Forum behavior

Guys, I’ve been watching with interest and quietly for some time since I was alerted to some recent issues.

Since then I’ve seen many people helping, and being constructive, thank you, you know who you are.

However I’ve seen a small minority posting:

1. Pornography and NSFW posts
2. Admin – baiting
3. Rants, with no purpose other than to incite
4. Ridicule bordering on bullying

Are we going to let a couple of people ruin this for everyone? We put this forum here for us all to discuss the software, to help each other, not for a few people to commandeer for the personal entertainment. There are other places to put NSFW posts and rants, we should be professional on this forum.

We have to protect new users from abuse. We have to enforce the rules for everyone. Criticism is allowed and encouraged (prefer constructive criticism), but flagrant violation of the rules, and bullying of anyone cannot be tolerated. I have been a staunch defender of our open forum for years. Other OEM forums are closed, or non-existent, what does that say about the freedom that is offered here? Let’s respect our privileges or risk them being taken away.

If you want to respond to my plea for professionalism with some remarks about how the software has let you down, has personally screwed you out of house and home, mugged you and your brother, whatever, please don’t. The forum is for discussion, not for logging bugs. If you feel so strongly about the software (which is good), please try to actually do something constructive about the issue through official channels. Here is how.

1. First contact technical support, and report the problem. 800-343-7933. This works, I have followed many customers through the system. YES, I believe like all technical support that it is far from perfect, but at least start here so you can get your call logged and have something to whine to me about. If you don’t like to call, use this form: http://hexagonmetrology.us/contact-us.
2. If you do not receive the timely response you desire, call your sales representative. They will help.
3. If all these fail for a specific issue you have, PM me telling me what happened in technical support, who your sales rep is, and if you entered a contact request. I will follow up with each and make sure the system is working for you and for everyone. Allow me time, I do have a day job, and I'm just one person.
4. If after all that, you still don't like the response you are getting, fill out the customer survey here with your experiences: http://hexagonmetrology.us/contact-us/customer-satisfaction-survey . It is logged and reviewed.

Thanks for your professionalism in advance, please help me make this a better place.

Parents

Brian Gudauskas over 13 years ago

Large post, pretty constructive, I'll try to answer it all.

You say you like 3.7MR4, you don't pay for SMA's, yet you complain? Why complain? You are happy right? Many people are happy with the newer releases, and some are not. We put out new releases because people DEMAND them. They demand new features. If we keep selling 3.7 MR4 with no features, we not only get beat up for selling old crap, we get no new customers, and sure we get no SMA's. That's a worse situation. We do the best job we can at putting in a good mix of features without bugs. Clearly we win some and we lose some. Sure take a pot shot here at me, tell me we lose them all. We don't. But we do want to and have to listen, and we are listening to all valid criticism.

Point taken. In interest of full disclosure I have suggested at every company I have worked for that they discontinue paying SMA's I am currently working with 3.7mr4 and happy as a clam to stay there so no I haven't logged any technical support issues in years if ever, what's the point support for my version stopped a long time ago. The next thing that will be said is since I did that I have no right to complain about the software bugs so why didn't I just keep my mouth shut, and to a point you may be right but here's the thing. I don't keep my SMA's up or even want to play with the new versions because it appears to me to be the business practice of HexMet to keep pumping out releases for the sole purpose of justifying holding their hands out for more SMA money.

I can still not find anyone who can tell me what is wrong with CTRL-E, nor can I reproduce this myself. If you know what is wrong with it, can you shed some light on it? Clearly our testing shows no problem either, or it would have been fixed already. Wait, you don't use the new version, so you can't even tell me if it's working or not.

From there each and every time a new version comes out it is shortly followed by a list of things that are no longer working right, some of them egregious errors that never should see the light of day, for instance the ctrl-e issues mentioned for both 2010mr3 and 2011.

Would you prefer we release a version with a problem? Why complain about something we fixed? This just seems like bitching to me, I'll listen, but what do you want me to actually do for you here?

And please explain the here is 2010mr2, oh wait no it isn't, here it is thing.

Fill out a customer satisfaction survey if you've had an issue. I think it's the best way to handle this problem you have. No SMA required.

So my issues aren't as much the software as it is the way you do business Brian, please tell me how do I open a support ticket for that? How do I call this one in to tech support seeing how I don't have a current SMA? I would further venture to say that most of the people complaining around here are far more frustrated with the manner in which HexMet is doing business than it is the software itself (also how those business practices extend to the way the forum is being run but that's a different issue that has been covered ad nauseum).

Why are you shouting in an empty room? You are happy with 3.7, right? It's ok, 3.7 was a great version, I liked it too. Stick with that and let the new guys use the new stuff and beat it up.

