What Is Fair Technical Support From a Manufacturer?

VincenzoRomano asks: "One year ago, I decided to buy some 'enterprise grade' firewalls, in order to replace the old ones used by a former ISP. Before buying, I did a bit of a survey. I browsed the product 'data sheets' from the manufacturer web sites, and in some cases, asked for more details by email. I finally choose a top product, that had been on the market for a year and a half, from a very well known and reputable company. The product showed a number of issues as soon as it was unpacked and put to work, that you would not expect from something 'enterprise grade', like not being able to keep a VPN up and running for more than a few minutes, or doing bad IP routing on our LAN. I've spent the last year to make the equipment working, accordingly to both their data sheets and the features expected from an 'enterprise grade' product. Important issues are still open while the technical support is actually relying on my own stuff and setup, and on my personal availability in order to do troubleshooting, firmware beta testing and other experiments. I've finally decided that the product was far from being ready to market or even usable for beta testers, and have requested some kind of compensation for all the job I had to do. What's your opinion about such a behavior in a company? Is it fair?"

Welcome to IT?

[EveryNickIsTaken]

What you're describing was fairly commonplace back in 1994-1997 when I was helping start up a regional ISP. To a certain extent, it was "neat" that we were finding bugs in brand new routers (Cisco + Bay were the usual culprits). Of course, it was a pain in the ass that it'd typically take hours, days, or weeks to realize that the hardware/software was bugged.

As technology has progressed, things certainly have gotten better. Regardless, you need to realize that "shit breaking" is part of IT. Don't like it? Leave the field.

Re:Welcome to IT?

[Sobrique]

Sadly so. Almost any product out there has bugs. If you're lucky, the really sucky ones are already gone. But only if you're lucky. I have memories of a NAS upgrade, that resulted in 8 TB of 'possibly corrupt' data, over long enough interval that just restoring a 'known good' backup just wasn't an option.

I'm afraid it's normal that 'new toys' have problems. Your only way of really avoiding, or at least migating this is to stay one release behind the latest and greatest. You've got good odds that by the time the 'next release' is finished, most of the real killer gotchas will have been found.

In part, it's laziness in testing. In part, it's the simple fact that it's definitely non-trivial to exhaustively test something in teh kind of intensive environment you see in the 'real world'. Things like race conditions typically don't occur often enough to be noticed in testing, but will start to crop up often enough to be a real problem in the real world.

Acceptable? No, not really. Fairly commonplace? Hell yeah.

Don't trust any .0 release. Don't trust anything that's sold to you as the 'newest and feature laden'. Ask yourself if you _really_ need that totally new and cool (and therefore almost certainly not properly tested) feature, or if actually, a revision or two back would do what you need.

With the best will in the world, a test environment will never really compete with a couple of hundred thousand people using it, for finding 'problems'.

You will almost certainly find that the EULA also includes a get out clause for exactly this kind of behaviour.

Re:

[Scott7477]

While I agree in general with your comments, I have to disagree about testing hardware in real world conditions. I believe that any "top" manufacturer would have a decent-sized test lab where the device in question could be hooked up to the lab network and be put through its paces. I figure such a lab could have a secure link to the Web to suck down traffic to run through the lab network. This kind of setup would allow for fairly thorough testing that would closely approximate the kind of setups that cus

Test Labs can't test Real Life

[TBone]

As an app engineer for a major web services company (if you've ever bought software or ringtones for your cellphone or handheld, there's a good chance you've used our software), I guarantee that no testing/QA process will effecively exaust the space of possible real world examples. There's just too make devices with too many configurations in too many places for a test cycle to even be able to test all the permutations.

We have binders full of test cases...that are run across multiple devices, or through

Re:

[raddan]

Firewalls have been around long enough where I simply wouldn't accept this nowadays. I put up with proprietary firewalls for years that were purchased before I was hired here. They were purchased because they had long feature lists and snappy GUIs. But in practice, they were garbage. Their state tables were small, so they often dropped connections. Their VPN implementations were buggy (in fact, a 'factory authorized field consultant' from this one particular company said that no one *really* knew how t

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Regardless, you need to realize that "shit breaking" is part of IT.

