Apple Logic Pro /LogicExpress Discussion

On Wed, 20 Apr 2005, YAVUZ AKYAZICI wrote:

> I just tried to point Apple's and Emagic's wrong doing in a polite way,
> LUG moderator did not approve the message.
> I unsubscribed from LUG.
> I am very close to swearing off Apple and Emagic.
> I am going to give it a few days to calm my self down.

Speaking as someone who's gone through a few corporate mergers, I can tell 
you that there's usually a long, long period of adjustment when it comes 
to the support staff.  The bigger the companies, the worse the confusion.  
I've had to deal with people calling me for support about products I 
didn't even know we made, over a year after the merger.  It's poor 
interorganizational communication that's behind it.

I'm guessing Emagic and Apple haven't worked out who does what in terms of
customer support, since on the grand scale of Apple's software and
hardware base, there are probably a lot more calls about OS X printing
problems than there are about Logic, especially older versions, so it's
not a top priority.  It's probably even worse if they've outsourced their
front-level support, because then you get some guy who is familiar with
all the basics but has no clue about anything specific.  I spent 3 hours
on the phone with Dell once trying to convince some outsourced support guy
that my brand-new Dell laptop's bluetooth adapter was in fact a factory
component and no, I shouldn't be calling Intel about it.  That sort of 
thing is a nightmare.

Tech support is troublesome even in the best case.  The easiest way I've
found to deal with ths fingerpointing is to document everything.  Get
support peoples' names and extensions, and if they redirect you to
somewhere else, ask for specific contact information for that redirect so
you can be sure that the support guy isn't just tyring to pass you off to
close the call and up his personal rating.  Then, if calling the new
support people, tell them you were referred specifically to the new people
by person x at extension1234 so if they aren't the right person either,
they can pinpoint the communication failure.  Keep hounding them for a
specific name for support, and if they don't give you a straight answer
(i.e. "just call apple's main number") then ask to speak to a manager and
start all over again.  It's furstrating, but basically if you're dilligent
enough you'll either get where you need to go or become enough of a
problem to the support staff that they'll address your issue just to make
you stop.  This procedure has worked well for me on many occasions.


_______________________________________________________
Eric Oehler / wonko@... / www.nulldevice.com
Synthetic music for synthetic people.