Better Business Bureau complaint

Dave28C said:
I have already complained to my credit card company. Having no response to my TWO Emails asking for support, I decided to take a chance and pay the $30 for a support call. All I managed to get was a voice mail asking for my phone number and email. So far, nothing at all.

It appears that this company has found the mother lode with a hugely popular software program, but did essentially nothing in anticipation of the many problems consumers would have getting the program to work. That's often the way it is with business people who don't really care about their customers.

Call your credit card company. Once Visa or Mastercard get enough complaints, they'll yank the company's ability to use the accounts.

I still want to use Parallels to run a few Windoze programs that just are not available for the new Intel Mac.

Dave Clark
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Dave:

it's unfortunate that you've had problems -- whatever they are -- but trashing the company doesn't really add anything to the discussion IMO. It also seems odd for you to be so adamant but then to end with the idea that you "still want to use Parallels..." but that's up to you to decide what seems acceptable or not to you.

Windows can be incredibly difficult to support, esp with users who have no experience with it. Whether that covers you to some degree or not I don't know but in reading many notes about the problems users have experience, there are a large number of simply misunderstandings about Windows or about what is and is not clearly stated will be supported by Parallels.

My rule of thumb is that if something isn't EXPLICITLY STATED that it IS CURRENTLY supported, I assume that it probably isn't yet supported. Or that, if it is, I'm going to have to do some work to get that feature, program, hardware, operation, etc to work as I want it to. Perhaps it's just that I've been actively involved with computers for over 25 years...

Given that Windows allows for support of just about ANY device (if you know how) and that it has so many versions, etc, it's really quite admirable that ANY company has gotten to this level of execution of a program like Parallels.
 
I've been very happy with parallels. I decided to follow the beta builds (and bugs) from the release version a while ago. I found a couple of things that didn't work well (vista rc2, open suse 10.1 was really slow, etc) and have been gratified by the things that have worked well that I use daily: Win XP and Ubuntu. The rest is play.

I agree that this guy should get his money back after two weeks. However, I don't think that the world should stop for him because he stubbed his toe on boot camp.
 
darkone said:
i cant get windows on a real machine to function as advertised.. can i file a complaint ??

without starting a flaming war.. to all those threatening this and that to get their problems fixed, did you ever consider using the trial product before leaping in and buying ?? And for those that reply (as many have in the past) "it worked for what i needed it to when i bought it" , then you wont have a leg to stand on when harping on about getting refunded.
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Not everyone knows you can get a trial version until they come to the site looking for the nonexistant customer service.

Their box says that they have a money back garrente- its not the EU's fault if they refuse to honor that.
 
shelbydodgeimp said:
Not everyone knows you can get a trial version until they come to the site looking for the nonexistant customer service.

Their box says that they have a money back garrente- its not the EU's fault if they refuse to honor that.
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I don't know that they've ever refused a refund, but I have no doubt the process of completing it could very likely take more time than the OP is content with. Parallels has refocused on customer support and my impression is that it is improving. I think they have been swamped by the popularity and instability of their product, be it beta, RC, or GA. This can create significant problems and ill will.

I recall very well in the 1990's, as a staunch OS/2 advocate and OS/2 BBS sysop, being very disappointed with IBM's OS/2 service and support. Their helpdesk was geared for corporate customers and when they got hit by thousands of unruly and frequently clueless end users they were completely unprepared. It showed and it didn't get much better. Much support finally came from "Team OS/2" - a large and active group of volunteers. That is paralleled (no pun intended) in this forum. That lack of support is one of the reasons OS/2 faded into history for most users.
 
dkp said:
I don't know that they've ever refused a refund, but I have no doubt the process of completing it could very likely take more time than the OP is content with. Parallels has refocused on customer support and my impression is that it is improving. I think they have been swamped by the popularity and instability of their product, be it beta, RC, or GA. This can create significant problems and ill will.

I recall very well in the 1990's, as a staunch OS/2 advocate and OS/2 BBS sysop, being very disappointed with IBM's OS/2 service and support. Their helpdesk was geared for corporate customers and when they got hit by thousands of unruly and frequently clueless end users they were completely unprepared. It showed and it didn't get much better. Much support finally came from "Team OS/2" - a large and active group of volunteers. That is paralleled (no pun intended) in this forum. That lack of support is one of the reasons OS/2 faded into history for most users.
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I was an early OS/2 tester as well. Your last sentence is dead on.

