Great support from Red Gate Software
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We are used to bad product support stories, so I would like bring a different one that impressed in a positive way. A few days ago I purchased ANTS performance profiler from Red-Gate[^]. The profiler looked very good and handy, but when I ran it on my Dell notebook, timing in report were all wrong: they showed millions of seconds instead of small values. I was quite dissapointed that profiler did not work on my notebook, 'cause it's my main work horse. I wrote a mail to Red-Gate support, and they took it very seriously. I was getting several emails a day with requests to try different things. Eventually they managed to find not even one but two issues that may occur on some notebooks: 1. Multiple processor PCs with power management features may require a hot fix for applications that require high performance (e.g. games and profilers). The fix is available from Microsoft[^]. 2. Certain notebooks use a feature called SpeedStep[^] to optimize battery lifetime. Having this feature enabled may distort profilers' time computation. I applied a hot fix, disabled SpeedStep and ANTS profiler's reports got back to normal. Red-Gate promised that their next version should have a workaround that would not require disabling SpeedStep. This investigation took several days, and I must say I am very pleased with the amount of attention Red-Gate team paid to this issue. So I decided to share this story with you guys. And no, I don't have any relationship to Red-Gate except being their customer.
Вагиф Абилов MCP (Visual C++) Oslo, Norway If you're in a war, instead of throwing a hand grenade at the enemy, throw one of those small pumpkins. Maybe it'll make everyone think how stupid war is, and while they are thinking, you can throw a real grenade at them. Jack Handey.
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We are used to bad product support stories, so I would like bring a different one that impressed in a positive way. A few days ago I purchased ANTS performance profiler from Red-Gate[^]. The profiler looked very good and handy, but when I ran it on my Dell notebook, timing in report were all wrong: they showed millions of seconds instead of small values. I was quite dissapointed that profiler did not work on my notebook, 'cause it's my main work horse. I wrote a mail to Red-Gate support, and they took it very seriously. I was getting several emails a day with requests to try different things. Eventually they managed to find not even one but two issues that may occur on some notebooks: 1. Multiple processor PCs with power management features may require a hot fix for applications that require high performance (e.g. games and profilers). The fix is available from Microsoft[^]. 2. Certain notebooks use a feature called SpeedStep[^] to optimize battery lifetime. Having this feature enabled may distort profilers' time computation. I applied a hot fix, disabled SpeedStep and ANTS profiler's reports got back to normal. Red-Gate promised that their next version should have a workaround that would not require disabling SpeedStep. This investigation took several days, and I must say I am very pleased with the amount of attention Red-Gate team paid to this issue. So I decided to share this story with you guys. And no, I don't have any relationship to Red-Gate except being their customer.
Вагиф Абилов MCP (Visual C++) Oslo, Norway If you're in a war, instead of throwing a hand grenade at the enemy, throw one of those small pumpkins. Maybe it'll make everyone think how stupid war is, and while they are thinking, you can throw a real grenade at them. Jack Handey.
From a developer's perspective you're the kind of customers that we like :D Willing to help out. I would have given you a free copy for helping resolve an issue.
Todd Smith
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From a developer's perspective you're the kind of customers that we like :D Willing to help out. I would have given you a free copy for helping resolve an issue.
Todd Smith
Well being a developer myself I know how hard it can be to locate the problem. And I was very motivated to make the damned thing run on my machine :-D
Вагиф Абилов MCP (Visual C++) Oslo, Norway If you're in a war, instead of throwing a hand grenade at the enemy, throw one of those small pumpkins. Maybe it'll make everyone think how stupid war is, and while they are thinking, you can throw a real grenade at them. Jack Handey.
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We are used to bad product support stories, so I would like bring a different one that impressed in a positive way. A few days ago I purchased ANTS performance profiler from Red-Gate[^]. The profiler looked very good and handy, but when I ran it on my Dell notebook, timing in report were all wrong: they showed millions of seconds instead of small values. I was quite dissapointed that profiler did not work on my notebook, 'cause it's my main work horse. I wrote a mail to Red-Gate support, and they took it very seriously. I was getting several emails a day with requests to try different things. Eventually they managed to find not even one but two issues that may occur on some notebooks: 1. Multiple processor PCs with power management features may require a hot fix for applications that require high performance (e.g. games and profilers). The fix is available from Microsoft[^]. 2. Certain notebooks use a feature called SpeedStep[^] to optimize battery lifetime. Having this feature enabled may distort profilers' time computation. I applied a hot fix, disabled SpeedStep and ANTS profiler's reports got back to normal. Red-Gate promised that their next version should have a workaround that would not require disabling SpeedStep. This investigation took several days, and I must say I am very pleased with the amount of attention Red-Gate team paid to this issue. So I decided to share this story with you guys. And no, I don't have any relationship to Red-Gate except being their customer.
Вагиф Абилов MCP (Visual C++) Oslo, Norway If you're in a war, instead of throwing a hand grenade at the enemy, throw one of those small pumpkins. Maybe it'll make everyone think how stupid war is, and while they are thinking, you can throw a real grenade at them. Jack Handey.
Although not software related I've got to say that the most impressive Customer Support I've come across is from Demon our ISP. We've had a number of problems (usually when we were on dial-up) that occurred at 3 or 4 in the morning and they've been able to sort them there and then. The incident which sticks in my mind is when we had a problem with the broadband when it was first installed, it kept on cutting out. Eventually it got so bad at 03:30 that I phoned up the customer support, got a person on the other end of the line straight-away (after going through a few options to narrow down the problem). I explained the problem, he ran a quick test and said that he'd need to run a few more, could I phone back in 10 minutes or so, he explained how to get through to him and not anyone else. So 10 minutes later I phoned back and he said that they'd narrowed down the problem to BT and not them but he'd talk to their engineers. After being on hold for about 2 minutes he came back and said that they were fixing it and to try it out in an hour or so. Guess what, half an hour later it was fixed. Now that was impressive support, although I didn't get it the last time I tried to phone through. He'd even managed to get BT engineers off their butts and fix the problem :omg:
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From a developer's perspective you're the kind of customers that we like :D Willing to help out. I would have given you a free copy for helping resolve an issue.
Todd Smith
Yeah I totally agree. A good person at the other end is a precious resource. You probably get the same emails we do "somethings not working and I didn't write down the error message, I really don't have time for this, make it work now." after 14 emails trying to drag the slightest bit of information out of the client by playing 20 questions (to the point where you start to wonder if they are just messing with you because surely no one could be that unhelpful) we start making suggestions only to get "Ok, I tried something completely different from what you suggested on my own because I'm a certified blah blah blah and now I get a completely different error message but I didn't write it down or take a screen shot and I'm really in a hurry and this is taking way too long to fix etc etc"