Re: STINKY VENDORS, STINKY MFGS,STINKY PRODUCTS,STINKY GROUP

On 10 Feb 2006 02:06:03 -0000, soothsayer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

Forgive me if this is a bit disorganized. I've been getting
interrupted by customers bearing paying work a bit more often today
than usual.

After a month of advanced searching what should be fairly easy questions to
answer and products to find, as it is with nearly all other tech questions
I have, I think I qualify.

I think otherwise. There's no guarantee any question will be answered
on usenet or by support. However, I am curious. What question did I
miss? I usually ignore ones that I know nothing about, can't figure
out the question, are lacking in data, or are just boringly simple.

How many questions have you tried to answer? It's not difficult. Just
a little experience and some research usually comes close.

Ur kidding right? Used Copernicus and half a dozen other search techniques.
The problem is what's out there, not my research.

I'm not kidding. I just use Google and sometimes Yahoo. Works for
me. You learn more by answering questions than you do by asking them.
On the rare occasion when someone actually thanks me and offers
something in return, I always suggest that they find some topic they
know fairly well, and answer a few questions. The problem with all
search engines is that you must know the vocabulary and buzzwords
before you can do an effective search. The ability to do effective
filtering also relies on regex (regular expression) notation. One
also has to be a fast reader or skimmer as search engines always
produce too many hits.

You're better than most of the people here and have provided some very good
information. But you alone are not enough. And newbies cannot always supply
every last detail, they may not even know what is relevant. At first I thought
it was just my posts being ignored, but then I saw so many others going unanswered.
Maybe a bigger group is needed, but you won't get that till others start answering
new users posts.

Perhaps if you ask yourself why anyone bothers to answer peoples
questions, you might have a clue as to why there are so many questions
and so few answers. Throw in the minor detail that my heroic and
often abrasive attempts to get people to supply what I consider to be
the bare minimum of information has totally failed. Even those that
ask questions repeatedly still cannot grasp the concept of describing
what they are trying to accomplish, and not getting lost in where
they're stuck. Some people that answer questions work for wireless
vendors or suppliers and thus have a financial interest in being
helpful. These come and go. When business is good, they're mostly
gone.

My guess is that there are about 100 new questions each day in
alt.internet.wireless. It takes me about 15-30 mins each to provide a
complete answer. I can answer more if I supply one-line answers with
no substance, explanation, or substantiation. Is that what you want?
Realize that I've also been correctly criticized for being rather
sloppy and offered to take more time to check my pontifications, which
will result in fewer questions being answered. So, do the math. How
many answer people do you think it will take to completely answer 100
questions per day?

The
usenet is getting to be of diminishing value overall and people are using elitist
methods more and more to decide what posts to answer.

If you don't mind, I find that statement rather hilarious. I was
recently engaged in a dinner discussion with some of the usenet "old
timers" that have been around since the stone age of usenet news. Some
lament that value of usenet is diminished by the debasement of values
by the GUM (great unwashed masses) and that what's necessary to revive
usenet is almost an elite to the the GUM the way to righteousness. I
subscribe to this theory in that it is always better to uplift the
masses than to suppress the elite.

Already ordered some books cuz finally concluded the only way to get good answers
was to consult with books on the topic.

Maybe. Books are usually a good start. However, if you want current
information, the internet is best. With usenet, data is free.
Information must be fought for.

But the main thrust of my post is directed
at the lousy companies, mostly mfgs. and to a lesser extent bad vendors who
hawk their stuff with little regard to the end user. They don't want to talk
to you unless you talking big bucks and that is irresponsible for a company
marketing end user products.

Yep. That's about it.

So, how much MORE money are you willing to pay to get decent products
and better support? I'm serious. There were 120 million Wi-Fi
devices sold in calendar year 2005. How many users of those 120
million devices had any type of problem? How many were returned? I
have some numbers for some manufacturers, but can't leak those. Let's
just say that the numbers were very small. My guess is that it will
take perhaps a 50% cost premium to cut those numbers in half. My
experience shows that it doesn't matter how perfect the product, there
will always be support issues. One support manager recently mentioned
that 70% of the calls were over issues that were either in the docs or
on the web pile. About 10% were solved with a commonly available
firmware or driver update. What's left are usually difficult
questions that could not be easily answered. How much would you pay
MORE for your products to have those difficult questions answered by a
well educated and trained support person? Want it to be an across the
board price increase, or would you prefer to pay per incident?

True. Everybody lies. But, that's not important because nobody
listens.

I listen. And so far all I hear are a litany of complaints from knowledgeable
users who are buying crap products every day and returning them infrequently
cuz they are too tired from the struggle. Consumers deserve better treatment
and until the DEMAND it they will continue to be treated with disrespect.

Well, people that don't have problems with their wireless hardware
have no reason to ask questions in newsgroups. What you're seeing are
only those with problems. As for better treatment, the cost of
personal hand holding has to be paid by someone. Either everyone pays
with a general price increase, or the individual with the problem pays
with a per incident charge. There's no free lunch or free support.

Amen, they deserve to go under if they market stuff they a) know nothing about,
b) do not support, c) do not honor their warranties, and generally use poor
business practices. Hell I can't even get them on the phone half the time.
Sue, sue and more sue is my motto.

Lovely. Please not that the dealer usually does not deal with
warranty issues except on systems that the dealer builds. If there's
something defective with the hardware, the dealer just passes through
the warranty to the manufacturer.

You might wanna read my warranty when I was building systems:
http://802.11junk.com/jeffl/pics/drivel/slides/diploma.html
There's a reason I created that certificate. Many customers seem to
think that because I touched their computer, I automatically inherit
warranty responsibility for everything inside. It doesn't work that
way.

As for getting someone on the phone, I charge for my time. When I get
email from users in this newsgroup wanting personal support or
answers, they get a nastygram explaining how I consider that to be
billable consulting. Like many employees of wireless companies,
they'll answer questions in public forums for free because they are
trying to help. However, the same questions via email or phone
support is billable.

As for poor business practices, that can be handled by the local
better business burro, and does not require legal intervention. If
you think a law had been broken, there's always the district
attorney's office. If you can demonstrate financial damages, then by
all means, sue.

Incidentally, your IP address resolves to:
208.180.124.28 PTR record: cdm-208-180-124-28.gtwn.cox-internet.com.
Which is Cox Cable in Georgetown, Texas.

Hahahaha, ur kidding right. Yeah that IS my IP, congratulations expert.
Hope you know more about wifi then u do about IP tracing.

See:
http://www.geobytes.com/IpLocator.htm
Incidentally, your postings didn't show up last night on Newsguy,
probably because they contained a banned word. They did appear on
SBC's news servers.

--
# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831-336-2558 jeffl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
# http://802.11junk.com jeffl@xxxxxxxxxx
# http://www.LearnByDestroying.com AE6KS
.

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