For Parallels, as with every other business, it is a matter of truth in advertising. If the product/service performs as advertised (warts or not), no problem. On the other hand if product/service falls short of advertised performance (such as a lack of promised features/compatibility or charging $30 for support calls that don't get returned), then there is a potentially actionable problem. Of course, savvy customers should always read the fine print. caveat emptor

This is strictly business - our colleagues need not get emotional about it.
 
I didn't have any problems getting parallels to work
since June 2006 through all the versions including the betas

WInXP sp2
no bootcamp
MacBookPro 2gb ram

try and start a new thread listing what happens
with what your hardware and software versions are

what are you trying to achieve?


Hugh W
 
dkp said:
I recall very well in the 1990's, as a staunch OS/2 advocate and OS/2 BBS sysop, being very disappointed with IBM's OS/2 service and support. Their helpdesk was geared for corporate customers and when they got hit by thousands of unruly and frequently clueless end users they were completely unprepared. It showed and it didn't get much better. Much support finally came from "Team OS/2" - a large and active group of volunteers. That is paralleled (no pun intended) in this forum. That lack of support is one of the reasons OS/2 faded into history for most users.
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Having been involved directly in OS/2 development and support towards the end, I can say your wrong on that last bit about the lack of support being one of the reasons why OS/2 faded into history (truth to be told, it is still in use in a limited capacity).

OS/2's problems stemmed from internal struggles and turf wars, not to mention problems with Microsoft. There are plenty of articles and a few chapters in various books detailing this.

Suffice to say, to compare OS/2 to Parallels, would be along the lines of saying that in addition to Parallels Desktop for Macs, Parallels' parent company is also selling VMWare solutions to customers. That's exactly what was happening with OS/2 - a small part of the company was trying to sell OS/2 solutions to our customers, while another part of the company was pushing IBM PCs, servers and ThinkPads with Windows on them.

I don't mean to sound bitter, but I watched all of this play out with OS/2 from both inside and outside, and it was very aggravating.

added: I can certainly see why you feel it was a lack of support that killed OS/2, and to an extent you are right, but the reason for the lack of support was the turf wars, which is nothing at all like Parallels is having to deal with.
 
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Just as a quick note: I contacted "Tom Riddle" via the board's private IM feature as suggested here and he took care of the refund. If anybody else is going through grief attempting to get a reply from customer support, that account seems to be a lot more efficient.
 
Yeah, you won't see any more posts from ericthered. He got his refund, and he's abandoning Parallels until it has (his words) "a stable final release".

To recap: ericthered was wanting to run Parallels from a Boot Camp installation, but his Boot Camp installation is on a different physical hard drive (Mac Pro.) Parallels only supports using the Boot Camp installation when it is on a partition of the same hard drive OS X is booting from. No documentation mentioned this limitation. He filed a tech support request, and didn't get a response, so he complained. He finally got a response telling him that it wasn't supported. He PMed Tom, and got his refund.

He says he is perfectly willing to try it again, when it has a final release that is stable and supports his desired configuration.
 
thing is.. for some.. its working fine on mac pros, with bootcamp etc etc etc ... so saying when its stable and supports his configuration is a bit of a sweeping statement. I mean, I know some people who have problems with MS office on real PCs, for instance, but it works ok for the majority, so I wouldnt call it an unstable product. Maybe a format and reinstall (to clear out any junk) might be a good place to start.
 
darkone said:
thing is.. for some.. its working fine on mac pros, with bootcamp etc etc etc ... so saying when its stable and supports his configuration is a bit of a sweeping statement. I mean, I know some people who have problems with MS office on real PCs, for instance, but it works ok for the majority, so I wouldnt call it an unstable product. Maybe a format and reinstall (to clear out any junk) might be a good place to start.
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y

This is really the problem isn't it? Someone says "it doesn't work" or "it doesn't meet my expectations", etc and the real issue is whether or no "it's actually working" as described.