And that is why people in general have a dim view of computers... Not to mention the people who operate them.

I think the computer world in general needs to do a lot more in this regard - consider a television. It's got a relatively simple interface (depending on the model, but they're all usually pretty similar), and it's got "uptime" and MTBF that would make any server manufacturer more than proud. Why would the general population want t

Re:

[BVis]

I think the computer world in general needs to do a lot more in this regard - consider a television. It's got a relatively simple interface (depending on the model, but they're all usually pretty similar), and it's got "uptime" and MTBF that would make any server manufacturer more than proud.

A television is a far simpler device than a modern computer. No hard drive, no networking, etc. Comparing a television with a PC is about the same as comparing a digital watch to a PC. The more complicated and power

Re:

[ScuzzMonkey]

For someone who had such a problem with the generalization "the computer world in general" you've gone on to make an even less accurate one with "Given the option, programmers write good code. They're rarely given the option."

I'll add mine: most code is complete crap. A small percentage of programmers write good code, the rest churn out drek that requires a lot of testing and review to pass muster (which, if anything, reinforces your point about QA). They are no more immune to featuritis or feature creep

Re:

[BVis]

You're right about that. Looking at my own code is all the confirmation I really need :)

Re:

[fruitbane]

You know, this kind of scathing response doesn't help the discussion. The poster does have a point. We have allowed the complexity of computers and software to become an excuse for releasing crap products that have not been adequately developed or tested. It does not matter if the programmer or the manager or the CEO is responsible, if the user is the one who has to effectively help beta test a commercial product the model is broken.

Let's face it, people. We have allowed our industry to become one scandaliz

Re:

[BVis]

I may have been a little strident. The point I was trying to make is that programmers aren't the only ones at fault, and the post I was replying to seemed to blame everything on lazy/incompetent programming, when the problem is more complicated than that.

"Buckling down" and getting things right from step one requires things that are anathema to modern business, such as allowing developers to drive development, giving QA the right to delay a release, and doing more than is absolutely necessary to still push

Re:

[fruitbane]

I do agree with you here. These necessary steps do seem to go against the grain of the "modern" business approach, but they are much more prevalent in IT than in other industries. The automotive and children's goods industries are heavily regulated and recalls are mandates should certain standards not be met. Does that mean the only solution to this technology crisis is to implement a level of government regulation over the commercial software industry? Some of you may balk and say the market must be allowe

Re:

[scdeimos]

You're lucky anyone even bothered to ask how long it was going to take, even if they cut the estimate in half.

Where I work it's more-often-than-not a case of someone giving us a launch date as they hand us a dodgy, maggot-ridden request for development that doesn't have enough information to develop a solution, just a bunch of mockups or screenshots of how they want things to look to the end-users. After X gets released there come a bunch of billing and business rule changes that we'd thought we had alread

Re:

[Phil246]

This is something that has come up in the last two weeks as part of the Software Engineering course im doing at Uni.
This sort of practise differs depending on the country and what is considered most important according to lecturer.

In the states, it is apparently considered that being first to market is most important rather then software quality since bugs can be fixed later on and customers are apathetic to switching even if the product is bad.

In the UK it is considered that quality of software is paramoun

Re:

[EveryNickIsTaken]

This is probably part of the reason why the UK is not known as a hotbed of IT/Software/Hardware innovation.

Re:

[gregmac]

You may be first to market but if you do a really sloppy job of it, then word will spread and you can forget about getting big contracts in the future.

One word: Microsoft.

Re:

[Eagleartoo]

I really wish I had mod points right now because you stole what I was going to say =) . Releasing a product that has to continually be patched because of it's verbosity is not my idea of a good product. When I switched to apple the only time it really screwed up is when I did something that taxed the system, and the software that was built in was like the AM/FM radio in your car. You turn it on and it works. What you are seeing in the bugginess of new hardware/software is simply greed. There hasn't be

Re:

[stu72]

All great advice but try telling that to customers.

