No questions answered = no sales

Comments

• felix_at_home

  January 2005 edited 3:06PM

  me too. i'm very disappointed with the support. Even as a paying customer it took 2 weeks with a ticket which became as answer: not possible due to fastrep logic....
  
  I'm just wondering, the fastrep organisation is that just Alexander with some parttime freelancers...? Then I understand it, but it is still no good. It is so quiet here that I've got the idea that fastrep is dieing? Too many alternatives?
  
  If I google things up... it has been better with support...
• feamster

  January 2005 edited 3:06PM

  With all of the alternatives (I've purchased Rave, Report Builder, Quick Reports pro, and crystal. I can tell you that none of the products are perfect. I was considering purchasing their most expensive report version but now, because of time constraints, I've upgraded Report Builder. They are slow to come out with updates but they have good support and the forums get great attention from their support staff. If I had a product as nice as Fast Report I'd patrol the forums whenever possible and respond in some way to every post. That encourages customer loyalty and a enthusiastic customer brings in more enthusiastic customers.
  
  Well maybe next year when I'm shopping around for replacement tools.
  
  Good Luck
  
• djangman

  January 2005 edited 3:06PM

  I think you'll see much more activity on the newsgroups.
• tcmdvm

  January 2005 edited 3:06PM

  First, I am sorry you have had such a bad experience. However, did you carefully read all of the documentation before using Fastreport and look at the demos? I have been using FastReport since 2.4 days and still find myself referring to the documentation often as well as the demos.
  
  Really from your description I am not really sure what your are trying to do anyway. You might post an example in the binaries in the newsgroups to help us better understand what your are trying to do.
  
  If you are trying to use the RTF to produce columns I doubt you can ever get them to align properly. You can use the memo to produce columns that are formatted and that will align.
  
  Terry C. Mitchell
• feamster

  January 2005 edited 3:06PM

  djangman wrote:

  I think you'll see much more activity on the newsgroups.

  Actually I posted to the newsgroup first. No response there either. Looks like you guys purchased a fine product, although an orphaned one.
• FRNL Hoogeveen - Netherlands

  February 2005 edited February 2005

  I have seen your posts in this thread. As FastReport distributor I feel kind of responsible if your support questions are not answered.
  
  There is one point though... A newsgroup or forum is in my opinion not the place to look for support. That is where support tickets are for.
  
  One of the folks who posted in this thread is complaining very loud, but only posting complaints and bug reports, expecting the FastReport folks to spend their day in browsing the forum. I've seen 47 posts, all negative or bug reports just thrown in the air.
  
  I wonder.. You all are software developers. Would you spend a part of your day on browsing your forum and newsgroups and after that spend some extra hours (work late) to catch up the time you spent on your forum?
  
  If it was about your software, how would you look at your complaints? What if your customers would ask their sales questions on your forum or post bugreports there?
  
  I don't think a forum is the place to ask sales questions or post bugs. You cannot expect anyone to be browsing through forums and newsgroups looking for sales or support questions..
  
  Anyway.. If you have sales questions or a problem using FastReport, post your questions or send them to me by mail. Bug reports can be done through the FastReport website. There is a support link in the left pane.
  
  If you don't respond to this invitation, then I suppose you had your chance and you will stop complaining about support and pre-sales, even more because these questions would be answered if you used the appropriate channels for that.
  
  I know this is not an utter friendly post. I dare to write all of this because I know FastReport for some years now and I started selling FastReport because I became very enthousiastic about the product which is working very well. That is why I dare to offer you support or an answer to questions that you may have.
  
  Regards,
  Teo
  (Distributor of FastReport in Holland)
• gworboys

  February 2005 edited 3:06PM

  FRNL wrote:

  [snip]
  There is one point though... A newsgroup or forum is in my opinion not the place to look for support. That is where support tickets are for.
  [snip]
  I don't think a forum is the place to ask sales questions or post bugs. You cannot expect anyone to be browsing through forums and newsgroups looking for sales or support questions.
  [snip]

  Where I look for support depends partly on the sort of product/organisation I think I am dealing with. When I need to talk to Microsoft I go to their KB first, then I go to their support lines etc. (I generally ignore their forums and newsgroups, too much noise and too many people wanting to be "smart" without being helpful.)
  
  When dealing with development software I generally go to their forums/listgroups first (I really dislike newsgroups, not sure why but I've always had trouble with newsgroup software). The reasons for this are:
  
  Often I do not know whether a particular issue is a bug or whether it may be my mistake. By posting the issue to a forum two things become possible: 1. Someone may point out that I am doing something wrong, or should be doing it in another way. 2. I (and the software developers) get the chance to see if other people have experiencing the same problem.
  
  Similarly for feature request ideas. Posting first to a forum lets me find out if my idea is "barking up the wrong tree", that there may be better ways of doing the same thing. It also lets other people respond with "yes thats a good idea, can we have that please" - so that the software developers can get some feedback on whether the feature request is important to many people.
  
  
  To me that is the whole idea of running forums and newsgroups, to let the community of users contribute to both the support and the development effort by sharing their problems and their ideas. So YES, I do believe that FR developers should be monitoring the lists to notice bugs and feature requests.
  
  To that end I think FR has made a problem for itself. The newsgroups and forums should not be separate (they should use an integrated system that can be participated in using newsgroups, email listgroups or web interface - witness Yahoogroups for example). There are also too many different groups. It becomes too difficult to decide what belongs where, especially when there is so much overlap between most of the products.
  
  I am not unhappy with the support. I recently posted three items, two have received adequate feedback the third ("Additional aggregate functions" an idea for new functions that I am willing to contribute to FR) seems to have been ignored. I dont really mind about that third item, if you dont want it I will continue to maintain it in my own copy of FR.
  
  Perhaps I have spent too much time in open source and other products where users are encouraged to contribute more than just problems. FR is not expensive, I dont demand huge amounts of support for such a moderate price. However I do believe that FR could benefit from using its user community to better effect.