Interesting ISC Support Policy

[John C. Rossmann]

In <44666 at ism780c.isc.com> support at ism780c.isc.com (Support account) writes:


>The following will hopefully help to clear up any confusion regarding the
>support policies of INTERACTIVE.

>Let me first talk about support from the distribution arm of INTERACTIVE
			.
			.
			.

	.... Lots of "policy statements" deleted ...
			.
			.
			.

>With regard to technical support programs for the INTERACTIVE UNIX family of
>products, we have recently brought to market RESPONSE/ix, a new, low cost
>introductory level support program designed with the smaller reseller in
>mind.  This program is modular, to allow the purchase of support for only the
>software ...
>These support products are available through the same distribution
>channels as the rest of our product family, and are priced at a suggested
>retail from $645/yr for Basic UNIX to $1545/yr to include all extensions.

Interesting. He considers $1545 per year to be cheap!! ;-|

>Mike Alcorn
>Manager, Systems Products Support
>INTERACTIVE Systems


I've read this thread with great interest. I'm not an ISC user -- I've always
felt their product to be overpriced. But this message from their product
support manager is a gem.

	1) It indicates clearly why you ISC users are having a support
	   problem: they aren't hearing what you're trying to tell them.

	2) To paraphrase #1: Everything in this message thread seems to
	   have gone completely over the head of the person who's position
	   might give him the authority to do something about it.

	3) Given the loads of messages here, magazine articles, etc., any
	   software company should understand by now that most resellers
	   are not capable of giving support to sophisticated end users.
	   That's what many of you have tried to tell ISC in this thread;
	   Mr. Alcorn's message shows that he doesn't care - or can't hear
	   you.
	
Seeing this message from ISC's product support manager must fill the ESIX
folks with joy -- if I were one of them, I'd have popped a bottle of Dom
Perignon!

One point to Mr. Alcorn: If you charge more money and don't provide more
service, don't plan on hanging on to your customers unless you're the only
game in town.

John C. Rossmann, Synergistic Systems	(uunet!synsys!john)