Bug and feedback reporting

[mattbeals]

How many of us actually officially report bugs we find in software? I see on user forums such as here and other places that people find "bugs" in software. We talk about about it, we bemoan the "buggy" nature of one product, feature, etc or another. But how many people actually go to the vendor, contact support log a bug report? I also see that there are many people who say that they don't like this, or don't like that. But does anyone actually contact support or customer service and log an actual comment?

Some vendors make it very easy to report bugs and log feedback. Microsoft and Apple for example have a feature in their operating systems that can send information/crash logs back to them at the push of a button. Callas has a specific button for sending feedback and bug reports. Many vendors have their own support forums that they monitor as part of their support system. Many, if not almost all, other vendors also monitor communities like printplanet.com.

As much as we all, I certainly do, bemoan different vendors, products, etc. how often do you find yourself hitting the button to "send error log" or "contact support"? From my experiences on this forum, and its parent email forum, and others that many times we as users do not report bugs or give feedback directly unless a vendor representative actually intervenes. I can think of a few different vendors off hand who regularly monitor forums like printplanet.com and "take over" by getting their support respective support departments involved. Which I think is a great thing, they should be doing that.

So what do you users think, how many people actually report and follow through with bug reporting and feedback? Do you think the support and customer service departments actually "listen" or are supportive in resolving your issues? I don't want to turn this into a vendor bashing thread but rather a way for vendors to get an idea of what we think.

 

[zoran]

It is certainly good thing to report bugs and I do it as often as they happen.
You are also correct that some companies are making it really easy and transparent to report bugs and crashes, while others seem to want to stay away as far as possible.
In general, my opinion is that software industry is doing poor job in this regard and there is a lot of room for improvement. I'll give you one example of ignorance displayed by well known vendor when I reported officially bug I found in their software.

First nobody responded for 5 days even though I received "official" automated response that someone will contact me, than I resorted to user forum since I did not get anything from them, than when other people joined me on forum with same issue, somebody finally contacted me officially.

After initial couple of annoying emails (spell me your name again, what is the software version you are running, ...) and going through regular annoying salutes, what is your system, etc.. (all of this has been already captured by online system of the vendor), where we wasted another day or two, they told me, "... ohh, this is known issue".

Nowhere on this vendor site is acknowledgment of anything similar, not in forums, not in official knowledge base, etc.. about this or similar issue.
I guess you have to work for this vendor in order to gain access to internal developer logs where it's probably explained that product they are selling for several months now has slowed down opening of PDF's 10 fold (I am not exaggerating).
All I've been told is that it will be fixed in next update.

Well guess what, I have production department to run and can not afford to wait for them to get off off their pedestal that my company paid a lot of money for. Next time I will think twice before paying for another update from this same vendor.

It is a bit of rant but it is real life experience and I hope it contributes to your good idea of vendors getting what we think as users.

 

[mattbeals]

How far up the food chain did you take this? Obviously there is a large communication gap here. Have you tried escalating this to customer service, product managers etc? If the service was as bad as you say, I wouldn't hesitate to fire off a red hot rocket (polite, but honest) about your bad experience.

I did tech support for a brief time and it is no joy. It is a difficult job to do under the best of conditions. There are a few support tracking applications that can make maintaining a history much easier. Some products that have a feedback/support button will gather system information as part of the message as you said. That doesn't always get copied to the clip board to paste into an email or automatically added to a message. Adobe has a system report tool, but doesn't have a "get help" button to use it with. What they do have however with the system tool is a button that will create a text file of the system information and launch your email client to submit an email. I say that this email needs to have [email protected] added as the recipient and the subject should say "Acrobat Profession 9.2 Windows 7" or something like that to help sort and track incoming messages. Callas gathers basic information but they take you right to a web form for support, bug submission and feedback. There you can upload a file and enter in the issue(s). Enfocus will gather quite a bit of detail about the system and has a button to copy that to an email. To Enfocus' credit they have a comprehensive web form for getting good information from users about what the problem is, how to reproduce it, file submission and a place to copy and paste the system information.

But you have to find these things first. I think if vendors made help more accessible as part of the UI then users would have an easier time of getting the help they need and getting vendors the help they need in improving the product(s). Vendors are already gathering all sorts of information about your system in some form or another (not necessarily personally identifiable information though some do). So why not make it easy on the users to get you the information vendors need to provide support?

Keeping an up to date knowledge base is no trivial task. It can require much work to establish but also to maintain. If vendors have limited support resources (personnel or hours) then an up to date knowledge base is critically important to getting good support information to users before they escalate to support itself.

