Hello!
Hello!
First i'm going to ask if this is the correct place. I have recently purchased a component at over EUR 200. I have gotten only one reply to my pre-sales question. My tickets are left untouched or unnoticed and my emails are not replied to.
How much slack do you think i should give the vendor?
If this time period is reached, would it be ok to post here; simply tallying the dates and (lack of) communication, and the vendors name and ask if anyone knows what's up?
TIA,
/Dany
First i'm going to ask if this is the correct place. I have recently purchased a component at over EUR 200. I have gotten only one reply to my pre-sales question. My tickets are left untouched or unnoticed and my emails are not replied to.
How much slack do you think i should give the vendor?
If this time period is reached, would it be ok to post here; simply tallying the dates and (lack of) communication, and the vendors name and ask if anyone knows what's up?
TIA,
/Dany
I generally expect to wait 24-48 hours, during a working week, to get a response from a vendor. If more time elapses, I note the lack of response, and am unlikely to do business with that company again.
ReplyDeleteDelphi is not the biggest market sector for selling add-ins, and vendors need to be possibly more responsive than might the folks who sell to the C# crowd.
I value vendors who are supportive and responsive, and am ready to recommend any of them, when someone asks. Equally, I am ready and willing to give warnings about a vendor who has failed to act responsibly.
I have seen others ask for opinions here of various vendors and products. Rants and complaints might be better posted on Unit number5.
Thanks for the input, Bill Meyer! I completely agree. My #1 3rd party will Skype with me anytime and i have svn access too.
ReplyDeleteThe 11/2 i sent an email with a pre-sales question, i got an immediate response (the same day).
The 14/2 i sent an email stating two outstanding (but easily fixed) showstoppers. No reply.
The 20/2 i purchased* a license (EUR 261) and got download links and licence number back. Contrary from the first response there was no prepared support for XE7.
The 20/2 i logged four (4) tickets.
The 25/2 i sent an email to the address used to respond to my first mail (as the email adresses info@ and admin@) does not seem to be monitored. No reply.
That lic option was the cheapest, it is a somewhat expensive component compared to others. I made a mistake and thought the 14/2 mail had been caught somewhere. I should not have purchased. I'll wait a couple of days more, then i'll try for a refund. I really do not have time for this :(
Dany Marmur I think you have been more than sufficiently patient. On 25/2, did you send also to the info@ and admin@ addresses? If not, that might be a point of argument when you seek a refund. I would not wait too long to try for a refund.
ReplyDeleteI have the TMS components pack as well as other components every single time I run into an error due to the components the response time is less then 8 hours and that should be the way.
ReplyDeleteApparently the vendor forgot that the client is the number one priority. If the vendor has a bug, they should inform you and request time to fix it. I think that is fair especially in this market that constantly changes.
If a person decides to go to market with their applications they should abide by the golden rule of solid support.
Personally I think for this forum you should provide the vendors name so others may have experienced the similar issues, sometimes a crowd makes a great team.
Yes, Richard Baroniunas me too. From Delphi 5 and on i have juggled a lot of 3rd party stuff. Some has been very reluctant to admit to a bug, but when finally proven they fix it mostly.
ReplyDeleteSome treated me badly; once i wrote a plugin for Excel using components for the direct data retrieval (a special Excel function) from my system. There was a threading problem in the components, but the vendor would not admit it. Finally another user pointed it out and with his help i could get the stuff working. Immediately after that conversation they shut down my forum login! They were embarrassed. I have roted out a lot of these things over the years. Generally the 3rd party Delphi world has become more stable i think.
When starting all over again i went for DevExpress as the main UI stuff. Their support is quite ok, but there has been the attitude of "i don't understand what he wrote, i'm sure his just confused, lets past a boilerplate answer" every now and then. IBObjects (my preferred DB connection suite) has done /extremely/ well, my warm recommendations. FastReports was very messy until version 4 and in the beginning of 4. But then when most bugs were fixed it has been much much better to work with. I was much more active in those foras back then than i had the time to be. RTC is very good too, the replies in the forum are clear well versed and informative. And so on :)
No, Bill Meyer i did not. However, i'll resent the mail and then start to shout. Thanks!
On TMS, I have had mixed feelings on the Component Pack, which I have used for years. That said, they have generally been responsive when I can send a small project to demo the problem. And in fairness to them -- and I have written of this before -- there are so very many ways their components can be combined that any notion of exhaustive testing is really beyond reach.
ReplyDeleteDevExpress's attitude issue comes from Bucknall that his stuff doesn't stink and they charge quite a bit for their solutions.
ReplyDeleteJust a reminder to all, it depends where you shop for stuff, if it looks crappy most likely the product will be crappy.
I understand about the TMS dilemma Bill Meyer that you bring up, I feel that sometimes they rush updates a little too fast without fully testing some of them. They do have a lot of components that I just do not use but they do get back to you fairly fast on support.
ReplyDeleteRichard Baroniunas I agree that they sometimes update too quickly. On one project I worked where they were our primary for GUI, we finally froze the revision, as the updates were actually causing us to revisit fixed issues a number of times.
ReplyDeleteGenerally 24 - 48 I would like some response but the time zones can pad this out. Have also struck the odd public holiday issue which is understandable as well.
ReplyDeleteIn our company you must answer to client during the very first 24 hours. You may not have solution or fix, but you must start communication with client to let him know that he is not alone with his problem.
ReplyDeleteYes, I agree response time is tough based on time zones and with the type of technology, auto-responses can go out to the folks informing them that the email was received for review, at least that is something to know you are on the queue.
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of smaller companies that do not employ this type of tactic leaving clients hanging waiting for a response over 2 weeks which is wrong. I do remember there was a software company that the owner went on a bike tour of Europe leaving the business for 3 weeks so as you guess they are no longer in business but at that time they did have some great stuff but poor vision.
After requesting a refund at the DRI-level it seems this might get resolved!
ReplyDelete