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  • I Love the Ones Who Tell Us How to Run Our Business

    Why do the lunatics always do this when we are short handed? On top of all the other sucky people we've dealt with this week?

    Get a call from some IT guy at some public library on the west coast; I shall call him Soapy. Another person at the library had asked for a free trial of our software in September, liked it and bought two licenses in December.

    Soapy managed to install one license onto a machine and get it activated. Then, instead of installing the other license on the other machine and activating that one, he (apparently) re-imaged the first license onto the second machine.

    Resulting in the activation program we use thinking it was on the first machine, becoming confused by the unfamiliar surroundings and collapsing into a whimpering mass of error codes.

    I don't want to speculate what prompted Soapy to do things that way, but I have my suspicions.

    Anyhoo, it's very easy to fix it when that happens. You call us. We tell you to remove the software, you then do a clean install, the activation program thinks it's at home and is happy. Three more clicks and you're done.

    Soapy was successful in reaching us. It was lunch time; I was at lunch (at my desk). He got Mark. Mark doesn't do much activation troubleshooting, but knew to tell him to re-install. Soapy didn't want to. He argued a bit with Mark about that, but that wasn't the main issue. The main issue was that Soapy felt personally affronted by the fact that we make our users activate.

    He spent a good few minutes letting Mark know his displeasure and then asked him why. Mark's answer, "We do that to make sure that everyone who uses the program is paying the same price for it. That helps us keep everyone's price as low as possible. If we didn't do that, our paying customers would be paying higher prices to subsidize the people who don't pay for the program at all."

    At least he tried. Soapy didn't want to hear the explanation he asked for. He wanted to lecture us for being evil and greedy. Logical explanations made his crusade look silly, so he wasn't going to hear them.

    This on a day when we are both busy and shorthanded.

    Mark did get him to refocus back on the actual issue. Soapy still refussed to re-install. Mark wasn't 100% sure that the alternative Soapy was demanding didn't exist, so he sent him on to Carl. If there was another way, Carl would know.

    So I got back from lunch and found an email from Carl. I don't have many details, but apparently that call didn't go well. He still hadn't re-installed and Carl thought I might know of an alternative. He gave me Soapy's number.

    He also wrote that Soapy was doing a presentation in a few minutes and considered it an emergency.

    I really didn't want to talk to this guy, but it's my job. So I called and got voicemail! Yay!

    I left a message explaining that a remove/re-install was required. I assured him that trying anything else would make the problem worse, but remove/re-install would fix it.

    About 20 seconds later he called me back. He had a question. Care to guess what it was?

    "I don't want to remove it and re-install it. Is there another way?"

    Knowing that the guy had an "emergency," I decided to give him good customer service by keeping it simple and brief.

    "Removing and re-installing is the only way to clear that error code." I use the same intonation as the Star Trek computer when I know I'm dealing with someone who wants to engage me in a long and pointless discussion. It works sometimes.

    It didn't work this time. He decided to try the silent trick to see if I'd accidentally let the secret easy way to activate slip out.

    I let the silence hang there. He spoke first to ask if there was an easier way. My response was, "We always give our customers the easiest available solution. If there were an easier way, I would have told you."

    Seriously, what possible reason could we have for not giving people the easiest fix? It would be terrible customer service and, more importantly, it would make our jobs harder.

    So he asked me give him a version that didn't need to be activated. I told him that we don't have a version that doesn't need activation. There's no such thing. Even WE have to activate and we own the damn copyright. Even if we did have such a magical version, we certainly wouldn't sell it to some schmuck who bought a couple of licenses. We have clients with 300 or more users who don't give us that much crap about activation.

    He just went on and on and on about what a hassle it was to activate. I finally let him get to me. I asked him if it was hard to activate the first computer.

    No. It wasn't hard. But the second one was!

    I was thinking, "Only because YOU are making it hard, buddy." But I simply pointed out that, when done correctly, activation is very simple and we are here to help in those cases where something goes wrong.

    So he started the "what abouts" and "what ifs". You know, naming multiple scenarios where they might lose an activation.

    I tried to assure him that, as a paying customer, we would take care of him if he lost an activation, but he was back up on that soapbox and beyond hearing and reason.

