Date   : Fri, 26 Feb 1988 07:21:44 GMT
From   : killer!elg@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Eric Green)
Subject: Wordstar 4.0 support

in article <3202@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>, jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I.
Kamens) says:
> Some of you may recall that several months ago I posted a complaint
> about Wordstar 4.0 failing to work on my hardware configuration and
> about Micropro failing to give me any help whatsoever.
 [...]
> So, I guess Micropro has given up on customer service.  When a
> customer has a problem, instead of helping him/her solve it, they
> simply refund the money and blow it off.
> 
> Pretty bad customer relations policy, if you ask me.

It's a real pain in the a$$ to debug a foreign hardware configuration over the
phone. For the past three weeks, I've had that dubious pleasure, with folks in
California that have a very WEIRD modem/interface setup. Despite them reading
me the manuals over the phone line, and me saying "Gawd, that's the strangest
thing I've ever seen", we simply could not get the combination working right
with our program. Finally they said "hell, we'll just ship it to ya, and you
can figure it out over there instead of us running up a $500 phone bill". So
right now that combo is in transit via UPS... it simply is infeasible to try
to deal with strange hardware via remote control. 

However, I doubt that Micropro has the personel, management, or facilities to
do that, and besides, do you want to lose the use of your computer for 30 days
while Micropro figures out what's wrong? Certainly Micropro should have
written you a letter, telling you that they were sorry etc.  But I really
can't fault them for throwing up their hands and giving your money back. You
can't run a program on equipment you don't have.

--
Eric Lee Green  elg@usl.CSNET     Asimov Cocktail,n., A verbal bomb
{cbosgd,ihnp4}!killer!elg              detonated by the mention of any
Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191              subject, resulting in an explosion
Lafayette, LA 70509                    of at least 5,000 words.