Actinic Support

[gabrielcrowe]

Excellent post, thank you.

[Darren B]

Thank you for being honest Chris

[Sean Williams]

Thanks for being candid Chris.
It does sound bit of a nightmare and I wish you the best in getting it sorted out quickly.

One suggestion - for the short term how about a streamed support system whereby those customers who are paying for their support get put through to someone who knows what they are doing (for want of a better description - I don't wish to be rude) straightaway?

[jont]

Ach ... need to phone support tomorrow for a knackered database ... will prove interesting

[grantglendinnin]

Ach ... need to phone support tomorrow for a knackered database ... will prove interesting

No, it really won't prove interesting. It'll prove disastrous. For a site that does well over the odds per day, we haven't been able to download orders for the past 2 days, nor upload the site, as some seasonal products are now out of stock. I've got a feeling unless this issue is sorted by the morning, I can't see our future lying with Actinic at all. Paying Ł400+ a year for some form of 'premium' support service only adds insult to injury. It's all down to relying on Actinic generating the e-mails for the orders placed, and us picking them up okay through the server, which isn't exactly ideal as Actinic generating the e-mails, although works the majority of the time, it does fail to work efficiently every once in a while.

Ah well, suppose that's what it's all about at the end of the day - lining somebody's pockets, even deeper than the rushed version 8 and version 9, both of which are unstable, with the latter at the stage where it's almost unusable without shutting down, compacting databases, crashing etc, on an almost daily basis.

One can only say - things can't get much worse (please don't tell me otherwise!!) I think that's todays frustrations out now

[christina]

Thanks for the explanation Chris. Someone had told me about the move back from India but I didn't realise there has been so many UK people leaving as well.

An interim suggestion would be for premium support members to have a priority email address to submit problem details on, & then an experienced member of the support team can call back on the same working day! This would take the pressure off the phone calls & would certainly make my life easier!

What really wound me up & lead to the original post, was waiting in a queue for a long time, then getting shuffled around departments with no one sounding particularly clued up & in the end someone had to phone me back anyway. My business is split between retail/wholesale so apart from the phone bill from hanging in queues, I tend to treat 9-5 as "sacred hours" for phoning my customers so am loathe to be doing anything apart from sales calls in these hours, especially wasting time listening to muzak!

[jont]

I was on hold for about 4 minutes and quite annoyed it was not longer as the on-hold music was Screamin Jay Hawkins "Heart Attack and Vine" and thankfully got through to Adam who thankfully believed what I was saying and asked for the ACD. That was Wendesday afternoon. So far so good.

[christina]

I was on hold for about 4 minutes and quite annoyed it was not longer as the on-hold music was Screamin Jay Hawkins "Heart Attack and Vine" and thankfully got through to Adam who thankfully believed what I was saying and asked for the ACD. That was Wendesday afternoon. So far so good.

Must be a generational thing then Jont

[jont]

They must have a system tied in with Caller Display to serve appropriate music (now that is an idea for the Dragons Den)

[wfl]

Last time I had to call support I waited 20 minutes to go from 3 to 0 in the queue only to be dumped into a voice mail box. I left a message and no one returned the call. I ended up calling back 24 hours later.

So as is ever the way I gave them a snapshot (this was several weeks ago) since when I have heard diddly squat back.

I don't see why I should have to continually chase them.

After a lot of years I don't think I will be paying for Actinic support again.

Actinic gave me V8MU to replace V7.5MU and now they have given me V9.0.2.

Seems the more I pay the worse it gets!

In the meantime our e-comerce site continues to work - but only just.

[grantglendinnin]

Well, thought I'd best give another perspective on this matter.

I had an issue with our database last week - I got Lance on the job mid-week and Tracey had the answer by Friday morning with some very professional assistance from them both. As a Cover customer, although this wasn't as quickly fixed as we expected, due to the Actinic's recent support issues as described by Chris, a delay was expected and understandable, so...

Thanks to both Tracey, Lance & the other developers.

Cheers,
Grant

[FrazerPart]

it'd be nice if you could actually get through to the Support Desk.
I was sold the cover at an extra cost when I bought the product at the start of July. For the last week, I've been trying to get through on the phones, entering the queue at position 1 (which has always been a little suspicious) only to be cut off approx 2 minutes later having been redirected to a non working/non configured extn 240 voicemail box.

A week on, and my problems still have not been resolved and I've resorted to corresponding with the Support Desk via email.......

[cbarling]

On the problem of dropped calls, I've just had a conference call with the Actinic Support Manager and the Actinic Administration Manager (who is responsible for the phone system). The problem is caused by a behaviour in the phone system which isn't correct, and which we've been trying to sort out for some weeks. It only effects a small minority of calls.

After a lot of chasing, and trying various fixes, our phone system supplier is actually sending someone on site this Friday, so we may know more after that.

Max, I think that you have been very unlucky to experience the problem of dropped calls several times. Someone from support has tried to contact you and left a message and will try again. As well as helping with your support problem, we need to check if there are any particular features of your call like time of day, number called etc which might account for you getting dropped several times.

Chris Barling
CEO, Actinic

[Rich Brady]

Chris,

I've been using actinic for 12 months now and have recently renewed my cover subscription, for the upgrades and discounts more so the support really.

I'm not saying that the support isn't very good, I had a recent problem with a site and Chris from support spent several hours trying to help me sort it out. Cheers Mr Jackson

The main reason for my post is that I come here first, before even thinking about phoning Support. The wealth of knowledge that is here or in the KB is amazing, other users are only too happy to help and I can access it at a time that is convenient to me...

I imagine that the majority of calls received are for the same type of issue that could be easily found via a search on here or the knowledge base.

If guys on here can't sort you out they usually refer you to support, by that stage though you've probably realised it's a fairly big issue

I digress, would it be worth having a message on the support line:

"Thank you for your call, we a are sorry that an operator is not available at this time, if you cannot hold the line please visit the Actinic Community where Registered User, Designers and Actinic Administrators may be able to help with your problem." You get the idea...

It would allow users to quickly obtain answers and encouragement outside of support hours and also free up your phone lines.

Just a thought...

[RuralWeb]

"Thank you for your call, we a are sorry that an operator is not available at this time, if you cannot hold the line please visit the Actinic Community where Registered User, Designers and Actinic Administrators may be able to help with your problem."

I dont believe you are posting this - you are obviously new to the forum and dont have the knowledge of what has gone before. We spent months getting actinic to remove references to the forum being an alternative to support.

I suggest that you offer you own services as an alternative to support rather than offering the services of other forum members.