3 ms·

That particular horror story led me to not equip our development team with a dozen POWER9 machines, which is a pity, because the combination of almost-total tru

by qubex 7y ago

That particular horror story led me to not equip our development team with a dozen POWER9 machines, which is a pity, because the combination of almost-total trustworthiness and enormous firepower was extremely attractive for our particular niche (plus, I used to hand-code PPC64 AltiVec “velocity engine” code for HFT funds back when Apple sold G5 Xserves). I’m glad to hear that it was a one-off and that you have revised your support strategy, but... really, it made for a pretty frustrating read. It’s not chump change, and going out on that kind of a limb on... trust... which was clearly unwarranted at least at the time of that initial incident. There’s nothing more frustrating than paying top dollar for something exotic and then being stonewalled by oblivious “tech support” when things don’t work as advertised, particularly when something is sufficiently novel or unusual that relatively few other users are out there to proffer help and the potential points of failure are plentiful and “unknown unknowns”. As far as I’m concerned, that incident was extremely bad publicity. That board could’ve been shipped to me. I’d have been left to dangle from my solitary rope and squirm when management asked me what was going on. That’s just not acceptable, sadly.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
tpmx 7y ago
If I were you I'd be a lot more comfortable pulling the trigger after reading all of this. Being worried over what might have been spoilt milk if you had gotten a broken board in the past seems counterproductive.
- qubex 7y ago
  The new machines I eventually decided to go with were ordered more than a week ago.
  - tpearson-raptor 7y ago
    Sorry to hear that. If you ever get tired of worrying about untrustworthy firmware phoning home, DRM, etc., please consider us for the replacement purchase? ;)
tpearson-raptor 7y ago
It also won't happen at this point, ever. Is there anything we can do to help you revisit this decision?
- qubex 7y ago
  Nope, too late. The decision was made and orders have been placed. You don’t get do-overs, sorry. I might still get a machine for my own amusement, but... I don’t know, reading of some poor guy left dangling for best part of a year just doesn’t build confidence and leaves me with a “there but for the Grace of God go I” feeling, you understand?
  - tpearson-raptor 7y ago
    I understand. I also know this happened to no one else, and it was a pathological case in a support system that has since been completely overhauled. This is one reason why we started the self-serve RMA process -- to show that yes, we are committed to replacing defective hardware in a timely fashion. If the machine is defective, and we can't help via our online troubleshooting guide and Email / phone support, send it right back for replacement. That being said, the assembled systems products are checked with a significant burn-in test etc. before they ship. We have never had an assembled system arrive defective anywhere, except if it was damaged in shipping (i.e. crushed box etc.).
    - qubex 7y ago
      I’m not trying to guilt-trip you or anything... I really like the idea of having non-monoculture machines and I’ve always been a sucker for unusual hardware (NeXT, BeBox, IBM RS/6000, dual Pentium machines to name but a few)... but if the one prominent story I find online is about a poor guy who is left to cry his eyes out regretting his courageous and expensive decision while the company that supplied him is apparently indifferent (this was before the happy if belated epilogue) it’s just an instant turn-off as far as I’m concerned. You’re producing something unusual and new, and users take a risk and pay far above market prices for the privilege to be on the bleeding edge... the least one can expect is competent and timely technical support. This poor guy went through “please reinstall your OS”-level indifference for months. That’s not the way one builds confidence. And yeah, I’m glad you’ve revised your policies, but in my particular case it came too late. This guy bought a Ferrari-analogue and got a Trabant with Lada-level tech support. He’s been pretty polite in writing up a follow-up detailing your company’s long-overdue resolution of his issues. I doubt he’s asked you to refund you the months of lost productivity and the time he spent essentially volunteering his time to serve as a free engineering consultant. That’s just not good enough. Somebody should’ve swooped in before this poor guy became so frustrated he wrote it up and submitted it to HackerNews. No DRM, full-ownership computing is great, and the performance is literally astounding (particularly for our use-case), but at the time the decision was made, based on the evidence I had, the decision was clear. I do not regret deciding not to buy your product because based on the data available to me at the time as far as I knew I would’ve been alone and/or I would have spent a fortune sending faulty items back-and-forth through customs, paying import duty each time. Whoever decided not to be proactive in this guy’s case procured your firm a sizeable amount of bad publicity. Not to mention that the team I am part of would’ve probably, as a side-effect of the proprietary software we are developing, also contributed various patches and so forth to various parts of the underlying open-source stack.

