, or what. If you are anything less than a responsible partner (means you have breathed new financial blood into the company) then your hands are tied by the two moneymen in the company, and everything you're here to say is simply to placate upset purchasers. If you're the person in charge of customer service, you would do real well to listen to what the customers are saying about your company and forget the meetings till you have something to offer instead of listening to all the stuff we, the customers, have heard for the past year plus. You're darn right you couldn't get anything else done, there are an awful lot of unhappy purchasers out here. Could so many people *all* be wrong ? We also recognize that all unhappy customers aren't on usenet, let alone vocal. The magnitude just kinda keeps growing......... If the product worked as promised, your job would be an easy one with only a few ropes to learn. As matters stand....... > Contact your sales rep for details. WHOSE sales rep ? Certainly not mine. Since you are _new_ to uport let me tell you what the sales rep told me when I first called to purchase 286/V. I asked "is there any '286 machine which cannot run your product?" The response was "if you find one, please let us know because we have been unable to find any machines on which Microport unix will not run." If uport wishes to behave as a corporate Robinson, I suppose you could pick apart the meaning of the word 'run.' In October or so of last year, I purchased an upgrade, and the serial drivers were still not fixed. When I phoned to complain, the first question was "do you have a support contract ?" An ethical business sells support contracts to provide user support, not to spend time on the phone trying to convince the customer that it is a hardware problem. See above about 'cannot find hardawre uport will not run on.' It was determined that MY driver problems must have to do with hardware. Uport completely ignored the fact that I was not alone with driver problems, that in fact everyone using serial drivers for call in lines had the same problem, and we all still do. There must be something quite special about your in house machine. Dwight Leu told me on several occasions just how well it runs. I've offered to go beg, borrow, or steal whatever definable configuration of hardware would run my software correctly, without sio driver problems. To date, I have not received any reply to this question. I can assume only that there is no hardware on which microport 286 will run as it is supposed to, that is, with minimal system loading uport software will ALWAYS cause lost characters. I beg you to prove me wrong. Send me the hardware for beta test here. I'll return it with written verdict on usenet. Using someone's smart sio card and THEIR software drivers does NOT count. We're talking about standard 286 hardware and microport software with only two (2) sio ports, and a printer port. One of my beefs with uport, and I've stated this time and again in this newsgroup, is that support is never supposed to mean paying a publisher to cover their tracks for screwups. Support is supposed to mean helping a customer lacking information or experience to use the product. I've never once requested _support_ from your firm. For many months I have asked uport to fix the product. To microport's credit, they did send me a driver fix. To microport's discredit, the drivers don't work much better than the old ones. Yes, the problems with double panics have been reduced. Now the system still loses characters like mad, but won't panic and shut down as easily. Again, we're not talking about a heavily loaded mode of operation. Lost characters seem to be the best known microport feature. Care to address how this affects the thruput of long uucp transactions and the attendant costs ? > "Beta" does NOT mean "production" or "placate an upset customer" > or "get a free upgrade"; now that I'm here, Beta means BETA, and > not early shipping. Just why is it that uport feels they can continue to ignore old problems while developing new products, apparently also quite buggy. You really should consider the present version of your '286 product to still be BETA. Is it perhaps early shipping ? A closing thought or few. If uport were an automobile manufacturer, they'd have been in bankruptcy a long time ago because of recalls to which the automotive industry is subject. It is the sort of thing that uport is doing that might well establish textbook cases for fraud in software publishing, and attendant personal liability for corporate officers in this industry. Bill (fix the product) Vajk learn@igloo