Have you tried re-installing it?

Filed Under Misc, News

You know what, I actually think I’ll get a reply from Ed – he is doing a good job of restoring my faith in support, if not Sage as yet. For that we’ll see how they deal with the actual support call when it goes in.

Well, to say not well would be an understatement.

I listened in on the support call that we made to Sage today. Apparently it is all the fault of someone else. Third party software you see.

No, it’s not ACT!’s fault that it incorrectly queries the OS for available TAPI interfaces. Its all to do with the way they link in you see. If the 3rd party software (a telephony interface, AFAIK, barely constitutes 3rd party software, but that’s why I’m not good enough to be a Sage tech support guy) isn’t written specifically to link in the right way with the way that ACT! links, well then the link is all wrong. And with wrong linkage – well – that’s out of supports hands! What can they do? No – of course they can’t tell ACT to requery the TAPI interfaces. No no no.

That is the sum total of the support I got. The TAPI interface was there, I uninstalled it, removed it as suggested by Ed and it still wasn’t there. I repeated this on a machine where ACT! had found the TAPI interface, and again ACT! lost it.

And this is where we got to the piece de resistance.

Have you tried re-installing it?

Why would I do that if it wasn’t ACT!’s fault? Maybe re-installing the software will rewrite the third party software’s bad linkage?

Why yes … that makes sense …

Whilt I commend Ed for trying to offer support, I condemn the actual support you get off them – especially the chap who tried to tell me the story of the never ending linkage. It was a stream of rubbish that nearly rivalled the salesperson who once told me the difference between a 486SX and a 486DX was that a DX could have an internal modem!

Sometimes, just sometimes, the person calling in for support actually has a fairly good handle on all things IT. Trying to baffle them with bullshit is a poor tactic in these cases -especially when you’re called on it and asked ‘how does ACT! query TAPI interfaces?’ and the best you can manage is ‘support doesn’t write the software’. This underlines your understanding of the problem and indicates that perhaps you are out of your depth a little.

Good luck buying support from Sage. You’ll probably end up spending good money to hear ‘it’s 3rd party software you see, not designed to link it properly with our linkage. Have you tried re-installing it?’.

Cunswups 🙁

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Sage – The End?

Filed Under Misc, News

And for the final chapter in the ongoing crusade between firstline Sage Corporate Support and poor little old me? Or alternatively, the final chapter in the ongoing crusade between corporate greed and the poor end user?

Thanks, I’ve put the note on the account you’ve given.

Thanks Ed – appreciate it. We’ll see if support can help me out on this issue.

In exceptional circumstances (such as this) we may be able to offer one-off courtesy calls to assist customers who have been unable to set up and configure their software within the 45 day warranty period. The majority of people, though, simply don’t need this and are up and running within that period.

We try to be flexible, as it’s very much in our interest for a customer to have the software successfully installed and being used. But for customers who think they’re likely to require support above and beyond installation after that initial 45 days (and your example below would be one of these situations, as the warranty doesn’t re-start with each new licence – just the initial purchase of the program), we offer our SageCover support contracts.

It does however still look like you are saying to your customers that they shouldn’t budget for the future. Where I am currently working is in the process of expanding – especially the IT division. We’re looking at bringing more people on board as are some of the other divisions.

What you are telling me here is to get any support off you, I have to buy the product on a case by case basis. Not to budget and grab a 10 user license when I only have 8 users, with a view to expanding and eventually using those other 2 licenses.

Because, and this is the point I appear to be unable to convey to you, you deliberately shaft the end user on the amount of support they can get without paying for it. I have to activate my license for ACT! – the 45 days should run from then. Not from the first install we do in a test environment prior to running it out in production. Not from some arbitrary timepoint completely unrelated to the installation that requires support.

Equally, if you do want extended support cover for ACT!, you’re not obliged to buy it from Sage – many of our business partners offer support services that match our own, some even going beyond what can offer here to the level of site visits, managing installation and rollout for you.

Lovely. I understand you wish to upsell people to an all inclusive, super-dooper support ‘care’ package. It’s not the point at hand though.

