I agree with Rupp completely, except the part about them providing the BB for us. They aren't doing it just for us. On the HS support page the escalation path for a problem or question is to read the FAQ page, then go to the message board and if all that fails, open a trouble ticket.Rupp said:
I would like to say that although I don't post often (either here or on HS) when I have posted questions on the HS forum I have never been answered by an HST employee. That could be because folks like Rupp are reading the board more frequently and they just post first. Once the question is answered, unless someone feels there are other options or that the original answer was incorrect or incomplete there isn't much need to keep answering it.
But if the forum is going to the the first level of interactive tech support for the HS software I think that the HST staff should be more active than they are in monitoring it and assisting HS owners. Too many times I have read posts that say, "I hope Rich or Rick are monitoring this thread..." or "Rich, could you chime in here." More than once the reply to asking HST staff to chime in is something on the order of 'If it is that big a deal open a ticket we don't have time to read every post...' If that is the case then they are leaving their first level support totally up to other users. That's fine. The user base usually has some darn good answers and some really great ideas. I just feel that if you are going to have your users doing your primary support then you really do have to provide them with a method of doing it. Short of putting half the users on consultant status they have no choice but to provide the forum or have their own help desk ticketing system flooded.
I'm not commenting on the whole pricing issue and HS's attitude about the current uproar because I have yet to read Rich's response or anything on the HS forum for the last 10 days so I have no idea what he said except from the impressions I get from reading this thread.
