uport Support

[John Plocher]

I am now the manager of Customer Support, a position I have held for only a
week now.  This reply is based on what I have learned in the three weeks
I have been working for Microport.

+---- In article <351 at bdt.UUCP> David Beckemeyer writes:
| +---- In article <17124 at sgi.SGI.COM> Vernon Schryver asks:
| | Are Microport 'Hotline Support' or 'Upgrade service' worth it?
| | If I send a bunch of bug reports to Microport, what good will it do
| | me?  Will I get fixes or patches?  Are updates frequent, with lots of
| | fixes?  ...
| +----
| The answer is NO.   There are ways to deal with Microport but buying
| their services is not the most effective.

Things I've learned since I got here:

All bug reports are investigated.  The more detail, the more
in depth the investigation.  If hardware configurations permit, the
bug is verified here in tech support.  

The bug is assigned a classification - roughly the areas are
    o - Fatal to the operation of the system
    o - Fatal to the program being run
    o - Documentation
    o - Incorrect operation
    o - Feature requests
    o - CPU limitations (64K segments...)
 and, of course
    o - Pilot error (remember the spate of flames last year about how
        Microport's printf() was broken because printf("%s", (char *) NULL);
        caused a core dump?)

The bug is then assigned a priority and a schedule for fixing it.
This schedule depends on priority, number of customers affected, 
the presence of a viable work around, marketing, and a host of
other factors.

| Who nees Hotline Support when the switchboard operators can't even
| transfer the calls?    Even if you do get through to somebody after

We are busy.  From 10 to noon and from 1:30 to 3 CA time.  Even so, there
shouldn't be a problem with our switchboard.  People with installation 
problems and those with support contracts are transfered to support, those
without are told that they need a support contract.  If you are reporting
a bug, just tell the person on the phone and you will be transfered.

The problems we are handling are evenly divided between installation
questions (getting Unix up on yet another new mix of hardware) and what
can best be described as technical hand holding - people who are trying
to write programs who are just learning Unix and the limitations of the
286.  (or the freedoms of the 386 :-)

| several calls, they seldom can offer much help with real problems (unless
| you have the "is the power turned on?" type problems, which I doubt). It's
| cheaper and faster to figure out solutions yourself.

I wish these were the only problems people called in with.  It would make
both my and my staff's job so much easier.  This last week I was called
upon to figure out why News 2.11 wouldn't install (what do you mean "You
need to edit localize.sh"?), debug an interface to a Mux (be sure you 
set both the MIN and TIME fields in termio.c_cc), figure out why the
serial ports on a customer's new machine didn't work (His hardware
manual was wrong) and lastly I had someone who was upset because he 
couldn't fit DOS and Unix into a 10Mb laptop with 640K of memory!

If you have a problem installing our product on your hardware, we will
do our best to get you up and running.  If you have bug reports, feature
requests, or gripes, send them to us (email or US mail + example code
or a description of how to reproduce the error is best, phone reports
are also accepted).  If you have a support contract, you can call us on
the support number and either myself or my staff will help you.  

If you don't have a support contract with us (and your problem isn't one
pertaining to installation) then you need to contact your salesperson
about getting one.

| I bought the upgrade contract.  I guess I got what I paid for but I think
| one could get anything I got *without* buying the upgrade service.

The upgrade service IS NOT a support contract.  These are two different
things.  The upgrade contract gets you at least 2 major upgrades and up
to 10 minor updates for free (see section 3 of the contract).  The support
contract gets you everything in section 6 (Phone support...).

| As for bug reporting.   I have sent in quite a few.   I even went so far
| as to prepare programs that reproduce the errors and I shipped diskettes
| with instructions and documentation.   My guess is that they went straight
| into the circular file.

I went through the disks that Henry gave me and your's didn't seem to
be there.  Email me with particulars, *please*.  I do have on file 
several disks from people - just none with your name on it.

| I have gotten patches for problems but it didn't happen becuase I sent
| in bug reports or paid my upgrade fee.  It happened becuase I became a
| squeeky wheel which needed some grease (not too much mind you, but a little!).

I can't speak for those who were here before me, but I will try my hardest
to make sure that you don't have to be a squeeky wheel to get answers and
solutions.  Those of you who know me from Usenet days of times past will find
that I still don't like bullshit - on either end of the phone.  If you can't
get a satisfactory answer to your problems, let me know about it.

    As always, feel free to email.

    -John Plocher
     Customer Service Manager
     Microport Systems, Inc
     plocher at uport
     uunet!uport!plocher