    Then it came out. The thing that had REALLY been bugging him all along. See all software should be free to anyone who wants to install it and only commercial customers should pay for it.

    I know that there are programs out there that work that way and people who have had success with that business model. For many, many reasons that model would not work for us. The main one being that fewer than 1% of our customers are commercial entities. I don't think you need to be good at math to figure out why that won't work.

    When he paused long enough to breathe. I assured him that I'd note his objections.

    That wasn't good enough and he went on some more telling us how to run our business. I was wondering what happened to the presentation he was supposed to be doing. Wasn't it an emergency?

    I got a bit tired and accidentally engaged him. I explained that we couldn't do it that way and stay in business.

    He wanted to know how come?

    OK. He opened the door to an honest answer.

    "Because I don't work here for free, sir. Neither do our other employee. We don't get free rent, free electricity or free computers either."

    Soapy didn't hear much of it. He had started talking over me again and stated that it would be better for us if people were pirating it than not using it at all. It's like advertising.

    Advertising? If people can pirate something instead of buying it, what good is advertising going to do us? Does he honestly think that having people pay for things only when they feel like is a valid business model?

    I decide to just repeat the mantra, "Sorry you feel that way. I've already noted it. Is there anything else we can do for you?"

    He was already talking over me AGAIN.

    This wasn't going anywhere so I ended the call by wishing him a good morning (he was three hours behind us) and hung up. I'm allowed to hang up on customers who are wasting time when other customers need actual help.

    I believe that, for people like Soapy the truth and logic are poison. They dare not let it in for fear it will burn their brains. So they talk and talk and talk to keep it away.

    So anyway, I helped other customers for 10 minutes. Then I went back to make a note on Soapy's license.

    He had activated since I hung up. So it took him less than 10 minutes to actually do it, once he was done arguing on the phone with three of us over the course of an hour.
    Last edited by Dips; 03-06-2008, 09:16 PM.
    The best karma is letting a jerk bash himself senseless on the wall of your polite indifference.

    The stupid is strong with this one.

  • #2
    Quoth Dips View Post
    Advertising? If people can pirate something instead of buying it, what good is advertising going to do us? Does he honestly think that having people pay for things only when they feel like is a valid business model?
    Believe it or not, but that actually is a valid business model.

    At least one software company releases their programs with nothing more than a serial number. One particular one does both corporate programs and games. Anyone who pirates their stuff gets the full program and anyone who gets their program doesn't actually have to submit the serial number. What pirates (and those who don't submit the serial #) don't get are updates and support. Even without anything to really stop people from pirating their software, they still released a game that, for the week it was released ,was the top selling PC game at Walmart, as well as the top-selling PC game and second best-selling game of any type at EBGames.

    But still, that buttmunch needs a couple whacks with the clue by 4.

    ^-.-^
    Faith is about what you do. It's about aspiring to be better and nobler and kinder than you are. It's about making sacrifices for the good of others. - Dresden

    Comment


    • #3
      What gets me is the time and effort it took to image the first system and reimage the second would have been a whole lot mroe than just installing the app on the second system. Then he throws the phone calls into it all? My gut tells me he has more than the two systems and was looking to score free activations on the rest of his systems.

      CH
      Some People Are Alive Only Because It Is Illegal To Kill Them

      Comment


      • #4
        Quoth Andara Bledin View Post
        Believe it or not, but that actually is a valid business model.
        <snip>
        ^-.-^
        Now that I think of it, that could be true. Our owner is a totally honest man, who believes most people are just like him with very few exceptions. He didn't feel copy protections was necessary because he believed very few people would steal from us and those few would eventually come around to paying. It took almost losing the business from lack of sales to convince him to add copy protection to the product.

        So, in a weird way, that model worked for us. There were so many illegal copies and the community had become so used to being able to update illegal copies illegally that many folks updated to the copy protected version, found that they couldn't use it and their old version was written over. [Don't worry. Anybody who was legally entitled to the previous version and didn't want to buy the new version got the old version replaced with our help.]

        As a result many pirates turned into paying customers, but only AFTER we added copy protection.
        The best karma is letting a jerk bash himself senseless on the wall of your polite indifference.