by qubex 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

tpmx 7y ago

If I were you I'd be a lot more comfortable pulling the trigger after reading all of this. Being worried over what might have been spoilt milk if you had gotten a broken board in the past seems counterproductive.

qubex 7y ago
The new machines I eventually decided to go with were ordered more than a week ago.
- tpearson-raptor 7y ago
  Sorry to hear that. If you ever get tired of worrying about untrustworthy firmware phoning home, DRM, etc., please consider us for the replacement purchase? ;)

tpearson-raptor 7y ago

It also won't happen at this point, ever. Is there anything we can do to help you revisit this decision?

qubex 7y ago
Nope, too late. The decision was made and orders have been placed. You don’t get do-overs, sorry. I might still get a machine for my own amusement, but... I don’t know, reading of some poor guy left dangling for best part of a year just doesn’t build confidence and leaves me with a “there but for the Grace of God go I” feeling, you understand?
- tpearson-raptor 7y ago
  I understand. I also know this happened to no one else, and it was a pathological case in a support system that has since been completely overhauled. This is one reason why we started the self-serve RMA process -- to show that yes, we are committed to replacing defective hardware in a timely fashion. If the machine is defective, and we can't help via our online troubleshooting guide and Email / phone support, send it right back for replacement. That being said, the assembled systems products are checked with a significant burn-in test etc. before they ship. We have never had an assembled system arrive defective anywhere, except if it was damaged in shipping (i.e. crushed box etc.).
  - qubex 7y ago
    I’m not trying to guilt-trip you or anything... I really like the idea of having non-monoculture machines and I’ve always been a sucker for unusual hardware (NeXT, BeBox, IBM RS/6000, dual Pentium machines to name but a few)... but if the one prominent story I find online is about a poor guy who is left to cry his eyes out regretting his courageous and expensive decision while the company that supplied him is apparently indifferent (this was before the happy if belated epilogue) it’s just an instant turn-off as far as I’m concerned. You’re producing something unusual and new, and users take a risk and pay far above market prices for the privilege to be on the bleeding edge... the least one can expect is competent and timely technical support. This poor guy went through “please reinstall your OS”-level indifference for months. That’s not the way one builds confidence. And yeah, I’m glad you’ve revised your policies, but in my particular case it came too late. This guy bought a Ferrari-analogue and got a Trabant with Lada-level tech support. He’s been pretty polite in writing up a follow-up detailing your company’s long-overdue resolution of his issues. I doubt he’s asked you to refund you the months of lost productivity and the time he spent essentially volunteering his time to serve as a free engineering consultant. That’s just not good enough. Somebody should’ve swooped in before this poor guy became so frustrated he wrote it up and submitted it to HackerNews. No DRM, full-ownership computing is great, and the performance is literally astounding (particularly for our use-case), but at the time the decision was made, based on the evidence I had, the decision was clear. I do not regret deciding not to buy your product because based on the data available to me at the time as far as I knew I would’ve been alone and/or I would have spent a fortune sending faulty items back-and-forth through customs, paying import duty each time. Whoever decided not to be proactive in this guy’s case procured your firm a sizeable amount of bad publicity. Not to mention that the team I am part of would’ve probably, as a side-effect of the proprietary software we are developing, also contributed various patches and so forth to various parts of the underlying open-source stack.