But hey, that's just another one of Matt's kooky ideas...

 

[Joe]

Workflow software, Nexus and now Prinergy. They always respond to issues and bugs. I've also had good luck with Enfocus.

I had tried dealing with Quark over transparency issues in the past but they obviously feel if they don't respond the problem doesn't exist.

Same for Adobe and the UI of Acrobat beginning with Acrobat 8. Went through the Adobe support links but never heard back from anyone. Someone from Adobe did respond here at PrintPlanet basically blaming Apple for Adobe having to conform to the Apple UI.

Microsoft? I had issues with Vista when it first came out (who didn't?). Contacted support about S-L-O-W copying to network drives via gigabit adaptor. If you google it you will find thousands of people having the same issue but MS would never acknowledge it on any of their forums. I opened a support ticket and we emailed back and forth for a couple of weeks trying different things. This was before SP1 was available. Nothing worked and the support tech made a comment that it could be working this way by design. I emailed back and asked if Microsoft always designs their OS software to run slower than the previous OS? They cut me off at that point and wouldn't reply to any more of my emails. I'm sure I'm on a list somewhere.

Workflow vendors, specialized prepress software vendors = good support wanting to hear our opinions and ideas. Adobe, Quark, Apple, and Microsoft = not so much.

 

[zoran]

I consider myself to be an advanced user, Matt and I don't have problems finding all the support forms, forums, knowledge Bases, etc..
As a mater a fact I would rather try to resolve problem myself and am contacting tech support only as a last resort kind of thing.

Do you really think I should take it to a higher level?
I wrote it off as a one kind of thing as I've had good support in the past from the same vendor.
That being said, my personal opinion is to play by the rules company set, if that doesn't get me anywhere, than it's not worth dealing with a company, period.

Why does the company who collects data through online form allow tech support to ask you same questions that you filled already in the form?
I experienced this everywhere and is certainly one of the first things that alienate me and potentially many other users?

When I ask for support for my tv or cellphone, etc.. they want only couple of things to make sure I am the right person and than they resort to their client database for all the other info, software companies are doing opposite.

 

[mattbeals]

Obviously in production sometimes you just have to find a way around it. Sometimes it's easier than others. Sometimes it's a show stopper. But I do think it is important to report the problem none the less and the "work around", if you found one, to the vendor. Maybe if enough people report something the vendor can change how it works, fix the bug or what ever. It's important to be able to track these things. Otherwise the vendor doesn't have any meaningful feedback and continues on as they had been. Which from a users point of view is frustrating because the problem never got resolved satisfactorily.

If your experience was a one time thing then I don't think it needs to go further than that. But if there is a history of bad service then yes, I do think you should say something. We have to go through QC procedures on an ongoing basis to evaluate our own performance internally. So why would it be any different with a vendor?

If the vendor is collecting information automatically or through a web page and they then ask you again for it I have to ask the question "what the hell do they think they are doing?". It's all right there for them. If they can't seem to communicate that internally what makes them think they can do it externally? It's all in a database (or email message) somewhere with the support question itself. It is very annoying. Just like when you call your bank or mortgage company and you have to keep repeating information every time you switch operators. The one I love is you enter all your personal information in the automated system. Then they put you on hold for an operator. Then the operator makes you give them all the information all over again. What's the point? I completely understand your frustration with it. If you complain, they have a record of it and maybe can adjust their procedures.

Joe, any time I have had the (dis)pleasure of working with Microsofts off shore support I have had a problem. First is the language barrier, they speak English from a script well. But they do not understand anything that deviates from their script. That is of course assuming that you actually get a response. Sonicwall is much the same. I haven't had much luck with Adobe support either. The old Aldus support group, that was easy to get help. Same with the old Adobe Prepress Group. But I had an "in" on that one since former co-workers were part of those teams and we were less than 100 feet from them.

So yes, you do have to find work arounds to get things done. But that shouldn't stop you from taking a few minutes to report it. You have to use your own discretion though as to what rises to the level of being reported. I can't honestly say everything needs to be reported. But at the same time if you don't take the time to register a complaint or a support call it's hard to complain when things don't work the way you expect them (or the vendor says they should). These guys run businesses too, and they collect information to form metrics which are used in aiding product development. And if you find enough bugs then you may get invited into the beta program where you really can make a difference in the product development by having a real say in how it works.

To me it's like this; if you don't vote then don't complain.

 

[Joe]

And if you find enough bugs then you may get invited into the beta program where you really can make a difference in the product development by having a real say in how it works.