The fact is that unless you purchase only enough licenses to be used in 45 days, then you are sh*t out of luck if you need to call support on any of your unused licenses when you come to use them. The fact that you don’t cover BASIC OPERATION OF THE SOFTWARE is WRONG.

On a plain vanilla install, the fact that something is missing from an option screen, whilst otherwise correctly installed on the rest of the OS, is INSTALLATION / CONFIGURATION for first time use. 45 days or no 45 days, this is the sort of basic issue that you expect to get supported on without the need to resort to complaining/blogging to get the service.

I don’t care if you offer 450 days support – on the first install of your product, if it fails to correctly identify the telephony settings, the fact that I first installed it on another machine 451 days ago is completely and utterly irrelavent.

Whilst I commend you for your help in assisting me to get this problem resolved – does it strike you as reasonable that these are the hoops I have had to jump through?

I suspect not.

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Sage Part III

Filed Under Misc, News

Fair play to Ed Tysoe, he follows up on the issues! I want to publically say thanks to him for sticking with the subject.

Purchases of ACT! (and other Sage programs) include a 45-day warranty. During this period, you’re covered for support with everything – installation, setup, customisation, and more general ‘How do I use..?’ queries.

Also, any issues raised during that warranty period we’ll continue to support for as long as they take to resolve – so if something happens on the 44th day, we’ll carry on supporting that particular issue until it’s resolved.

After that time, though, in the absence of an ongoing SageCover agreement, we do offer help only with the raw installation and registration of the software. Setup of specific program features (e.g. networking, synchronisation, dialler) are not covered.

On this occasion, we’d be happy to provide support for this particular incident, but I would need your account details to record on the account that we’d offered that support.

Assuring you of our best attention at all times.

Kind regards

Ed Tysoe
ACT! Technical Support
Sage (UK) Ltd

Well, I guess I’ll email him back with our details and see what happens. I’m sure you’ll understand if I don’t paste my reply to him verbatim!

I did email Ed back and mentioned the following – ‘What I don’t understand is why you limit it to 45 days on a multi-user install. If I am setting up an office, and expect to grow that office in the immediate future (next 3 months say), I may have unused licenses that remain uninstalled after 45 days. Maybe all the staff haven’t been employed, maybe we are waiting on hardware, maybe our expansion is behind schedule. There are a myriad of reasons for this. So when we install for a new user, on a license we purchased, if our intial install was over 45 days ago … what happens? We’re out of luck?

Are we meant to purchase the software single user license by single user license to be assured that we can actually get it installed? Is it pointless purchasing multi user licenses with a view to the future?’

You know what, I actually think I’ll get a reply from Ed – he is doing a good job of restoring my faith in support, if not Sage as yet. For that we’ll see how they deal with the actual support call when it goes in.

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The downside of working for someone else

Filed Under Funny, Misc, News, Rants

Apparently there are ‘rules’ about what we can send to our clients.

Apparently these ‘rules’ prohibit me sending this to my client … which I think is a crying shame 🙂

I leave the decision with you Ben. I think we have tried very hard to make you happy with mycompanyname and the services we offer but as with any relationship, it is a two way street. I hope you will look and see that we have tried to help as much as we can, but because you are a crayon wielding windowlicker, the basic simplicity of following fucking instructions appears beyond you. So yet again I have to drag my sorry ass down to your office and do the Fisher Price MyFirstVPN setup again and then show you that the black fucking magic actually works. But at least, I hope, you’ll get off my freaking back about this whole thing. I’m not your mother – it’s not my fault you’re retarded. Stop expecting me to pay for your fucking shortcomings.

I thought it had a lovely natural cadence 😉

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From my phone!

Filed Under News

Just a quick post to let you know I clawed my way back with 2 top 5 finishes and a 3rd and am back on track to keep that bankroll growing.

