Explosive rant

[Slammer]

A I´m-a-gonna-fling-the-phone-through-a-window rant. What is it with EFI support....? Are the products so crappy that the lines are always busy with harried techs trying to pacify irate customers? You can call when you want, "Welcome to EFI technical support" press 1 for blah, blah blah, press 2 yadda, yadda, yadda, press, 1 and dance the jitterbug... ONLY to get "all our lines are currently...." Day in and day out, no matter when you call or what number you call, "All our lines are busy" then "please leave a message and our tech weenie will call you back" has never happened or you get a line busy tone.
All I want is to ask a small, insignificant, minor question, one that by your god like grace could be answered in seconds. THATS ALLLLLL! Just spent three hours trying to get through, not going to happen, it´s almost knocking off time and I am not going to go into my well deserved weekend feeling like a contained nuke plant on meltdown.....
There, rant over and feeling much better now.

 

[Guest]

Good thing you got that off your chest.... that would have ruined your weekend!

EFI support SUCKS!

 

[KopyBoss]

We use the EFI My Portal and usually get a respond within 15 min after posting.

 

[kansasquaker]

Good thing you got that off your chest.... that would have ruined your weekend!

EFI support SUCKS!

"EFI SUCKS!" Fixed it for you Kringle, you accidentally typed 'support' in there.

 

[Guest]

"EFI SUCKS!" Fixed it for you Kringle, you accidentally typed 'support' in there.

I have 2 Fierys and have called EFI 2 times for help and gave up both times and just figured it out myself. Not sure how bad EFI is because I only have FreeFlow to compare it to and I HATED FreeFlow. But given my lack of knowledge with regard to the subject I will yield to and accept your declaration!

"EFI SUCKS!"

 

[MailGuru]

Have 2 Fiery's on our V2100's. Have never had to call support. All questions/issues have been handled by our Xerox Service Techs. Had FreeFlow prior. Like Kringle, I hated it.

 

[kansasquaker]

I used CWS on an old Xerox DC and free flow on an iGen. That's like choosing between being shot or being hit by a bus. The front end on the Nexpress dances circles around both of them.

I had to suffer through a decade of Colorproof xf and the ridiculously buggy interface. Fiery XF was an improvement, but still.
Metrix is an awesome program and we never had issues with their stuff, until the very first update after EFI bought them. There were all sorts of stupid UI bugs and they took months to fix.

I avoid EFI like the plague.

 

[meesh-lars]

I've had the best luck with portal or emailing [email protected]. If they don't return the call within a couple hours you aren't going to get a response.

 

[PricelineNegotiator]

Hopefully now that EFI has acquired Xerox's FF, we will see a major update to their RIPs and CWS as a whole in the next year or two.

 

[Yroc]

Then you pull out your lease and realize you are paying more for your firey than your printer!!

 

[Slammer]

Well I found the information I needed in the end, no thanks to EFI though.....: DO YOU HEAR ME EFI??

 

[kdw75]

We always joked at how many successful companies treat their customers like crap. The boss parks his Mercedes right in front of the door, while letting the customers walk, won't talk to the customers, and when they do, treat them like the DMV does.

 

[[email protected]]

There's also the Fiery user forum, http://fieryforums.efi.com/ They're usually pretty good about answering questions as well as getting answers from other users.
If you have a specific question message me and I'll give it a shot.

 

[Slammer]

There's also the Fiery user forum, http://fieryforums.efi.com/ They're usually pretty good about answering questions as well as getting answers from other users.
If you have a specific question message me and I'll give it a shot.

Agree with you there they are pretty good and I normally go over the forums, but in this case I needed a answer on the spot and wasn´t getting it.

 

[dabob]

Well . . . if you think EFI support services suck . . . you should try Social Security . . . they won't even talk to you on the phone or let you set an appointment - you just show up and wait . . . even DMV is better than that

 

[Guest]

Well . . . if you think EFI support services suck . . . you should try Social Security . . . they won't even talk to you on the phone or let you set an appointment - you just show up and wait . . . even DMV is better than that

Amazing how easy it is for them to take that money out of your paycheck but when it comes time to get it back, well, just sit down and take a number. Your comment is precisely why I'd like the government out of my healthcare. At least with EFI I can just choose another company when they treat me like crap.

Sorry guys, that one appeared to be teed up just for me, I couldn't resist.

 

[cec-prepress]

At least with EFI I can just choose another company when they treat me like crap.

I'm pretty sure EFI bought 'another company', so...

 

[Guest]

I'm pretty sure EFI bought 'another company', so...

Looks like an opportunity for a startup company to release a better product and take their unhappy customers.

 

[kansasquaker]

Looks like an opportunity for a startup company to release a better product and take their unhappy customers.

Why bother with actually developing and supporting a product when you can just buy all your decent sized competitors? After you're done with that, integrate vertically so the externalities imprison your customer just as much as your monopoly position. Imagine what companies like EFI and Abode could create if they put as much effort into product development as they do for business strategy . . .

 

[Slammer]

Why bother with actually developing and supporting a product when you can just buy all your decent sized competitors? After you're done with that, integrate vertically so the externalities imprison your customer just as much as your monopoly position. Imagine what companies like EFI and Abode could create if they put as much effort into product development as they do for business strategy . . .

That is one of the reasons I like the Harlequin RIP, you don´t get locked into these kind of Business models as much, but seriously I have been a support guy for my entire career and have always tried to help the customer as much as possible, but therein lays the crux, companies simply see support services as a major drain on the shareholder value and try to whittle them down to where it starts to squeak. Now don´t get me wrong I know that there are dedicated guys and gals manning the support desks but for most part they are too few and get simply overwhelmed by the sheer influx of calls, the companies compensate either by buying cheap third party support from helpdesks in (let´s say) India, "Well sir have you put the plug in the socket?") or filtering through a maze of numbers to push before you get to the recorded message that all lines are currently busy. A sign of the times I am afraid and I seriously think the beancounters in charge fully expect that exasperated customers will get assistance from Youtube or forums that double as helpdesks, in short the customers will provide their own support thus saving them a lot of money.