Lack of Support

Michael N. — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 10:21:55 +0000

Why do so many questions go unanswered? Doesn’t circus ponies support their product?

Jayson commented

Jayson — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 18:02:33 +0000

Hello Michael,

While we do try to keep an eye on the discussion forums, anyone needing technical support should contact us directly using the support page.

Best,

__jayson

CareyB commented

CareyB — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 12:06:49 +0000

Here, here… Any support questions I’ve ever put forward to the support line get answered quite promptly. This is the user forum – i.e. peer support.

In the forum, I find a great many people ask questions that are in the FAQ, in the Docs, in the Help, or have already been answered. To be blunt, some questions in these forums are just too basic, and go unanswered. Personally I prefer that to some of the nasty flaming you find in other peer support forums.

HTH

Myron Gochnauer commented

Myron Gochnauer — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 13:09:54 +0000

I’m of two minds about this.

On the one hand: “basic” questions can easily be handled by the software company, and perhaps should be since they often result not from user stupidity but from eccentric or counter-intuitive software design.

On the other hand: loading down the company with all support requests reduces the resources that are available for truly difficult problems, bugs and design improvement.

For many products that develop a fanatical following there are a few ordinary users who become highly knowledgeable and seem to enjoy helping the duffers among us come to appreciate the full glory of the product. Indeed, some products (like the DOS wordprocessor XyWrite) continue on in this fashion years after the company has gone to ground.

Regarding FAQ and help files: Beginners often miss answers from these sources not because they are lazy but because they do not yet know enough to know how to formulate the question or issue. This is especially true with innovative software.

...and I am one of those stuttering beginners with NoteBook, not knowing what questions to ask, how to ask them, or even whether I’m using the right program for what I want to do!!

odysseus commented

odysseus — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 06:44:26 +0000

I’ve found that questions put forward to the support line take a very long time to be answered—once I got a response several weeks later, and I barely remembered the problem anymore.

Jayson commented

Jayson — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 04:35:22 +0000

Hi Marc,

I know that you submitted a number of support requests back when 3.0 first shipped – those initial requests did take awhile to get to but we do respond to all inquiries (and urgent ones move to the top of the queue).

Your most-recent support request was responded to pretty quickly. Luckily we found it in an e-mail queue – please be sure to use the support form for help.

Best,

__jayson

Jayson commented

Jayson — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 04:46:54 +0000

Your most-recent support request was responded to pretty quickly. Luckily we found it in an e-mail queue – please be sure to use the support form for help.

Sorry, I should have said that we responded to it pretty quickly once we found it in an e-mail queue. It looks like you tried e-mailing it to us more than 2 weeks ago. We were lucky to see it at all!

Best,

__jayson

Travis commented

Travis — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:59:25 +0000

For all those reading this thread, I would also like to point out that NoteBook has some wonderful resources for support and learning. Aside from the FAQs and well illustrated user manual, NoteBook offers FREE video tutorials from the product’s website. These tutorials are invaluable for beginners and anyone wanting to brush up in certain areas.

These forums were designed for the “users” to discuss and exchange ideas between one another. In my experience, most companies avoid the user forums completely, but we try to make it a point to offer our support here as well. And if you would like to inquire with us directly, you can do so from our support page that Jayson mentioned above.

I can assure you as well, that no questions go unanswered to our support team. At times we may not have a solution, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t working on it. If this is the case, we will inform you about it and keep you updated as best we can.

If you feel that we may have forgotten about you, feel free to drop us a line to check in on things. We do our best to be a very friendly and open support team. We want you to enjoy NoteBook as much as we do.

Travis
Circus Ponies Sofware, Inc.

doho22 commented

doho22 — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 20:15:23 +0000

I keep seeing:

"NoteBook offers FREE video tutorials from the product’s website."

where are they? Do they still exist?

thanks,
a.s.

Eric commented

Eric — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 21:12:45 +0000

They sure do. You can find them here:

http://www.circusponies.com/videotour

Where are you seeing this reference, specifically? On the Circus Ponies home page there are two places that refer to the Video Tour (and links directly to it).