Gee! Thanks!

[Dips]

My extra special customer of the day appears to be our distributor in France.

By contract they are our exclusive distributor in France and they get a larger than normal dealer discount.

They are also a not-for-profit agency.

Anyway today I got an email from one of their employees. It seems that one of their customers bought software in 2001 and downloaded a free update in 2002. They have been happily running this on a Windows 98 machine ever since.

Alas, the Windows 98 machine died as well as the special hardware where the output from our software gets made into the end product. The primary purpose of the dead computer was to run our software and drive the special hardware. Keep that in mind.

So the customer went out and bought a new computer, bought Windows XP, and bought new special hardware. Then he tried to install our software. It worked, but he only had media for the 2001 version because he hadn't made a hard copy of the 2002 version (we encourage people to make archive copies for that very reason). So he asked the agency if the 2002 version was still available. The agency said it was not, but offered to sell them the newest version at the update price.

The customer didn't like this. He had paid a whole bunch of money for all that new hardware and the new operating system. He couldn't afford to pay for an update, even though using our software is the primary reason he replaced his computer.

So what did the agency choose to do? They emailed me and told me that they promised we could help him and gave him our number.

I wrote back and explained that the version he had was too old to replace and told her to offer him the paid update and how to get a trial version of the update which would tide him over until he raised the funds to purchase it.

I don't know if she ever got back to him with that information, but I just got off the phone with a guy in France. There was a communication barrier, so he asked for my email. I tried to give it to him, but I have a feeling that didn't work.

So now I'm off to ask the agency to either pass the information along in French or at least give me his email address so I can send along the English version.

From past experience, I'm expecting that they will refuse to deal with it. Apparently larger-than-normal dealer discount is not enough compensation for them to actually assist in handling their own customers.

Sigh.

I'll update if more happens.

[Dips]

Update:

It seems that the customer did get my right email address because I received an email from him or rather from a friend of his.

It seems that the agency did pass along the bad news with editorial comment about how we don't "want" to help.

Nice way to keep it professional, guys.

The most interesting thing, though, was that the story was completely different than the way the agency presented it to me.

It seems they didn't replace the Windows 98 computer, they fixed it. But they are afraid to buy the update to our software because they think they will have to buy a newer version of Windows to run it and can't afford to.

Well, guess what? The current version is compatible with Windows 98. So I gave them that good news and a price quote.

I'm probably not going to hear back from them until tomorrow since it's after 7:00 PM in France.

[Kilamon]

So, the intermediary company gave up on helping the client and passed the buck to you. They must be very proud of their national heritage.

[Jester]

Well you have to remember that surrender IS the national pasttime in France!

[Dips]

So, the intermediary company gave up on helping the client and passed the buck to you. They must be very proud of their national heritage.

To be fair, the only reason I mentioned nationality is that the agency knows the local language and we do not. That's part of the reason they get a discount, so that they can help customers in their local language. Other than that it doesn't matter where they are from.

What's peeving me right now is that they can't seem to pass along the simple answer I gave without editorializing. This is only encouraging the customer to persist in making his unreasonable demands.

I'm tempted to mention that the agency is certainly welcome to give him a dicounted or free update from their own stock (all of which which is already paid for ). If they feel that strongly that this customer is right, then they can put their own money behind their principles. Right?