mwizard@eecs.cs.pdx.edu (Craig Nelson) (03/02/91)
Anyone out there recently put through the hassle of giving feeble attempts of customer service by Lotus Corp. ? Well I have. Imagine this. A registered owner of Lotus 123 2.2 calls their "product support hotline" to find out why their "generic laser printer" driver isn't working on my new Panasonic KX-P4420. I'm greeted with the "please hold" recording we're all used to hearing from software development companies. Then, just when I thought progress was being made a "lady" came on the phone to inform me that Lotus provides a 900 number for product "support". Great. Anyone out there care to let Lotus know my wallet needs more support than their 900 number ? I don't feel like shelling out $ 2.00/min to be put on hold all over again. Besides that, once I do get through their going to tell me it's a problem with either the printer or the user. By the way, guess what Lotus charges non-registered users for their "product support" ? Thats right, $ 2.00/min. Same charge whether you purchase the software or not. Moral: Buying Lotus, Stealing Lotus, Whats the difference ? Craig (mwizard@eecs.ee.pdx.edu)
mmshah@athena.mit.edu (Milan M Shah) (03/02/91)
Yes, Lotus is pretty bad. I had a bad experience that lasted, yes, 9 months. What happened is that I purchased Lotus Manuscript. This was when I was in Urbana, and almost 1.5 years ago. For a while, I loved it, its pretty great for math formulas. Then, one day, I decided to do my handy dandy final project report in it, and painstakingly created a whole bunch of autocad files to be inserted into my report. Silly me, I never checked to see whether it works, I was so happy with manuscript, and after all, it says right there that it will import acad .dxf files. Well, first few attempts and it don't work. I call their Prompt line, which was free, and finally about a week later someone calls back. They say, well, not all .dxf files are supported, especially the fancy ones with multi layers. Ah ha, I had her in a noose. I had come up with an acad file that required 6 mouse clicks to create 3 lines and group them, and manuscript would die. I told her about this, and she goes "Oh, none of us here have acad available to try it out, you will have to send us the file you are having problems with ." So I did... It's report time, so I'll just print the acad drawings separately, and let manuscript print my report. Final report to be printed on Laserwriter II. This won't work either. Another call, and now she gets annoyed and says, well sir, its documented in the manual that you need a special cable for printers on the comm port (and sure enough, there's a complete schematic of a totally non standard cable). Anyway, finally did make the cable. Now I move to Cambridge, and once again some problem with Manuscript. Now I get annoyed, and demand a refund. No, I don't have a receipt. Finally, get some supervisor to agree to a refund (after *he* tried to get a hold of tech support and couldn't!!!). The check finally arrived this january. The whole process took almost 9-10 months. Couldn't believe them. Milan .