Useless Customer Support
on 10.04.05, 04:36pm in software • comments (2)
I thought I’d seen it all when I had my little email exchange with Nero regarding it’s crappy support of Nero MediaHome. But, this is just classic.
I picked up Vegas Movie Studio last weekend, based off my experiences with the trial version and comments people left me. While Vegas works fine, installing and running DVD Architect Studio greeted me with a lovely crash on startup. I went ahead, uninstalled and reinstalled - same thing, so I ended up logging into Sony’s website, sent them the description of the problem, even attached log files, told them the DLL that was crashing (and where), etc.
Today, I received a response: "I am sorry to hear that when you are trying to run the DVD, you are getting an error message. I suggest that you uninstall Sound Forge Audio Studio, using the Add/Remove Programs utility in the control panel. Then go into the Program Files folder in the C drive and into the Sony and Sony Set-up folders there and delete the Sound Forge Audio Studio folders within. After doing so, re-install Sound Forge Audio Studio."
Couple points:
- I don’t own Sound Forge Audio Studio. The product I’m having problems with is DVD Architect Studio.
- I already uninstalled and reinstalled, no go.
- The problem (which I can also duplicate in Sony Movie Studio) occurs on CDRom detection - for some reason their sfspti2.dll is crashing. Obviously, the information I sent them is far more technical of a description than an average end user would send, you’d think they’d pass it on to technical support.
- I still have software that doesn’t even run.
Far too aggravating of an experience. It’ll be interesting to see what their next email will be, but meanwhile I’m left with a useless piece of software now.
Update: More useless email from Sony. This is the latest response: "I suggest that you uninstall DVD Architect Studio 3.0, using the Add/Remove Programs utility in the control panel. Then go into the Program Files folder in the C drive and into the Sony and Sony Set-up folders there and delete the DVD Architect Studio 3.0 folders within. After doing so, re-install DVD Architect Studio 3.0. Hopefully the issue will be resolved."
Um, didn’t I already do that? Twice?
Jeff Atwood (October 5, 2005 @ 10:26 am)
Yes, but in their defense, a google search for that DLL returns hits on “Sound Forge”. So that DLL must be a part of Sound Forge bundled with Vegas.
Does this happen across multiple different computers?
Grover (October 6, 2005 @ 11:17 am)
If you are at all technically inclined, nearly all software tech support is useless until about the 4th contact. The first level support will generally know far LESS about it than you are, and just find the pre-written response that is the closest to your response based on a quick scan of your request. Most are specifically instructed not to move things up to the higher levels unless you are extremely insistent.