Also to let you know that I can now blog from my phone so you can expect more regular updates. Lucky you 😛

Posted by Wordmobi

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This Poker Business is E-Z

Filed Under News

bankroll1


$0 invested
$3.38 returned

That’s …. an INFINITE ROI!!! I pwnz0r t3h W0rld!

Still, based on winning $2 a day, I’ll come up short of $1000 by next year. On a % win however, I’ll be there very quickly. Any hints and tips from me to you?

BANKROLL MANAGEMENT.

’nuff said

And a yaboo sux0rz to the chap who knocked me out in 2nd position in my last SnG … damn flush draws 😛 (Actually – ncm 😉 )

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T3h Pok3rz

Filed Under News

I am officially a professional poker player as of this weekend!

To quote The Free Online Dictionary on the subject :

pro·fes·sion·al
adj.

1. a. Of, relating to, engaged in, or suitable for a profession: lawyers, doctors, and other professional people.
b. Conforming to the standards of a profession: professional behavior.
2. Engaging in a given activity as a source of livelihood or as a career: a professional writer.
3. Performed by persons receiving pay: professional football.
4. Having or showing great skill; expert: a professional repair job.

Whilst I definately fall outside of the scope of 1,2 and 4 – I’m actually getting paid to play. Well I’m winning so I’m calling that my ‘wage’

So – how much is a professional like myself earing? I entered two freerolls recently (meaning you don’t have to pay to play) and in the first one I finished 31st out of 4438 players and won … wait for it … $0.90!! Obviously most of it I am having sent offshore for tax reasons but I’m going to keep some to try and grind into a little more.

The second freeroll I donked out just after making the money as it was late O’Clock, the Super Bowl was on and I was ab-so-lute-ly knackered so I won $0.25 for finishing in 550th position!

So now I am a wealthy, independant poker player with over $1 to my name. Who knows how much I can parlay this into?

My aim? $1000 by this time next year. I’ll keep you posted how I get on!

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A Moral Dilemma Part II

Filed Under News

I recently blogged about a moral dilemma that I was having concerning whether or not to contact the hard working author of some software to advise them about a fundamental weakness in their licensing scheme.

Well – I broke 🙂 I was using the software last night and exploring some of the new featurees and I decided now was the time. So I emailed the author last night and explained to him that I had found a flaw and wondered if we could work together to resolve it. I am perfectly happy to sign NDAs as long as he is happy to promise not to perform any legal shenanigans.

I’ll keep you updated with how I get on (as of yet he has not replied) – I hope he takes the friendly email in the spirit it was sent, one of wishing to work together.

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MCP, MCSA, MCSA:Security, MCSE, MCSE:Security, CompTIA Security+

Filed Under News

aka bb goes legit!

Just got back from Atlanta where I have successfully completed all of the above qualifications.

A big shout goes out to Easy E (the O.G.), my brother Ray, ex-SpecOps blokey Dave T and all the other guys and gals I met whilst out there.

Props to ex-Marine Diego who made the rookie error of challenging the Brit to competitive drinking, only to disappear completely before the end of the evening. Now I’m not sure but I think that normally means I win by default.

Apologies to Jenna and Ray for throwing them in the pool. Many thanks to Ernest for taking me shooting and generally looking after me. Including introducing me to Crown Royal and Red Bull. Which meant I would also spend a whole day in class wondering when it would like to stop spinning.

Good luck to Fighter Pilot Doug and mad Dan who were staying on to do more study.

Thanks for the good times. Time to dust off the CV and polish it up with my new sparkly qualifications.

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1:21:27

Filed Under News

This post is purely to say how proud I am that Mrs bb and Friend of Minty both did the Nike 10k run in London this last weekend in the stunning time of 1hr 21mins and 27sec – a rate of 8min/km.

Both of them have had interrupted training schedules and Mrs bb was 50:50 to even make the run due to some cold/flu like symptoms she was suffering with a few days before.

But they both struggled through the pouring rain and cold conditions to post a time that was considerably better than they hoped – and that is all one can ask of them.

CONGRATULATIONS to the both of you!!! The Kersh and I are both very, VERY, proud of you both.

WELL DONE

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