To me it's like this; if you don't vote then don't complain.

I applied to be a Beta tester for Acrobat about a year or a year and a half ago.

Download beta and pre release of Adobe software (Photoshop, Acrobat, …), FileMaker (FileMaker Pro, FileMaker Server) software and Tasmeem

Adobe Product Tryouts - Beta Testing

Still waiting to hear back from them.

 

[mattbeals]

I do wonder how beta testers are selected. You would at least expect some kind of response of "Thank you for your interest in being part of the beta program but all of our slots are filled for thos cycle." Heck, it's not like they don't have your email address already.

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

I have found varried response but do report officially as well as try to lobby for issues to show vendors the importance of fixing… the latest thing was the font issue with PDFs from CS4 wich is now fixed

 

[Cory Smith]

To me it's like this; if you don't vote then don't complain.

That's fine in some cases, but when i'm paying several thousand dollars for software, I don't feel obligated to be your beta tester. If I have time I may report an issue, if you have a easy to use reporting system and I don't have to go through the typical support lines.

 

[mattbeals]

That quote was targeted at general bug/issue reporting. If you're beta testing then all bets are off; you volunteered. If you think that the released software is buggy enough where you consider it "beta quality" then that is a different issue. Even with automated testing software something inevitably slips through or bugs are left in to be fixed with an update. At some point there is a cut off for the release cycle. If it's that bad, switch products (if possible) or complain. Not saying something won't solve the problem. With all the posting people do here and other forums you would think they could take a bit of that time and actually report something to the vendors.

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

Well it does ge uppsetting when you spend time reporting buggs and being specific and the vendor impelments the change in another product as was the case for Preps. Makes one feel used, and less likeley to report. In some cases I have even been charged support costs for reporting buggs, that was not the way to get user feed back, I was credited the amount but again it doesn't build a generous development atmosphere.

 

[claude72]

It's also upsetting when I spent time to report to the Adobe's hot-line a bug in InDesign CS1 few days after the soft is released, and the man of the hot-line promised that it will be corrected in the next update, but 3 updates later this bug is not corrected...
... and 3 years later I bought a CS3, and I still found the same bug in InDesign CS3!!! and I reported it again to Adobe's hot-line, who promised again to correct it in the next update... but, again, 3 updates of ID CS3 later this bug is not corrected... and it annoyed me daily since now more than 5 years!!!

(and I don't dare to buy a CS4, because perhaps it still lives in the CS4!!!)


I also reported a bug in creating PS files with CS3... the hot-line simply told me that I don't know how to make good PS files, and explained me their good method to make good PS files...
... but this "good" method doesn't allow to set the options of the imagesetter, and the hot-line has no answer, no solution, no way to include the orders for the imagesetter in the PS file using their "good" method... the technician of Adobe's hot-line level 3 didn't understand what I needed!!! (seems that altought they built DTP softwares and RIPs, they have no idea of what is an imagesetter and how to use it!!!)
So, since more than 2 years I cannot image my files as I need...


I also reported a bug in Illustrator 8... the girl of the hot-line who answered me first gave me a workaround (showing that the bug is well known...) and the level 2 technician clearly said me that my file was crap... and, again, no solution, no correction...
And this bug still exists in Illustrator CS3... but since Illustrator 9 the workaround is different and easier!!!


I reported to Quark a bug in XPress 3.32 in 1998... this bug was well known by all people imaging films in separation, but the man by Quark had never heard of it...
... and it has been corrected in XPress 7!!!

I also reported a bug in XPress 6.0... it was corrected in the 6.1... fine (and amazing!!!)!
... but correcting the bug, they created another one!!!
(which have been corrected in XPress 7)


etc., etc.
... so, now, I no more loose time to report bugs, but I adapt myself to expensive bad-working softwares...

 

[mattbeals]

Claude, that's a real shame that you've had such difficulties. I'm not sure how exactly that a tech support person told you a bug would be fixed in the next release, especially since it had just been released. But to keep finding it, that's a different story. Hopefully someone at Adobe and Quark is listening to your frustration.

 

[claude72]

Thanks Matt.

Claude, that's a real shame that you've had such difficulties.

Yes... and especially when these bugs are not localized only to my computer but are repeatable on other computers with other OS and other sofware versions, and known by the manufacturer... meaning that I'm not the only one to be annoyed by these bugs and many other users have the same problems!!!

I'm not sure how exactly that a tech support person told you a bug would be fixed in the next release, especially since it had just been released.

He didn't promise me that the bug will be fixed in the next release, but he promise me that the bug will be fixed in the next update.