On 12/20/2011 3:37 AM, Alan Bourke wrote: > Though you don't mind paying for individual support incidents as long as > you're not hit for the back charges, I assume from that ? > > Bugs are one thing, but if you have no ongoing support contract, and > someone from the software vendor has to spend a lot of hours > troubleshooting a problem to discover that the issue is actually > environment-related, who pays for their time ? Do you? Does Microsoft or > the AV company that caused the problem? Does the software vendor ?
For some reason, this reminded me of Gene Wirchenko's story about fixing a printer issue that took him hardly 5 minutes. The client didn't want to pay for Gene's expertise to handle the solution since it was fixed so quickly. Anyone else remember that one? Alan's got a point. There's much more time involved in R&D sometimes that isn't obvious to the customer. I hear what you're saying about support. Here's what I do with my customers to help "make it right:" I charge them for 24 hours of support at roughly 1/2 my regular rate. At the end of the year, whatever balance hours have not been used on support are then credited to them toward NEW development. So, they see it as a value whereby they're covered in support AND they do not lose any money because at least it buys them SOMETHING rather than something like insurance for a person who never uses it. It may not be as lucrative, but my customers appreciate it and I appreciate the continued business. -- Mike Babcock, MCP MB Software Solutions, LLC President, Chief Software Architect http://mbsoftwaresolutions.com http://fabmate.com http://twitter.com/mbabcock16 _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/4ef09a12.4030...@mbsoftwaresolutions.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
