CompuServe Thread

Bob, I must agree with the sentiments expressed here. Your company's support policies as you've expressed them in your message are abysmal. There is no excuse for a company which charges thousands of dollars for a software license (note: NOT for the software, just for a LICENSE TO USE the software!) to provide only that level of direct support. My name is Joel Rea. I'm Marion's employee, and most of the messages you see here on his account are actually from me. Accessing this forum is part of my job. One of my prior jobs, a long-running one until I resigned a year and a half ago, was at a software co. called Softdisk Publishing. For a long time, I was its sole technical support agent. When I resigned, there were only two of us. I understand they have a few more now. Softdisk publishes periodicals on disk. Disk magazines, actually. Softdisk invented the disk magazine in September of 1991 for the Apple II, and later branched out to the Commodore 64 (Loadstar), IBM PC (Big Blue Disk, later On Disk Magazine, plus the later special-genre PC BusinessDisk and The Gamer's Edge), Commodore 128 (Loadstar 128 Quarterly), Macintosh (Diskworld and the later DTPublisher), and Apple IIgs (Softdisk G-S), plus many special one-shot disks. We never told our subscribers that they were only buying a "license to use" our disks. A disk subscription to one of the above products was typically on two double-sided 5.25" (normal density for the PC) disks or one higher-density disk, every month (except for Loadstar 128 Quarterly, PC BusinessDisk, Gamer's Edge, and DTPublisher, which were bimonthly except for the obviously-named LS128Q). Each issue of each product had an average of 5-10 programs, plus articles, reviewes, fonts, graphics, etc., all with a friendly user-interface. Each issue of the monthly products retailed for $9.95, with a one year subscription for $69.95. Back issues were available all the way back to the original Softdisk #0 from September of 1981. Think about that for a minute. Think how MANY programs that means! 5 or more programs PER ISSUE PER PRODUCT PER MONTH, for over 10 years!! ALL STILL AVAILABLE!! As Technical Support, I was expected to know ALL of those programs for ALL of those computers off the top of my head! And I did, too! I dare say that while other software companies may have a far greater VOLUME of technical support, that no other software company IN HISTORY has had more COMPLICATED technical support knowledge requirements. This for disks that cost via subscription as little as $5 per issue (and a single issue could be the equivilant of up to FOUR disks) of NON-SHAREWARE, FULLY COMMERCIAL software! And our Technical Support was directly available to the customers, and for FREE! For much of the time, we didn't have an (800) number for tech. support, but our customers understood that we were willing to provide the technical support itself for free, but not to pay their phone bills as well. <g> I often found myself talking computer neophytes through such tasks as editing CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT (with EDLIN, no less! This was before the days of EDIT!), moving INITs into and out of the System Folder on a Macintosh, editing and saving BASIC programs on the Apple ][ and Commodore 64/128, and in some cases even opening up the computer to change DIP switches or even perform minor repairs on disk drives (many times I saved people from having to go to the repair center to fix their floppy drive's write protect sensor by having them blow hard into the left side of the slot — most common cause of that problem is accumulation of dust or bits of paper over the LED or detector of the sensor). All over the phone. If some small software company in Shrevepit, Lousyana (The Nation's LARGEST Hick Town) can do THAT kind of support under THOSE circumstances, why can't a major firm such as AutoDesk which has in its entire history published maybe 1% as many programs (counting versions and upgrades) as Softdisk has in ITS history, provide ANY direct support, at least for less than the cost of the software "license" itself additional?