It was brough up and seconded by you that if we have problems with the way things are going then we should talk with our checkbooks, ok I have done that and I'm still in an empty room shouting, I have probably cost Hex more than 30 SMA renewalls over the years but no one cares, or ever has.

I specifically said that no one is expected to log issues, just that if you have an issue our testing did not find, it could be helpful to you instead of shouting in an empty room, to actually report the problem to us. You could even get your problem solved. And that would be good for you. In an ideal world, communication goes both ways. But if you feel like you don't want to help, I respect that. You don't have to. You are right, it is our responsibility, and we will do it as best we can.

Further, I find the very idea that I, and other users (outside of your beta testers) should have to log tech support issues as insulting and offensive. It should be HexMet's responsibility to release a product that works, correctly, most of the time and not up to it's user base to be the ones to find and report issues, especially some a basic as some of the errors seen even in the error fix logs. We have all just gotten so used to it because that is what we have to do to do our jobs that somehow that became right.

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Brian Gudauskas over 13 years ago

Large post, pretty constructive, I'll try to answer it all.

You say you like 3.7MR4, you don't pay for SMA's, yet you complain? Why complain? You are happy right? Many people are happy with the newer releases, and some are not. We put out new releases because people DEMAND them. They demand new features. If we keep selling 3.7 MR4 with no features, we not only get beat up for selling old crap, we get no new customers, and sure we get no SMA's. That's a worse situation. We do the best job we can at putting in a good mix of features without bugs. Clearly we win some and we lose some. Sure take a pot shot here at me, tell me we lose them all. We don't. But we do want to and have to listen, and we are listening to all valid criticism.

Point taken. In interest of full disclosure I have suggested at every company I have worked for that they discontinue paying SMA's I am currently working with 3.7mr4 and happy as a clam to stay there so no I haven't logged any technical support issues in years if ever, what's the point support for my version stopped a long time ago. The next thing that will be said is since I did that I have no right to complain about the software bugs so why didn't I just keep my mouth shut, and to a point you may be right but here's the thing. I don't keep my SMA's up or even want to play with the new versions because it appears to me to be the business practice of HexMet to keep pumping out releases for the sole purpose of justifying holding their hands out for more SMA money.

I can still not find anyone who can tell me what is wrong with CTRL-E, nor can I reproduce this myself. If you know what is wrong with it, can you shed some light on it? Clearly our testing shows no problem either, or it would have been fixed already. Wait, you don't use the new version, so you can't even tell me if it's working or not.

From there each and every time a new version comes out it is shortly followed by a list of things that are no longer working right, some of them egregious errors that never should see the light of day, for instance the ctrl-e issues mentioned for both 2010mr3 and 2011.

Would you prefer we release a version with a problem? Why complain about something we fixed? This just seems like bitching to me, I'll listen, but what do you want me to actually do for you here?

And please explain the here is 2010mr2, oh wait no it isn't, here it is thing.

Fill out a customer satisfaction survey if you've had an issue. I think it's the best way to handle this problem you have. No SMA required.

So my issues aren't as much the software as it is the way you do business Brian, please tell me how do I open a support ticket for that? How do I call this one in to tech support seeing how I don't have a current SMA? I would further venture to say that most of the people complaining around here are far more frustrated with the manner in which HexMet is doing business than it is the software itself (also how those business practices extend to the way the forum is being run but that's a different issue that has been covered ad nauseum).

Why are you shouting in an empty room? You are happy with 3.7, right? It's ok, 3.7 was a great version, I liked it too. Stick with that and let the new guys use the new stuff and beat it up.

It was brough up and seconded by you that if we have problems with the way things are going then we should talk with our checkbooks, ok I have done that and I'm still in an empty room shouting, I have probably cost Hex more than 30 SMA renewalls over the years but no one cares, or ever has.

I specifically said that no one is expected to log issues, just that if you have an issue our testing did not find, it could be helpful to you instead of shouting in an empty room, to actually report the problem to us. You could even get your problem solved. And that would be good for you. In an ideal world, communication goes both ways. But if you feel like you don't want to help, I respect that. You don't have to. You are right, it is our responsibility, and we will do it as best we can.

Further, I find the very idea that I, and other users (outside of your beta testers) should have to log tech support issues as insulting and offensive. It should be HexMet's responsibility to release a product that works, correctly, most of the time and not up to it's user base to be the ones to find and report issues, especially some a basic as some of the errors seen even in the error fix logs. We have all just gotten so used to it because that is what we have to do to do our jobs that somehow that became right.

Thanks for the post.
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