People buy IT products on features, not reliablity or usability. If you stop developing new features to focus on reliablity, your customers will, in short order, abandon you for the guy pumping out feature after feature, however buggy.

I'm not saying this is rational, but it's how non-IT (and some IT) people make IT buying decisions, and that drives the industry.

Re:

[Phreakiture]

Of course it's not fair.

It seems like you have taken every reasonable step, especially in spending a year on it. Now take the next step.

Name them.

SLA

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to reply, but since you didn't sign an SLA, it would cost you $300 per incident.

Obligatory MS slam

[Jimbo God of Unix]

To be quite honest, this has been my personal experience with MS software. I've also had problems with various open source software, but at least with OSSs you don't necessarily expect it to be usable "out of the box" and sometimes requires a little fiddling. But with MS stuff you're paying real money for it.

James

Re:

[Sobrique]

Agreed. If you're both serious about the product and the sale, then run an eval. It takes some effort replicating your production environment, to a level where you can put this product 'in parallel' to see how it copes, but it's worth it, for exactly the reasons outlined above.

Sadly all too often, bosses don't see the 'value' of a test environment. There's plenty of large companies out there, that do, and they don't do it just because they like to waste money - My current employer buys everything in 4s. On

Re:

[tlhIngan]

Agreed. If you're both serious about the product and the sale, then run an eval. It takes some effort replicating your production environment, to a level where you can put this product 'in parallel' to see how it copes, but it's worth it, for exactly the reasons outlined above.

Of course, if your company is a fairly big one and you're thinking of doing a major purchase, many manufacturers will trip over themselves to let you do free evaluations for extended periods of time (easily 3 months, 6 months to a yea

Firewall

[jwilhelm]

Assuming you have set everything up correctly (and I'm not saying that to be an ass, just that a lot of times people complain about hardware and it's configured incorrectly) and it is not working as advertized, then you certainly should be upset with the manufacturer. However demanding compensation from them is a bit much. Part of your job (I am assuming) is picking the right hardware for your company. That means testing it before deployment in a production environment. If you deployed the wrong hardware (even if on paper it looked right) that's not the fault of the company.

Re:

[Sobrique]

Actually, I'm fairly sure 'Fit for purposes' is defined in various sources of consumer rights, in various legislatures.

Sadly, it seems that IT is mostly exempt.

Or maybe it's just that _my_ definition of 'fit for purpose' which goes something like 'isn't flakey, unreliable and does wierd things' is slighty different from theirs 'operates as advertised in at least 5% of possible usage scenarios for at least 5% of the time'

Re:

[bernywork]

'Fit for purpose' is defined in Australian law, and is quite often sided on the side of the consumer and not the supplier / manufacturer.

In Aus, it's defined as part of the "Trade practices Act 1974". As the parent rightly said, it's in various consumer rights and various legislatures including the US.

I would turn around and ask for a refund citing as reference all the helpdesk cases you have logged and the fact that it is not working as advertised. I don't think however I would be asking for more. The only

Re:

[abb3w]

However demanding compensation from them is a bit much.

Mostly.

However... if you have a support contract; if you have well-written and up-to-date documentation complete with change logs, describing your network infrastructure, how the widget integrates into your systems, and which of its marketing-brochure functions it is expected to perform in practice; if you have created a maintenance user account with all necessary and sufficient permissions and access to allow their technicians to diagnose and ma

Re:

[Sobrique]

Which, lets face it, is pretty disgusting behaviour from someone selling you a product. I mean, imagine the uproar at someone who sold cars under that basis.

But hey, they all do it, so at least it's _expected_ that you'll end up with a pile of bug laden rubbish.

It was your decision to purchase

[ip_freely_2000]

"I finally choose a top product, that had been on the market for a year and a half, from a very well known and reputable company."

Something sounds fishy here. A 'top' product from a reputable company on the market for 18 months but it doesn't work?

