Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!mailrus!iuvax!rutgers!cbmvax!daveh
From: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: Bad programming practices: View from the other side...
Message-ID: <9692@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Date: 15 Feb 90 16:15:52 GMT
References: <"90-02-14-17:50:45.32*UK4H"@DKAUNI2.BITNET> <4992@wehi.dn.mu.oz>
Reply-To: daveh@cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com (Dave Haynie)
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA
Lines: 54

In article <4992@wehi.dn.mu.oz> BAXTER_A@wehi.dn.mu.oz writes:

>We don't get marketing folk even. We get NOTHING. CBM do NOTHING. They ARE
>nothing. With the one exception that a nice technical bloke helped me over the
>phone with a hardware problem. The usual problem is I apply to CBA Australia
>for developer status, right to alter narrator device, docs, ANYTHING; with
>absolutely NO ANSWER. If I write to the US CBM, I just get refered back to the
>Australian CBM. They are completely USELESS and DO NOTHING. Please sack them.

Part of the problem is separating customer support from technical support.  The
customer support people are supposed to know bits about common problems, and
where to get things fixed, but the only thing they should know about real
Developer Support is the name of the local Developer Support manager (I suppose
in a small enough area it could even be the same guy).

The ADSPE (Amiga Developer Support Program Europe, which just recently added 
Australia and New Zealand too) is the equivalent of CATS for Europe and the
Pacific.  They have some excellent technical people, but that haven't been at
it as long as CATS.  I attended the ADSPE sessions at the Paris DevCon last 
week, and can really say they are making progress.  They have organized some
groups over UUCP for technical support, and while they've just started this
network throughout Germany and over here to cbmvax this week, it is up and
running and looks very good.  I expect it'll spread throughout the rest of
Europe and I'd think Australia, etc. over the next month or so.  

However, coordination with the local Developer Support managers is absolutely
necessary.  I may have all the hardware answers you'd care to ask, but I 
certainly don't have the time to answer every possible question.  However, 
Thomas Giger at ESCO (which is the central point of the ADSPE network, in
Frankfurt) probably has most of the answers, and would certainly hit me
or another engineer directly with one he can't answer.  You local support
guy may not be able to handle every question, but he will certainly know more
locally important things than anyone in Frankfurt or West Chester.

And if you really have a problem with the local guy, no one in West Chester 
is going to know much about this guy anyway.  So if you've really exhausted
all patience with the guy, go directly above him, not to a parallel group 
who may know nothing about him.  But I would encourage patience, especially
considering how new much of this stuff is, especially in Australia and
New Zealand, where things are probably still just being organized to fit
in with the way the rest of the world works.

With all that said, personally I'm just dying to get to Australia some day,
and if answering Amiga questions along the way would get me there, I'm all
for it :-)....

>Please, I'd do anything! (Well almost anything). But leave the nice bloke in
>the technical department.
>Regards Alan

-- 
Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Systems Engineering) "The Crew That Never Rests"
   {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh      PLINK: hazy     BIX: hazy
                    Too much of everything is just enough