Let's stall to get more attention!

[sirwired]

You are a customer. You have engaged tech support in order to fix a fiendishly complicated problem. After much effort and a couple of false starts, the highly capable engineers that have been engaged on your behalf for no additional charge have found the solution to your problem. All you have to do is upgrade some software to install a fix to a known bug, a bug you most certainly are experiencing. This is a fact we have verified by letting you borrow, gratis, eighty-five thousand dollars of test equipment.

What do you do?

Do you:
A) Install the fix we tell you to install. A process that is non-disruptive, free, and requires the entry of a single command in each of the 15 boxes that need the fix. Total time? Maybe half an hour.
B) Bitch and moan on calls twice a week as to how arduous and painful the process is, and how you couldn't possibly complete it in less than six months unless major help is received. Further complain that it's taken three months to fix, even though they have spent fully half that time refusing to install it.
C) B, plus enlist the aid of your sales drones, who then inform the folks in support (like Yours Truly) that they "must" fly in six or seven highly trained engineers to perform this trivial operation. In addition, we are to provide an ironclad "guarantee" that this will solve all their problems forevermore and everything will work perfectly from here on out. We should provide this guarantee by magically assembling $4 Million dollars of equipment out of thin air in the test lab, and run a full suite matching their exact configuration by Wednesday (the day after tomorrow.)

With geniuses like this selling and running our gear, it's a shocker it ever works.

SirWired

[houdini]

This is a fact we have verified by letting you borrow, gratis, eighty-five thousand dollars of test equipment.

Please tell me you've got it all back safely, and they haven't lost/broken/borrowed permenantly/otherwise kept the expensive test equipment?

[roothorick]

For a second I thought you were complaining about me. But the story is very different, and I never got a (real) fix. I'm pretty sure Lasermovies and their software contractor still don't know what went wrong.

[Buffalo]

You could have been talking about me, too. A couple months ago [software developer] released an updated version of their program. This program is used by 40-50% of my users. Now the original reason for this update was to comply with a new regulation going into effect about 2 days after the release. Instead of making the ONE necessary change, they decided to do a major rewrite.

Anyways, shortly after installing this update on the workstations that need it, the users started having issues - delays on startup, config files getting reset, that kind of thing. After working with [software developer] the fix they recommend is giving everyone who uses the program full admin rights on the workstations. They seem genuinely shocked that we really don't want to do that. Can you say "security flaw"? Given the average intelligence of my users I'll be up to my ears in busted Windows installs inside of a week.

One thing I find particularly rage-inducing is the fact that we've been told we're the only one of [software developer]'s customers having this problem. However, my boss talked to a tech at another company, and they are having exactly the same issues. They were also told by [software developer] that they are the only ones having the issue.

My boss and I are about ready to drive to [software developer]'s HQ and give them a bit of the ol'

[bsaana]

I wouldn't want them to have local admin rights either.

Because of some screw up with the proprietary software my company deployed last year to our users, on equipment leased from the company as well, they do have local admin rights. We have had sporadic cases of unsupported programs being installed that directly interferred with the software that machine is supposed to be running. I even got a trouble call from a source we usually don't deal with much when 1 of these systems started broadcasting malware over the network.

My manager and coworker both do not want it that way and neither do I. But until they do more testing and find the solution, we are out of luck.

[technical.angel]

That's how I became smug tech of the year yesterday.

The dining hall uses software to scan in each student for meals. The company said that you had to run the program on an admin acct. The server admin and I quickly found a way around of that.

I rock, and the company sucks.

[bsaana]

Unfortunately I don't have much of an ability to change the screwup my company has. It is our own software even. But the local admin rights are granted by GPOs that I have no access to, and not to mention the 1 username they set up for testing a year ago does not have priviledges to run the crucial software to begin with and its not because of the admin rights.

[Shalom]

One thing I find particularly rage-inducing is the fact that we've been told we're the only one of [software developer]'s customers having this problem. However, my boss talked to a tech at another company, and they are having exactly the same issues. They were also told by [software developer] that they are the only ones having the issue.

My boss and I are about ready to drive to [software developer]'s HQ and give them a bit of the ol'

If you do, I suggest you stop off on the way and pick up $BOSS[other_company] and HIS tech. Then the four of you drive out there with the . Why should you have all the fun catharsis?

[Buffalo]

If you do, I suggest you stop off on the way and pick up $BOSS[other_company] and HIS tech. Then the four of you drive out there with the . Why should you have all the fun catharsis?

Well, [other_company] is on the other side of the country, and [software developer] offices are somewhere in the middle. They would be more than welcome to meet us there, as long as they chip in for fuel for the