Re: Bugs and responsibility.

[Grant <rowan@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 09:52 AM 10/13/98 -0700, Dan Emory wrote:
>At 06:27 PM 10/12/98 -0700, Mike Hedblom wrote:
>>------------Snip
>>Finally, now that I know the solution, I would like to report it to
>>Adobe but because I have not paid for "CustomerFirst" support, they
>>don't want to hear from me.  Their loss.
>*****************************************************
>It's a loss to all of us. If Adobe doesn't know about the bugs, it
can't fix
>them. Before I had my posting privileges suspended on Brad Framers, 
>I posted a message about this problem in response to Trish Mudgett's

>announcement that comments@Adobe.com had been discontinued. 
>Brad suppressed my post. In that suppressed post, I predicted what 
>just happened to you will become the norm.

Umm.. I don't know... I remember reading that post....
(And I (unfortunately) agree with you.  Not that your post is/was
unfortunate, but it's unfortunate that the bean-counters are in
ascendancy at Adobe.)

>I also sent a message to Trish Mudgett on this issue, offering some
>constructive suggestions on how comments@frame.com could be modified
to
>reduce the workload for her tech support people. She took one
sentence out
>of my message, and ignored the rest. Here was the sentence and her
response:
>>In the attached you said:
>>	Probably 80% of bug reports aren't really bugs (my statement)
>>Exactly!  End of discussion.

Hmmm... that  doesn't sound like the Trish I know.
(And I know her fairly well)

>>Users have channels available to them to report problems.
>>There is a 90-day window of complimentary support via
>>telephone.  A support contract is relatively cheap and
>>offers a good insurance policy to a serious DTP user
>>(as low as $149/year for unlimited toll-free support).
>So, Tech support's official position is that you must either find
all the
>bugs in the first 90 days, or buy a support contract.

Yup.  That's pretty common in the industry, not just Adobe.
Tech support is being forced to be a revenue stream, not
a added-value service.
Additionally, if no bugs are logged, why then, there must be no bugs
in the product!  (thank the lawyers and marketroids for this gem of
doublethink)

I suspect that there is a "party line" that all must hew to, or be
sent packing.
And unfortunately for all of us, it's Adobe's party, not Frame's.

>Perhaps Adobe needs to add to its logo the image of an Ostrich with
it's
>head in the position (I can think of two, one of which is in the
sand, and
>the other I cannot mention since it might offend) which symbolizes
"I don't
>want to know."

Right... "If I don't know, then I can't be held liable in a court of
law."
*sigh*  What was that Shakespeare quote again about killing all the
lawyers?
<wry grin>

Grant Hogarth
Who has worked both sides of the Tech Support battle  line....
"Documentation is the castor oil of programming.  
Managers know it must be good because 
the programmers hate it so much."
   --Fabrizio Fiorucci

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