Sender: thoth@type-a.ortge.ufl.edu Message-ID: <316BEC23.3B44C8D5@purplefrog.com> Date: Wed, 10 Apr 1996 13:13:07 -0400 From: Bob Forsman <thoth@purplefrog.com> Organization: Purple Frog Software X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.0 (X11; I; Linux 1.2.13 i486) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: info@northgate.net CC: dog@gainesville.fl.us, kaallen@type-a.ortge.ufl.edu, webmaster@zd.com, support@varesearch.com Subject: blatant untruth in advertising X-URL: http://www.northgate.net/info.html Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On your web page you say ``All Northgate customers have toll-free access to Northgate's astute technical support team which has earned numerous industry awards from PC Magazine, PC World, Computer Shopper and many others.'' After dealing with your tech support I would rewrite this phrase as ``All Northgate customers will soon get a boil on their butt the size of Winston Churchill. The dweebs at Ziff Davis can't tell Microsoft Software from bat shit (but you have to give them a break. It's a tough call).'' Just what awards did you win? I tried to get through to your tech support on Monday evening. I gave up. I tried to get through on Tuesday. I set the phone down to get some work done and was finally disconnected maybe half an hour later. I called back and the phone said "our hours are something to something CST" and my calculations indicated that it was then 30 minutes before the mentioned closing time. If you are going to terminate tech support and sales before your offices close, then I don't give a flying buick what time your office hours are. I'm on the other end of a damn phone, so I want your phone hours. Maybe if I was in the neighborhood and wanted to throw my severely confused keyboard through your window, I'd be interested in your office hours, but I'm not in the area, and I don't really have enough spare keyboards to be throwing them through windows. I called this morning from home at about 9 EDT. Your phone said you were open, but, again, didn't let me connect to any of your supposedly on-duty staff. I finally went to work at a site and used their multi-line phone to set up two tech support calls. I put them both on hold, figuring that when I noticed one of the lights was out, I could pick up the other line (the handset is rather heavy, and I do not have the neck muscles of a 20-year veteran receptionist, so no friggin way am I going to listen to your elevator music until I get a cramp) When I finally got a tech-support drone, I told him that I managed to accidentally reprogram the keyboard, and over a couple of days of poking at keys, I managed to get it to the point where absolutely nothing generated enough of a keystroke to wake my computer out of screenblank. It's a good thing this is a server and not a desktop machine. Anyway, your tech support guy asked me if I had the keyboard programming disk. Excuse me, i need a friggin disk to fix my keyboard? This better be an auto-booting disk, because I can't type a damn thing. Well, I think the reseller forgot to stick the disk and manual in the box when he shipped it to us with our computer. All we got was a diskette with some bad sectors and some even WORSE documents giving the environmental operating range of the equipment. Where can I get this keyboard programming disk? the bbs. EXCUSE ME? LONG DISTANCE PHONE CALL? Why don't you put it on the fuckin web. I'm going to have to disconnect my home machine from the internet (where, with a local phone call, I can download software from JAPAN and INDIA, but not from your fuckin BBS) and dial your long-distance phone number to MAYBE download some software, assuming I even know how to operate kermit or zmodem or whateverthefuck communications software (which predates the wheel) is needed to download from a BBS. Anyway, you guys are really lucky because there are a few things preventing me from reprogramming the next shuttle mission to involve changing the course of an asteroid to smack your corporate headquarters into a 1-mile glass crater. 1) I don't really know how to hack NASA or any other computer system 2) I think the astronauts would get suspicious about the orders 3) I don't know where to find an asteroid with a suitable orbit 4) I don't know where your corporate headquarters are 5) I would probably get in trouble with the law 6) the lame excuse for tech support was on YOUR dime. You really need to get another operator. (I would find it hard to believe that you already have more than one) Anyway, if some browbeaten tech support operator doesn't forward my complaints to you, find him and fire him. As for these Ziff-Davis magazines that gave you an award, I recomend they give you a different one: The Award for Extreme Mediocrity in Tech Support and The Award for Resisting Technical Innovation Above and Beyond the Call of Sanity (they earned this one by not putting their software on the internet. Hell, it would cost them $150/year in server fees for the whole site, why not take advantage of that to put software up?) As for the hardware, I love the keyboards. These things weigh enough to be a weapon. I love the way they come with replacement keycaps to put the Ctrl key where it belongs. When I first accidentally reprogrammed the keyboard my roommate accused me of sabotaging it to try to get it away from him. Now, drag your tech support out of the 70s. - Bob
Robert Forsman <thoth@purplefrog.com> Last modified: Fri Apr 19 15:50:54 1996