Re: Informix support: Where are you?

In article 19122@informix.com, dranney@informix.com (David Ranney) writes: -> ->You paint with a pretty broad brush there, Greg. -> ->Your comments disturbed me since I used to work in the front line tech support ->organization here, so I took the liberty of looking up your old cases. With ->three exceptions your cases were just quick one sentence questions on the order ->of what product is needed to call C from perform. -> Thank you David for pointing out what is a common problem for all Tech Support engineers. Lets face it Tech Support (for any company) is a thankless job. I too worked the front line of Informix's Tech Support line and was also suspect of Greg's generization, but unfortunately I didn't have access to the database to expose the truths. It's too bad, but it seems that no matter what you do for some people all they can remember is the one instance (or in this case the no instance) that they got bad news. If people could just realize that tech support can't always provide workarounds (some problems just don't have them) and patches (for any "real" product patches go thru many months of QA before being released to the public) maybe Tech Support engineers wouldn't spend 50% of there "career shelf life" trying to find a different career. As one poster said in an earlier note, Informix employees often provide very insightful information and tips on the net. In my opinion this is far beyond the call of duty. In fact it may just be too far. As I remember Informix charges money for Tech Support, so if they answer questions on the net from non-paying individuals they have exceeded any expectations I could have from any company. As David noted Tech Support can only help influence the dirrection a product goes. If this was not your expectation of what a Tech Support group does maybe you should talk to your sales person and stop slamming the people for not meeting your self-set requiremnets.