Always Ask for a Supervisor withTech Support: Angry Letter from Good Customer Sometimes Works

Recently, my prime computer system became very ill, requiring a complete Microsoft Windows install, followed by my trusty Symantec Systemworks program. As luck would have it, there was more wrong with my baby than I hoped; it took MANY hours, hardware changes and repeated reinstalls of Windows and Systemworks because it was off the critical list.

As you can imagine, my day was shot, and when the time came to re-register my Systemworks, a message said I had exceeded the total number of installs and call customer support. "No problem, I'm sure it's just a glitch-one call and it's OK," I thought to myself. Bzzzzzt! Wrong answer.

I groaned when an overly polite Indian voice answered and asked me to repeat my serial number eight times before she finally hung up in frustration. Perhaps my Arkansas drawl was too much for her (grin).

A second try was more successful, but he told me that if a customer makes changes in a computer-including changing memory, adding a new video card or anything that alters the hardware configuration signature-their registration server considers it a "new computer." It seems all my work to fix the computer and the changes I made, coupled with repeated installations, came across as putting the software on more machines than I had licenses to do so.

He understood the problem, as did his supervisor, but I was told (paraphrase) too bad, so sad, you have to cough up the money to buy the software again. To make matters worse, the supervisor said his supervisor "never calls anyone back because we can't call from India."

Rather than (1) pay up again or (2) buy a competitor's product, I wrote a hot letter to the company's public relations department explaining what happened and that I felt the decision was arbitrary and downright unfriendly to customers who do a lot of work on their own equipment.

Several hours later I received a follow-up letter and phone call from the department that handles this sort of problem. They apologized, saying it was a "training issue" with the Indian tech support and a check of my account showed what happened, and they could fix the problem here in the good old USA without buying new software.

Loyal readers of this space know that I always encourage them to never take no for a final answer, especially dealing with tech support. Look on the company's Web page for e-mail addresses and send your concerns (politely) to corporate. It has been my experience that most of the time efforts to either fix the problem or accommodate a customer's needs to retain them are made.

This experience also taught me that software companies look at a computer's configuration at registration. Major changes in hardware can end up being a problem if you must re-register. Caveat Emptor.