#Innovative Beta Programs
5 messages in this thread
Paul,
What sort of warrenty do you provide? I'm curious. If a hard disk
crashes and it can be traced to a bug in your program, what happens then?
I'm a consultant also so I am just curious how you handle "warrenties."
-=Jonathan
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I expect the customer to take normal precautions like backing up, but after
that it's in my park if anything goes wrong. I don't see how what I do can
cause a disk crash, but if it did and the client lost a few hundred dollars
in data entry for that day (prior to a normal b/u), I'd have to eat it.
This is, practically speaking, a minor issue since my programs don't do
much on the lower levels of machine operation. I let stuff like I/O in
DOS's hands <g>.
Mostly my warrentty extends to what I say the program will do. I say it
will give accurate inventory numbers if the right figures are fed in, and
by golly, it ought to or I"m in big trouble. I had a friend that wrote and
dist. a large medical app to lots of docs regionally. After a certain date
it started failing to add in certain invoices to statements and the docs
lost lots of $$ due to this. He lost his entire biz when this happened
along with a lot of personal wealth. I'm hung out there the same way.
HOw do you handle this?
Paul
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Paul,
That sounds similar. We guarentee to keep working on it until they
are happy with it and/or it meets the aggreed upon specs (this gets to be a
tricky issue sometimes.) If, however, a bug in our system locks up their
machine, for example, causing some damage or data loss from within
*another* app we will fix the problem but we will not take fiscal
responsibility for the loss. These are sure tricky issues!<g> -=- Jonathan
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Yes. I don't want to sleeze my clients by disclaiming responsiblity if I
do something wrong, but I don't want to be left holding the bag for
something I didn't have any hand in causing. Like all ethical issues,
finding the lines is difficult.
I spend an inordinate amount of time with my clients making a tight spec
and making sure we have a meeting of the minds. If they get restless at
this, and some do, I explain what can go wrong if we don't take the time
and they all come around. If one didn't, I wouldn't work for them unless I
did so hourly. And since I dont' work that way, I don't know how much I'd
charge <grin>. Ah, life….
Paul
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Paul,
It certainly *is* a fine line we walk! I have only had to drop one
client because he didn't want to hold himself to a spec but wanted to hold
me to a price. Chow baby! -=- Jonathan