reporting to customer reports.

[cook@RIVERSIDE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM (Kimberly L. Cook)]

    Date: Tue, 4 Dec 1990 09:24 EST
    From: dmitchell@APCTRC.trc.amoco.com (Donald H. Mitchell)

	Date: Mon, 3 Dec 90 17:15 PST
	From: CStacy@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM (Christopher Stacy)

	    Date: Mon, 3 Dec 90 19:32 EST
	    From: pc@ctt.ctt.bellcore.com (Peter Clitherow)

	    I've sent a few (3 or so) reports in to
		    "customer-reports@riverside.scrc.symbolics.com"
	    over the last two weeks or so.  i've had no response at all from them,
	    not even an acknowledgement of the form ".... has been assigned incident
	    number <90-12-03....>".

	Your reports are being received, and are waiting to be handled by some
	(slightly backlogged) software support person.

    Sometime last summer Symbolics changed their software support categories to
    basic, basic+, and red phone where there's an additional $200/month charge (my
    cost, yours may vary) for basic+ and it "guarantees" a 24 hour response and a
    $500/month surcharge for red phone with a "guaranteed" 2 hour response.
    Seeing that under my current support I've almost never seen quicker than 3 or
    5 day response and often no response (I am paying for support), I wonder what
    quality and quickness of response people who are purchasing the new surcharged
    packages are seeing?  Paying $6M per year over and above the basic $4.5M for
    software support to cover my 4 hosts seems painful unless people really are
    seeing quality and timely response.  I'm afraid that all I'll see is that they
    will pass the problem to the developers and get back to me whenever the
    developers respond (which is almost always what I hear now).

We generally respond to phone messages with the two hour limit.  Certainly all
calls are responded to within the 24 hour response time.  With mail reports, we
try very hard to respond - with as least an acknowledgement - within the 24
hour limit.  

As you know, most of the bug reports we receive from you pertain to  UX and
x-windows.  Unfortunately, these are both areas where we are lacking in expertise.
We have hired a new support person who is knowledgeable in this area and have plans
for training other staff.  Hoepfully, you will see a large improvement in the
speed of responses to these questions.

    A related question is whether the people not purchasing the guaranteed
    response packages are guaranteed to ever get a response?  Is it up to
    Symbolics to decide whether to respond to a bug report?

We always respond to every question unless told to cancel the incident by the
customer.  I realize that sometimes the answer may not be one that you like,
such as "fixed in the next release", but not all problems are susceptible
to an easy solution.


    Don Mitchell			dmitchell@trc.amoco.com
    Amoco Production Company	(918) 660-4270
    Tulsa Research Center
    P.O. Box 3385, Tulsa, OK 74102