Point well taken - what I am struggling with is this -

1.  Responding to a question about the quality of support when I have
legitimate concerns about the way we have been supported.

2.  Avoiding a "did not - did too" sort of a discussion on a list that
L-Soft sponsors and maintains.

What I wanted to do was say this - Lsoft has let us down in some specific
ways in terms of providing basic support for the software we purchased.  And
if anyone wants specific examples of how this has been handled, they can
contact me directly and I would be glad to discuss - offline.  I would be
happy to answer your questions if you wish about our experiences - offline.
But I thought it was important to note that there are some dissatisfied
customers out there.

I find it interesting that after several emailed complaints to the support
staff, my sales rep and the alleged Vice President in charge of Customer
Relations - nothing has been done, but yet I respond to this question on
this list - and suddenly my sales rep is a lot more interested in our
happiness - and I am getting phone calls from support wanting to help.

I will say that I have always maintained in any organization that problems
will occur and the sign of a good organization with good products is not
flawless execution (which never occurs) but how they respond when it doesn't
run perfectly.  To date that response has been less than expected - thus my
concerns - but I intend to continue to pursue our issues - and my mind
remains open - just not enthusiastic.

Thanks


-----Original Message-----
From: Wayne T. Smith [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, November 09, 2000 10:23 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: List-serv support fee


[I intended to send this to LSTSRV-L instead of Mr. Roselius..wts]

<[log in to unmask]> wrote, in part..
> Is this for email only support or something a more traditional?  I
> personally have had a very disappointing experience with LISTSERV and
> it's current support structure of email support.  I won't take the
> time to air dirty laundry on their sponsored list but based on the
> quality of the support we have received to date - I would have a hard
> time increasing my organization's expenditures with L-soft.

Trashing their good name without providing much of a hint as to what you
expected or where they went wrong seems to me to be worse than explaining
what went wrong and why the situation couldn't be rectified, especially
since most of us seem to find the knowledge of personnel and quality of
service high and quite acceptable.

If this problem is important enough for you to "walk away" from LSoft wrt
future needs and you choose to write to us about it, I think we deserve to
know what is wrong from your point of view. Maybe that's important to
others, maybe not.

(My installation doesn't, to my knowledge, pay a service fee beyond a yearly
"maintenance" fee.)

cheers, wayne


Wayne T. Smith                       mailto:[log in to unmask]
Systems Group - UNET                 University of Maine System
LISTSERV maintainer for http://lists.Maine.edu/