(a) Since there are no names mentioned, maybe it's not a top product from a reputable company.
(b) You are trying to use the product for something it was not designed.
(c) You're a customerzilla that is a networking legend in his own mind.

In any event, you chose the product so you've got to deal with it. You either toss the device or continue your CYA exercise and get something out of your 'investment'. Apart from an apology and updated firmware, they really owe you nothing. Maybe they can offer you a job. But would you want to work for a company that would allegedly ship bad products?

Re:

[Aladrin]

On top of all that, he either totally ignored all the bad reviews for the product, or there were none. If there were no reviews at all, that's a sign in itself, and can be considered a bad review.

So let's assume that mysterious, but very apparently very popular firewall X did indeed have a ton of good reviews. Doesn't that pretty much leave him as an edge-case? Someone who is either using the product as it was not intended, or so incompetent that nothing the company can do will straighten th

Re:

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

So let's assume that mysterious, but very apparently very popular firewall X did indeed have a ton of good reviews. Doesn't that pretty much leave him as an edge-case?

Or the reviews were astroturf and/or advertiser influenced.

Re:

[ip_freely_2000]

ummm...if you buy IT products based on advertising
  (A) you get what you deserve
  (B) you'd better jump out of the industry before you get pushed

You took too long

[Overzeetop]

You bought it. It didn't work. Tech support couldn't fix the problem.

You had two options: work with the reduced functionality or send the product back. It sounds like you chose the former and are now regretting the decision.

Maybe you needed a custom solution that was actually outside of your budget.

What the market decides.

[Shivetya]

If a manufacturer starts losing sales due to bad word of mouth then they will either increase support or get marginalized in the environment they compete in. If people continue to buy their stuff then obviously they aren't doing enough research before buying. This is the biggest issue I have seen where bad companies persist, people love to claim doing great research and get stuck on a product because of one or two things that pique their interest losing focus on the bad sides.

If you feel as if your getting the short end of the stick then why continue to use their product ? Also, make sure others know about it. If your not willing to take the time to let others know about the issues then it can't be a major problem.

Re:

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

How about what the law decides? In most places, there is a legal requirement along the lines of "fitness for purpose" or similar. If the goods aren't, then their technical support needs to fix that, or they should expect the goods to be returned as unfit.

Re:

[Sobrique]

You are correct. However most EULAs have also got the weasel out clauses built into them.

Relative enforcibility is a different matter. It's pretty easy to say that this vacuum cleaner I bought, isn't fit for purposes, and make an assertion/demonstration as to why. It's a bit harder with a piece of software that 'works-ish'.

Re:

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

You are correct. However most EULAs have also got the weasel out clauses built into them.

You are correct. However, as you seem to have noticed yourself, there is this teensy weensy little issue of having no legal weight whatsoever. In many jurisdictions, you can't disclaim warranties of fitness for purpose etc. however many lawyerly weasel words you put into the "contract". Of course, whether EULAs can constitute valid contracts in the first place is a mostly untested question in many jurisdictions, too

Evaluation

[Neil Watson]

Vendors are usually willing to lend you a model for evaluation.

Name 'em, already...

[dos]

Let's see, an "enterprise-grade" firewall that also supports VPN connections, that in reality isn't really as good as its rep... 's' key on your keyboard broken so you can't type "SonicWALL"?

Well...

[frank_adrian314159]

What's your opinion about such a behavior in a company? Is it fair?

I'd probably call it poor, but look on the bright side - the company made money, the salesman made money and two out of three ain't bad...

Trivial solution

[Sigma 7]

The product showed a number of issues as soon as it was unpacked and put to work, that you would not expect from something 'enterprise grade', like not being able to keep a VPN up and running for more than a few minutes, or doing bad IP routing on our LAN.

Defective within 30 days. Request a return at the 29-day mark.

I've finally decided that the product was far from being ready to market or even usable for beta testers, and have requested some kind of compensation for all the job I had to do.

Don't bother r