"Alun Jones [MS MVP]" wrote in message
. ..
In article , "D.Currie"
wrote:
The advice I offer on the phone costs me as little as what responding on
these newsgroups does. And the ones on the phone have the potential of
becoming customers.

A lot of people make this same assumption when posting to Usenet - that
they
are engaging in a dialogue, that only their correspondents are involved
in.
For every person that writes a post in Usenet, there are at least a dozen,
up to several hundred, that read that post. The advice you offer here may
be more valuable than advice you offer over the phone, which is very
definitely a one-to-one medium.

I wasn't commenting on how many people get helped per message, just that
helping on the newsgroup and helping on the phone "cost" me the same as far
as my effort is concerned. And the only reason I said that was because
someone else had called me a fool for helping people who aren't customers.
The newsgroups is less likely to yield paying customers, but I do it anyway,
as do many others.


Actually I've gotten quite a few customers who've come
in for service after calling, since some people, even with instruction,
are
skittish about doing certain things with their computer. And I have quite
a
number of customers who ignore their warranty and bring the computer to
me
for repair. Or I diagnose they problem, they get parts under warranty,
and I
replace them. So it's not all bad.

There's a lot to be said for treating everyone nicely - it's a great way
to
attract new business. "I shan't buy my computer from the company that
treated me like an irritation even when they were supposed to be obliged
to
help me; I'll buy it from the company that treated me like a valued
customer
even though I hadn't bought anything from them yet". Of course, there has
to be some balance, otherwise you get freeloaders taking advantage of you,
or even just a wealth of well-intentioned newcomers who just haven't got
around to buying from you, and put you in the red as a result.

There's always a point where I can say that I don't have time to chat, or
that the problem is not one that can be fixed easily over the phone. But
there's always some lagtime in the day, and it's better to be doing
something than nothing.


As far as the enforceability of it, there's no way they could get all of
the
ones who don't provide support, but they could crack down on the most
blatant offenders. And you'd think it would be easy for them to muscle
companies like Dell and Gateway and the like. When people call for
support
and day, "Dell won't help me" they've got the evidence right there.

Of course, the problem with that is that it takes a lot of effort to
allege
contract breach, and when you do, it's not generally a quick or
satisfactory
solution that comes out of the other side.

Suppose so. The ones I'd really like to hang are the ones who sell supposed
"full" versions of the OS, then when the customer gets it, it's OEM, it
won't do an upgrade, they can't get support for MS, and they usually can't
return the product.