Call for comments: Rev as a Second Language

[Dave]

Hi Heather,

Nice of you to drop by for a chat.

On 27 Jan 2009, at 18:53, Heather Nagey wrote:

> Dear Dave,
>
> I recall the incident you are referring to. In the interests of  
> accuracy, here are some facts regarding the matter:
>
> 1.) You wanted some custom work done, which was not related to  
> fixing a bug of any sort, but was a change to a feature.
> 2.) You asked us to quote for this work.
> 3.) We spent considerably more than 15 minutes assessing your request
> 4.) We came to the conclusion that the work you required was not in  
> fact simple, and would take considerably longer than the 15 minutes  
> you estimated it would take.

This is just not true, or at least, none of this was communicated to  
me. The last thing I heard on the subject was you asked me to send an  
email detailing what I wanted, which i did. I didn't receive a reply  
or a follow-up after that.

Apart from that, and out of interest, why would it take £1000 worth  
of effort to fix this trivial problem? I'm an engineer and if someone  
had explained in technical terms why it would take so much effort,  
then I would have accepted that. As it was I just came away feeling  
"They really couldn't give a toss".

If you really did spend "considerably" more than 15 minutes, then all  
I can think is that you were not having the correct conversation with  
the engineer(s) in question or the code in question is so badly  
written and bug ridden as to be not supportable, in which case it  
shouldn't be in a released product.

You yourself said something like "I don't understand these issues, I  
am not an engineer", therein lies the problem me thinks!

> 5.) We quoted you the minimum we considered it would cost to  
> implement the change you had asked for.

I have never received a "quote" on this. You said it would cost £1000  
to make me "go away".

> 6.) You declined the quote. You did not spend £1000 with us.

Yes we did, before this incident, please see separate reply.

> This was not in fact a support issue at all. It did not relate to  
> assisting you to write code, or fixing a bug, or understanding how  
> to implement something in Revolution. You wanted the way something  
> currently works, changed.

It was a support issue in that I needed some help in order to get  
RunRev accepted, you didn't want to help.

> As most of the community here can testify, we do provide quite a  
> considerable level of support for free. Probably more than many  
> companies do. If you exceed the limits we set on the free support  
> we provide, there are some extremely reasonably priced support  
> incident options. Typically, we do not make money on these, they  
> barely cover the cost of the time given by one of our developers to  
> resolve the issue.
>
> This is not an appropriate place to air grievances. If you have a  
> problem with support, please email support. None of the people on  
> this list can help you with this.

I don't have a grievance. I lost nothing from this "exchange", in  
fact I gained a whole lot of extra work. RunRev lost at least 2  
(maybe 3) Studio Licenses, the small amount of consultancy (an hour  
or 2), lost one hell of a good opportunity for some great publicity  
on a VERY visible product , lost future licenses and upgrades and  
lost a hell of a lot of good will.

This thread was about experiences using RunRev, well this is mine!

All the Best
Dave