        The stupid is strong with this one.

        Comment


        • #5
          Ambrosia Software was a shareware company that did a minimal amount of copy protection... until they did an upgrade to one of their products, and over half the people trying to upgrade were using pirated codes. Now, their software needs new codes every half year or so. They're fast about making your changeover, but still...

          Comment


          • #6
            I'm of a mixed opinion on mandatory product activation...

            On the one hand, activation schemes can indeed slow down piracy, although for the really determined, cracked copies usually are not at all difficult to find for just about any software package. No, they don't get support, but that doesn't even phase most folks, except for the most complicated software.

            On the other hand, activation can sometimes break, resulting in hours of hassle for paying customers. This made quite a bit of news in the IT press when TurboTax, Norton AV, and Windows XP all had significant issues with product activation, and a pathetic support structure behind it that was very poor at solving the problems. I, myself, had problems with that stupid "Windows Genuine Advantage" crap.

            Personally, I prefer the type of product activation where you just punch in your name, and some sort of serial number that gets e-mailed to you or is on a sticker on the package. This keeps the honest people honest... (The dishonest will be able to download cracks for just about any product activation scheme, no matter what you do.)

            I despise the sort of product activation that feels the need to "phone home". (especially if it wants to do this more than once) This causes all sorts of issues for machines that, for one reason or another, are not connected to the internet. In addition, if the company providing the software decides to discontinue support (Intuit is notorious for this), or goes under, I have just lost software that I paid for.

            SirWired

            Comment


            • #7
              Any serious discussion regarding the merits and evils of copy protection decidedly belong on fratching.

              And even so, since the guy didn't actually install the software onto the second machine, it isn't completely a security problem, anyway. Any software that requires installation requires installation to work properly. I imagine that if it hadn't hung on the activation, it would have failed somewhere else down the line from what he tried to do with it.

              Why do so many people take shortcuts that take so much more time and effort than the standard method? It's like crooks who put out more effort to run a scam than it would have required to just earn what they were stealing.

              ^-.-^
              Faith is about what you do. It's about aspiring to be better and nobler and kinder than you are. It's about making sacrifices for the good of others. - Dresden

              Comment


              • #8
                Quoth Dips View Post
                Then it came out. The thing that had REALLY been bugging him all along. See all software should be free to anyone who wants to install it and only commercial customers should pay for it.
                I had an interesting chap on another forum I run recently tell everyone with confidence that if it's on the Internet then it must be free. He's been hotlinking a fair number of images from other sites and a couple of people had called him on it.

                My response was that since it's hotlinked through my server, on the very remote chance that any legal action occurred, it was my coin on the line and not anyone else's. I didn't need to add that he was being brave with someone else's financial future at risk.

                I didn't hear much back from him after that.

                Rapscallion

                Comment


                • #9
                  Sounds like http://www.denovosoftware.com/ , they REQUIRE registration (personably identifiable info), activation, and a dongle.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Quoth Stryker One View Post
                    Sounds like http://www.denovosoftware.com/ , they REQUIRE registration (personably identifiable info), activation, and a dongle.
                    Well, they're just slightly specialized, there. There are some industries for which a dongle and someone to go after in the case of misuse are to be desired.

                    ^-.-^
                    Faith is about what you do. It's about aspiring to be better and nobler and kinder than you are. It's about making sacrifices for the good of others. - Dresden

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Quoth sirwired View Post
                      (The dishonest will be able to download cracks for just about any product activation scheme, no matter what you do.)

                      Actually, if you are determined enough, every single copy protection/activation mechanism for the PC can be completely broken, unless that involves a secured chip embedded onto your motherboard that will prevent your PC from booting in the case of tampering.

                      I've pondered this quite a bit. Others have pondered it. The simple reality is that you are trying to ensure trust in an untrusted environment. Copy protection/activation mechanisms can not be unbreakable because of one fundamental flaw: The entire computer is readable by running programs. Sooner or later, one single bit (or byte, or word) gets flipped.

                      That flip states that the program is now able to run legally. Once the location of that needed flip is found, it's all over. The crack can be written in 20 minutes then.

