Jari Williamsson wrote:
David W. Fenton wrote:
Most companies, no matter how large or small, have a policy of
responding to any complaints that go directly to the CEO. A client of
mine was very unhappy with the support they got for their Dell laptop
and I told her to write to Michael Dell. She did, using actual paper
and a stamped envelope. A person from the President's office at Dell
called her and listened to her problems and then went out to all the
heads of the various departments involved and got her satisfaction
that she'd been unable to get any other way.
I hardily recommend writing an actual letter to the CEO of any company
that has failed you.
And if it doesn't get any results, that tells you it's not a company
with a long-term future.
But OTOH is Dell in a business that's highly competitive, with very
small profit margins. Microsoft (and even Apple to some extent) for
example, built a whole empire on customer arrogance.
Microsoft and Apple both operate within monopoly conditions -- the only
choices users have is either suck-it-up-and-take-the-crap or switch to
the other platform. With huge investments in hardware and software
which depends on one platform or the other, very few people
(comparatively) switch and most people just suck-it-up-and-take-the-crap.
In the music notation software field, it used to be very much like that
-- MakeMusic (Coda back in those days) had no real competition, so users
just had to suck-it-up-and-take-the-crap. Nowadays, though, with
Sibelius an equal partner in the notation software business and Encore
still managing to survive (although admittedly not in the same league
anymore), the notation software marketplace is much more like you
describe Dell's business -- the notation software marketplace is highly
competitive and (if you believe the financial statements) has small
profit margins.
The problem seems to be that Sibelius realizes it's not in the same sort
of marketplace that Microsoft and Apple are in, but are more in a
marketplace like Dell's while MakeMusic thinks it's still in a position
where arrogance won't matter because people won't switch no matter how
poorly they are treated. I did waste my money buying Finale2008 and I
will not make that mistake again. I have bought every upgrade since
starting with Finale (version 3.5) only to finally be handed an upgrade
which did nothing to improve what Finale2007 offered and did nothing to
fix blatant bugs of Fin2007.
Any work I do in Finale is in Fin2006 but all my new projects are in
Sibelius 5 (now in version 5.1 for the past month or so -- I'm still
waiting on Finale2008a even though both products were released at about
the same time).
Corporate arrogance only works when one truly has a monopoly marketplace.
And thank goodness, that no longer is the case with notation software.
--
David H. Bailey
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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