First let me preface this with the fact that I am not getting paid by
Ipswitch nor is anyone I know for that matter
As far as tech support goes, it seems to be on a general decline for just
about everyone in the industry. I can only assume it is because of the
world wide shortage of IT professionals. If you know enough to be fully
qualified to work the tech support/help desk you can get better money
elsewhere in the industry. I work at a local ISP and one of the ways we can
compete against the bigger operations is that we try to help our customers
with any and all computer problems. In doing so we often speak with the
tech support folks from software & hardware venders as well as the local
telcos. I am amazed at the over all number of know nothing, slack jawed,
moth breathing inbreed miscreants that seem to some how get hired to answer
the telephone. (sorry if this upsets anyone, you should only take it to
heart if it applies to you). But I guess what keeps these companies going
is that one guy you get occasionally who knows the product/service inside
&out. He's the guy who can take the vaguest customers description of the
problem and diagnose it's cause and solution over the telephone. I think
Ipswitch probably has a few of both types, I've been luck to get some of the
later in all of my dealings with them. Hope they can the incompetents and
hire more of the second kind.
I think that this Forman is a good idea and have encouraged other companies
to follow this idea as it seems a quick way to get candid comments from the
real world as well as promulgating an ongoing dialog amongst it's users.
Hopefully Ipswitch will use the opinions and comments aired here to guide
them in the design and improvement of v7.0 of Imail.
(Do I get my free copy now?) lol
I have to give kudos to Dell on the last service tech we had visit. Our
back up tape drive failed and he was here first thing the next day and the
affected machine was off line for 15 whole minutes. In all of 30 minutes he
was here and gone, to include the fresh cup of coffee we offered him at 8:50
in the morning.
Kevin Childers
Mail Administrator
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Carolina's Fastest Internet Service Provider
www.NetQuick.net
(910) 486-7845 Ext. 23
(888) 228-0312
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bill Landry" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, August 25, 2000 12:05 PM
Subject: RE: [IMail Forum] Fw: "cocky" support - IPSWITCH, PLEASE READ THIS
> Wow, I rarely participate on the list anymore (mostly just monitor), but
> I've been using IMail for about 4.5 years, and gone through the many
> upgrades and patches during that time period, and been on this list, it
> seems like, forever. And my biggest complaint with Ipswitch has always
been
> that their tech support is the worst I've ever seen (non-responsive,
lacking
> product knowledge, rude). If you report a bug that they can't resolve,
they
> will never respond to your e-mails to support. I once had to go all the
way
> to the president of Ipswich to get a problem resolved and then he got John
> Junod (vice president of research and development) personally involved and
> finally got the problem resolved.
>
> It was a major pain having to go this route to even get acknowledgement of
> the problem and it took weeks before I ever got a response from anyone,
and
> then it was a response from the president of Ipswitch, Roger Greene. I
> don't recommend that everyone go this route, but someone at an executive
> level needs to be made aware of our frustrations with tech support and
their
> "deaf-ear syndrome", and with the product, in general. The fact that they
> sell their product on its feature set, then can't and won't support it, is
> appalling! I guess the place to start with complaints is with Eric
> Shanbrom, director of technical services:
>
> http://www.ipswitch.com/Company/Press_Releases/000717_Shanbrom.html
>
> and then work your way up the chain to Roger Greene, President of Ipswich,
> if you don't get resolution along the way.
>
> Mark, good luck on your quest to get some resolve to your issues here.
> Please keep all of us on the list posted on your progress. I hope that
you
> have better luck than many of us have had in the past--changing products
is
> a drastic, and hopefully unnecessary, move (we'll see). I am always
hopeful
> that things are changing for the better at Ipswitch, but it is these kinds
> of continued complaints that lead me to believe that it is a corporate
> culture problem, and that's a problem that's hard to overcome.
>
> Bill Landry
> Director, Network Services
> Pointshare
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark McDonald [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Friday, August 25, 2000 4:11 AM
> To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'
> Cc: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'; '[EMAIL PROTECTED]';
> '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'; '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'
> Subject: RE: [IMail Forum] Fw: "cocky" support - IPSWITCH, PLEASE READ
> THIS
>
>
> Hi Patrick/Ipswitch,
>
> I don't know why it needs to come down to this, but we're starting
> to look for alternatives to replace IMail on our mail servers due to the
> lack of support/fixes for *known* bugs that have went untouched for over 6
> months (unacceptable for businesses that depend on email). I don't
> understand why IPSwitch continues to work so hard on new releases without
> first fixing the major bugs in the old versions.