I know that unless a feature is EXPLICITLY MENTIONED PER SE that I simply don't expect it to be present. So, unless the documentation said somewhere that Parallels can use a boot camp HDD that is NOT present on the HD from which OSX was booted, I would expect that Parallels could NOT YET support that feature. But that's me -- others apparently have different expectation sets and IMO that is partly what sets up their experience of "disappointment" or whatever.

This isn't a blame at all -- just a description of what I've seen and what I've learned over the years, esp in re: to feature sets in new programs.

It is my personal preference to stay focussed on the product when on a product-vendor-supported forum. This goes along with not particularly wanting to hear about VWMWare or any other particular program, except to the degree that the other program directly interacts with Parallels. That's my preference and I believe that I have as much right to express it here as anyone else has to express any particular opposing opinion.
 
Good analogy darkone... M$ would be a fraction the company it is now if it had to give refunds for anything that crashed a particular system. Parallels can only be held accountable for features they state they support and for installs on fresh systems.

But, it never hurts to have a company that will help you with non-program related problems. It seperates the 'good' from the 'excellent'.
 
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Why is the evil empire, known as the evil empire?

Parallels obviously has a great deal more conscience than microswift.

And to say that any swift product is absolutely stable, is a great leap of logic.
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Better Bizneth Bureau complaint

Wow.

And I thought MY pressure was up.

I just wanted to say that I installed Parallels (twice) with no issues what-so-ever. The only glitch at all was trying to access an SQL server database that resided on another computer on our net.

I tried telephone support, but they weren't able to come up with a solution either.

Finally, after installing an XP SP2 update through the autoupdate feature, the SQL database was accessible! Bizarre, but who cares!

I am running a Mac Book Pro 17", w/2GB RAM, Windows XP Professional SP2 and I need the XP for most of my work as a financial advisor.

For me, any hassles with Parallels support has been far outweighed by the fact that I can finally use an elegant Mac system at my office.

'Nuf said.
 
darkone said:
thing is.. for some.. its working fine on mac pros, with bootcamp etc etc etc ... so saying when its stable and supports his configuration is a bit of a sweeping statement.
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The problem is we get some people with intense anger coming in here, talking about calling the Better Business Bureau or filing lawsuits, etc. (part of our culture unfortunately :( ), and they don't stop and think why are they having problems when people with the exact same hardware and software aren't.

This isn't the Parallels Workstation forum where you could have 150 different motherboards and 40 different CPUs.

Being that we are Intel-based Mac users, we really only have two revisions/generations of systems (and it's hard to call them a separate generation when in some cases the second revision was merely a newer, but backwards compatible CPU), and we have a very homogeneous environment.

Most of us are on 10.4.7 - 10.4.9. Unfortunately (fortunately for Parallels) the majority of Mac users using this software have no problems, and therefore do not seek out the forums for help or to vent. Even then, you will still find just about every combination you can think of on the forums.

I think some of these people need to chill out, step back, and look at the fact that because we are such a homogeneous group of computer users, with very few variations, chances are the problem is with something they are doing.

I don't mean to insult them, but if I have a MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo, with 2GB of memory, and I'm on 10.4.8, and the next guy has a MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo with 2GB of memory and is running 10.4.8, and I had no problems with installing Windows XP, but he did, rather than blowing a gasket and going off on some tech support person or talking about lawyers or whatever, he needs to say "okay, what am I doing different than everybody else who has the same hardware and the same OS, and who are not having problems".
 
austin said:
The problem is we get some people with intense anger coming in here, talking about calling the Better Business Bureau or filing lawsuits, etc. (part of our culture unfortunately :( ), and they don't stop and think why are they having problems when people with the exact same hardware and software aren't.
...
I don't mean to insult them, but if I have a MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo, with 2GB of memory, and I'm on 10.4.8, and the next guy has a MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo with 2GB of memory and is running 10.4.8, and I had no problems with installing Windows XP, but he did, rather than blowing a gasket and going off on some tech support person or talking about lawyers or whatever, he needs to say "okay, what am I doing different than everybody else who has the same hardware and the same OS, and who are not having problems".
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Yes. Although it may SOUND insulting to some, what you have said is precisely on target.
 
I think you have this place confused for a fanboy blog. If you have any hard data, experiences, or solutions then everyone would be glad to see them, but if you're just another drive-by poster with nothing to contribute then I hope I don't see more of you in the Fusion forums.
 
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