On the issue of Customer Support

I believe this exchange is self explanatory, received this mail yesterday.
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~Private communications removed per the Terms Of Service for using these forums.~

 

Well, the copies of both customer support and my response removed.
the gist of it was that Customer support responded to my "recent request", this "recent request been over 2 months ago!!!"
As a loyal customer since V.9 I was surprised to find so many problems with V.11, and for the first time experienced the non existent Customer Support.
The excuse for the delay is based on "having sold a very high volume" but that is not true as actually the non existing customer support goes back in history, also the back log must be explained not on a high volume sale but suspect a high volume of unhappy customers.
I do not believe an outfit should continue poor business practices.
After all the time wasted by me as all the other good people trying to help and failure to completely remove ATI as per instructions I reformatted the HD and reinstalled all programs but ATI.
Good ridance

 

I had a similar experience with Acronis support. Service ticket was almost 3 months old before I received a response.

 

I have put in two recent issues that were both finally answered in about two months for each. Each reply noted they were extremely busy which led to the delay.

Since I had either figured out the solution on my own or searched the forums for possible fixes, I essentially did not need Acronis to actually reply. Still it was annoying for such a delay.

Since you say "good riddance" I can only assume you are done with the product. If not, this forum is actually pretty good (I've been reading it for several years) and their live chat is usually available so you could try that in the future.

For what it's worth...

 

Hello all,

Thank you for using Acronis True Image

I may recommend you to use our Live Chat service here in order to receive immediate support.

Thank you.

--
Oleg Lee

 

"Busy" is just an inappropriate excuse for slow support. It's like an airline saying that flights are runing behind schedule because of delays.

The adequacy of software support is a function of the amount of resources applied to the problems. If a vendor doesn't provide enough support to handle the probs, then of course the meager resources applied will be "busy" and have trouble keeping up. If the product has serious bugs, even more resources are needed -- at least until the market falls away or, if the product requires too many resources, ceases to be financially viable. When that happens then, tech support becomes moot.

I suspect that ATI home has lost so much of is shine because Acronis is devoting more of its resources away form the home market -- that is, planning to be primarily in the enterprise market, as the home user market eventually becomes thinner as halfway decent backup progs are built into OSs -- Apple, and somewhat like MS has started to do in it's own meager way. We may have seen last good job of programming for the home user with ATI 10. I'd be glad to be wrong.

 

I agree, it seems like many companies find it cheaper to lose a customer than to provide adequate and timely support. This is especially true when each individual unit of product is not very costly. To pay a living wage to a properly qualified support technician ,,,,, well, thats real money. If you need dozens of these individuals to keep clients happy perhaps its better to do without some clients.

I hate this business model but it does seem to be quite a popular one for many companies when dealing with any but enterprise clients. The $49 that the publishers of program X will lose if I decide not to use it because of poor support will have a negligible effect on the companies bottom line. Especially if support can be provided on forum such as this one you can see why companies would embrace this model. Why pay a qualified tech if you can get the users themselves to provide the support. Forums are great but they should not be used to replace quality support IMO.

 

We all agree their service is horrible. Fortunately, the quality of support you'll get at this message board is fantastic. Post your issue - you'll get help.