                      The chip I mentioned is called a TPM chip. If you have one present in your computer, and if the application is able to take advantage of it, then they can provide secure copy protection/activation. Without it, it can not be done (not even the dongles will do it).

                      Quoth Andara Bledin View Post
                      Why do so many people take shortcuts that take so much more time and effort than the standard method?
                      For this one, he might have been trying to set up a standard image. Fairly common practice in IT, and allows the administrator to get someone back to work very rapidly in the event of Windows failure or hardware failure. Takes some extra time to do in the beginning, saves hours (possibly even days) of work later.

                      Very much worth it, I'd say.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Dirt

                        Quoth Dips View Post
                        There were so many illegal copies and the community had become so used to being able to update illegal copies illegally that many folks updated to the copy protected version, found that they couldn't use it and their old version was written over. [Don't worry. Anybody who was legally entitled to the previous version and didn't want to buy the new version got the old version replaced with our help.]

                        As a result many pirates turned into paying customers, but only AFTER we added copy protection.
                        Give us the dirt:

                        I am sure that not all of your 'new' customers meekly ponied up the money. I very am sure you had a few interesting conversations during that change over.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          But more than two?

                          Quoth Dips View Post
                          Then it came out. The thing that had REALLY been bugging him all along. See all software should be free to anyone who wants to install it and only commercial customers should pay for it.
                          While I like that model of software as 99% of my own software comes from the free/open software sources out there I have to ask? What is his use that is non-commercial but needs more than two copies? I understand the laptop/desktop need for two activations, but his demands for more 'FREE' activations/versions reeks of someone filling the needs of a commercial organization.

                          If he was making an image for quick recovery, he should say so. That what makes this guy seem very sucky to me, even if he has valid reasons for doing what he is trying, he is lying and hidding them from the software supplier, this lack of honesty makes him sucky regardless.

                          PS. His software business model would kill a large percentage of game companies.

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Quoth crashhelmet View Post
                            What gets me is the time and effort it took to image the first system and reimage the second would have been a whole lot mroe than just installing the app on the second system. Then he throws the phone calls into it all? My gut tells me he has more than the two systems and was looking to score free activations on the rest of his systems.

                            CH
                            I tend to agree with this assessment. Imaging is not really cost-effective for
                            only one or two clones of an original. Unless, of course, he pirated the imaging
                            software......

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Quoth Andara Bledin View Post
                              Well, they're just slightly specialized, there. There are some industries for which a dongle and someone to go after in the case of misuse are to be desired.
                              I don't mind dongles in general, but the ones that irk the hell out of me are the ones (photo booths come to mind, as well as one specific video game) that have the dongle count down the number of uses it's had, and shut off when it reaches zero. Damn it, try to make supplies good enough that I want to use anything else; don't try to force me to use your supplies.

                              The ultimate one was Dinosaur Kings. This was a stupid piece that was made by Sega Ltd (Japan), and we were testing for them. The game, in summary, is a tiny thing (13" monitor, IIRC) that is, quite literally, a game of rock-paper-scissors (that's what's on the control panel!) where your choices are weighted. At the start of the game, you get a card that has typically either a dinosaur or a tactical move: each dinosaur hit the other was better at attacking and defending different moves, and the different move cards altered the attack and defense a bit more. Plus there were a few "specail move" cards that were kinda interesting, but required you to have played a bit to have the needed card infrastructure (you could keep cards, and use multiple cards in future games).

                              So far, so good? R-P-S meets M:TG? The problems? One was that the single player mode intentionally had a pattern to follow to win. They even pointed it out to you. But more importantly, those cards cost us half a buck each. And our partners wanted, typically, about half the gross. The place I was testing at actually pulled in 52% of the gross sales. And while I thought a buck to play rock-paper-scissors was rediculous, it was even more rediculous to end up losing two cents every time someone did it! And yes, they had a dongle in the game... so every time I tested it, that was 50 cents more that we effectively paid out, even though I could shove the card back in the stacker... and I was supposed to test it every week.

                              I was quite glad that someone clued into the economic problems when we tested the pieces, before we bought a whole bunch of them.

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