Tuesday, March 08, 2005 2:13 PM
RichardM
stumped at multiple places
Well, All of my posts so far over at the community server have gone unanswered. I check my e-mail daily hoping for a reply. But nothing.
I paid the one hundred something that they charge for gold membership, but they haven't given me access to the priority support forums yet. That was on Friday.
This is what I figure happened:
Manager: Whoo hoo! We got Version 1.0 of Community Server out the door. The payment process pages are up, we can start taking orders. Everyone, lets take two weeks off.
Tech: If there are thousands of new people downloading their site for the first time, maybe people will have questions?
Manager: We give free downloads, they can wait a week or so before we answer their questions
Tech: But we're charging for forum support, if people sign up, they might want to access their premium forums, and even more, expect answers!
Manager: Version 1.0 came out, whats the odds of someone wanting support immediately after installing the forums? Heck, it could take them weeks just to get the software running.
Tech: But..
Manager: Paid Vacation
Tech: Okay!
No, really, this is what happens when you create products that are mostly used by programmers. The programmers have questions, and those questions have to be answered by other programmers, your average customer service tech can't answer the questions that are stumping your average developer. (Of course, being a customer service rep in a prior life, I know that professionals are also some of the most ignorant individuals when it comes to things outside their area of expertise). Programmers aren't necessarily the best customer service people usually, so these things don't go as smoothly than if say, I had trouble with my toaster.
Sigh.... I can only hope I get a reply soon, otherwise I risk hacking at the source code of the forums, get the things working, but then my work will preclude installing the newer updates that were promised in the next few weeks, or installing the updates, then redoing all my work. :(