>
> We purchased IMail v5.0 and shortly after that v6.0 came out
> introducing even more bugs. I never thought I'd say this but IMail is
more
> buggy than any Microsoft Product. Microsoft will fix something if it
> becomes public and is a big problem, yet hundreds and thousands of
messages
> go through the IMail forums about these problems with no resolutions. Why
> haven't the following *major* problems been fixed in the last 6-8 months:
>
> * IMail needs to block users from adding 50 aliases if this will
> crash the server (which it does). It's ridiculous to hear from support
> that "It's designed to crash after 50 aliases are added, it's your
> responsibility to make sure the domain host admins don't add more
> than 50 aliases". That is a bug no matter what IPSwitch says, even if
> IPSwitch doesn't consider it a bug, FIX IT, everybody complains about
> this.
>
> * SQL7 Support, SQL2000 is almost out already. What is the hold-up?
> Every product under the sun supports SQL7 and we have to rely on an
> unsupported DLL from Mr.Nice should we decide to switch to SQL. This is
one
> of our biggest gripes as we need to migrate to SQL, yet can't afford to
> switch to an unsupported product.
>
> * SMTP service constantly crashing on certain message files and
> hanging ALL SMTP traffic until that corrupt message file is removed. I
> got off the phone with tech. support (quite pissed off I may add) after
they
> told me to delete all 8,000 messages from today and yesterday out of the
> spool directory and that it should fix the problem. I'm sure it
> would, but we're not going to delete 8,000 messages from our customers.
We
> ended up moving all the files out of the spool directory and slowly
> feeding them in until it crashed. How long did it take? 6 hours to
restore
> mail service to normal after the initial 3-4 hours figuring out
> exactly what the problem was. Totally unacceptable.
>
> * ADDUSER.EXE - Honestly, how hard is it to have ADDUSER.EXE add
> host admin privileges to a user? We're talking about adding a single
> character to the registry/database.
>
> * ETRN support working correctly. I've been through this once, but
> here it is again. Lets say you have 30 normal domains setup in IMail and
> 10 domains setup for ETRN (NOT SETUP IN IMAIL, JUST THE HOSTS FILE AS IT'S
> SUPPOSED TO BE). Now, turn on "Relay for Local Hosts Only" and all
> the ETRN customers email bounces all over the place and never gets
> delivered.
>
>
> A few other features MANY people have asked for (not bugs):
>
> * Standardized Web Interface such as .ASP Files calling a DLL or
> ODBC connection to modify users/domains so modifications can tie in
> with other modules instead of the proprietory Web Messaging Interface.
>
> * Able to call ADDUSER/ADDDOMAIN from a remote PC with an admin
> user/password as Mediahouse does with their liveStats
> (http://www.mediahouse.com)
>
> * Better Web-Templates - Our development department would be more
> than happy to design a nice set and give them to IPSwitch if that's
> what it takes.
>
>
>
> I would like nothing more than to get a response from somebody at
> Ipswitch with an explanation, possibly from a developer or somebody who
> really know what they're saying. We offered to send in the actual file
that
> caused the problem on the SMTP32 process and the tech said "no, we already
> know what it is, we don't need it". If that's the case, shouldn't it have
> been fixed by now?
>
> Thanks for your time, I look forward to a response.
>
> -Mark McDonald
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> The Siteserver Network!
> Voice: 800.610.9856, Ext. 231 - Fax: 888.333.2710
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Patrick Mast, WinFakt! [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Friday, August 25, 2000 1:26 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: RE: [IMail Forum] Fw: "cocky" support
>
>
> Scott,
>
> > How is your evaluation on this product? We're considering
> > conversion to VOPMail. We're sick of hearing "Imail is designed that
way"
> > from their tech support on something that is CLEARLY a bug.
> Let me know what you think about VOPMail. I'm intrested too.
>
> regards,
>
> Patrick Mast
> www.PatrickMast.com
>
> Please visit http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html
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>
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>
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