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[That's what he said]
Bah. We've got this dealer in Europe who is driving me crazy.
They sell hardware that used to come with a free program that did what our software does, but the hardware manufacturer stopped making the free software because the expense of maintaining and supporting it got to be too much for them. <snerk>
So these dealers are buying from us now so they can sell a whole package to their customers. That's not the problem. Plenty of new dealers have come on board for that same reason.
The problem is that they think the modest amount of money they are paying us buys them the moon.
We tell them our policies. Policies which thousands of customers and dozens of higher volume dealers have followed with no trouble and they want us to make exceptions because they're somehow far too special for policies. They've been shot down by Mark (our marketing manager) every time. And yet they keep asking, thinking that rewording the question or explaining again how the effort of following polices is Just Too Much Work, will change our answer.
We tell them how activation works and they encourage their poor customers to do everything single thing on the planet with the program EXCEPT follow the actual directions I've given them ten times. It's like they think the instructions are meant to be outwitted instead of followed.
Then they whine to us about how it isn't working. Well, duh!
And then there's the nutty time table nonsense. Here is ONE example.
Back in August they asked for help activating a customer. I helped them and sent them a code. Which failed when they tried to use it. Did they get back to me right away and try to work with me to figure out what went wrong?
NOPE! They sat on it until September 6 and sent me a message, which apparently I never got. Did they follow up a day or two later to find out why I didn't reply?
NOPE! They sat on THAT until early October and then sent me a tersely worded message explaining that the activation in August didn't work and they'd been waiting MONTHS. First I'd heard of it! So I write back and tell them what information I need to help me figure out what went wrong way back in August so I can tell them how to fix it and get them activated now. [Thank God I keep copies of everything so I was able to look back that far!] So did they reply with the information I needed?
NOPE! They waited five more days and sent back another request that I hurry up and get them activated. Oh, and they mentioned that it was incredibly urgent. Yes, they did.
But they made a mistake. They cc'd the poor customer they'd been badly mishandling. So I was able to cc the customer my reply where I reminded them exactly how "urgently" they'd been treating this matter by waiting weeks to get back to me and never giving me the answers I needed to be able to help the customer.
A few days later, I hadn't heard a thing from and left for a long-needed vacation.
As it turned out they got back to my coworker, Eugene, with the same bad information they'd used in August (which certainly didn't improve with age!). He innocently tried to help them (not being aware of the whole history, even though I had notes all over the license) and, of course, it didn't work.
So today I get another message (we're in November now mind you) complaining about how it...doesn't work.
So I sent them the direction for the 11th time.
They don't want to follow them.
So I tell them the polite version of "Too bad. Either you follow them or it won't work."
And came here to vent about it. They are seriously thisclose to not being dealers any more if they don't knock this shit off.
Bah. We've got this dealer in Europe who is driving me crazy.
They sell hardware that used to come with a free program that did what our software does, but the hardware manufacturer stopped making the free software because the expense of maintaining and supporting it got to be too much for them. <snerk>
So these dealers are buying from us now so they can sell a whole package to their customers. That's not the problem. Plenty of new dealers have come on board for that same reason.
The problem is that they think the modest amount of money they are paying us buys them the moon.
We tell them our policies. Policies which thousands of customers and dozens of higher volume dealers have followed with no trouble and they want us to make exceptions because they're somehow far too special for policies. They've been shot down by Mark (our marketing manager) every time. And yet they keep asking, thinking that rewording the question or explaining again how the effort of following polices is Just Too Much Work, will change our answer.
We tell them how activation works and they encourage their poor customers to do everything single thing on the planet with the program EXCEPT follow the actual directions I've given them ten times. It's like they think the instructions are meant to be outwitted instead of followed.
Then they whine to us about how it isn't working. Well, duh!
And then there's the nutty time table nonsense. Here is ONE example.
Back in August they asked for help activating a customer. I helped them and sent them a code. Which failed when they tried to use it. Did they get back to me right away and try to work with me to figure out what went wrong?
NOPE! They sat on it until September 6 and sent me a message, which apparently I never got. Did they follow up a day or two later to find out why I didn't reply?
NOPE! They sat on THAT until early October and then sent me a tersely worded message explaining that the activation in August didn't work and they'd been waiting MONTHS. First I'd heard of it! So I write back and tell them what information I need to help me figure out what went wrong way back in August so I can tell them how to fix it and get them activated now. [Thank God I keep copies of everything so I was able to look back that far!] So did they reply with the information I needed?
NOPE! They waited five more days and sent back another request that I hurry up and get them activated. Oh, and they mentioned that it was incredibly urgent. Yes, they did.
But they made a mistake. They cc'd the poor customer they'd been badly mishandling. So I was able to cc the customer my reply where I reminded them exactly how "urgently" they'd been treating this matter by waiting weeks to get back to me and never giving me the answers I needed to be able to help the customer.
A few days later, I hadn't heard a thing from and left for a long-needed vacation.
As it turned out they got back to my coworker, Eugene, with the same bad information they'd used in August (which certainly didn't improve with age!). He innocently tried to help them (not being aware of the whole history, even though I had notes all over the license) and, of course, it didn't work.
So today I get another message (we're in November now mind you) complaining about how it...doesn't work.
So I sent them the direction for the 11th time.
They don't want to follow them.
So I tell them the polite version of "Too bad. Either you follow them or it won't work."
And came here to vent about it. They are seriously thisclose to not being dealers any more if they don't knock this shit off.
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