Customer Service: N O T

I am Internet marketing in the online health area. At home I use a Mac and up until now have loved Parallels. However I advise my fellow Mac users to stay away from Parallels if they want to run Vista for the following reasons:

-There was absolutely no support anywhere on your website for people who wanted to install Vista. I realize that the OS is brand new but the beta has been out for a long time. At the very least your website should have had a message to all current customers that Parallels is working on a solution to install Vista via Parallels on Mac’s (I finally installed by creating a new VM and booting from the DVD and doing a clean install).

-My numerous eMails to your tech support people were unanswered.

-I paid $30 for tech support phonecall & I left my number three times and never received a call back. When I did connect I was told it was a Windows issues and to call Microsoft (I won’t go there !)

As a marketer I realize the power of Consumer Generated Media and have been doing my best to tell user who want to run Vista on their Mac’s to stay away from Parallels and run Boot Camp.

One of the Parallels marketing team forwarded my eMail to a tech support manager & that was also unanswered and I can only think, as my fellow Mac users think, that Parallels is

1: Unwilling to answer
2: Was unprepared for the release of Vista
3. Does not value good customer service.

Would it have been so hard to have the home page of your website advise Parallels users NOT to install Vista until you have a working solution? All we want is a solution (I found mine by looking through endless forum threads) for the early adopters who made the mistake of thinking that Parallels would be ready for Vista.

 

While I agree that Parallels support is pretty much non-existant except for a few tidbits here and there on the forums and they should be slammed for it - Parallels runs Vista just fine. The only people I see having issues with Vista is upgrading Vista from XP.

So just to be clear, nothing is wrong with Vista and Parallels. Its just upgrading from an older OS. And yes, that needs to be made clear.

 

That does not seem to be the case from what I have been reading for the last hour with Parallels on Mac Pros. People seem to be having serious different issues happening that they cannot figure out on their Mac Pros. I personally have been having issues and just trashed Parallels in hope of talking to someone tomorrow from the support side to help walk me through some of this. From what people are saying on that it does not seem likely based on their lack of customer support. To not have a place to call and some quality support set up when your product is selling as one of the hottest new software out there makes NO sense to me. I see Parallels talked about in Mac World and all these different publications and they cannot figure out it may be in the companies best interest to make their customers happy by spending the needed money to set something up in regards to support. As far as I am concerned, windows in not worth that much to me if it is going to make things less stable and cause more unneeded headaches. I called Microsoft first to get some support and I would rather shoot myself in the head than have to deal with the call centers in India and the complete lack of knowledge and ability to even understand what they were trying to say. I am a very patient person most of the time, but when you feel like there is absolutely nowhere to turn other than forums to hunt out your solution for software that you paid for it is unacceptable in my opinion.

 

What does Vista give you that XP does not?

 

Oh lots of things....

More DRM, even less freedom, the opportunity to experience the joy of new bugs and security flaws, higher RAM requirements, reduced video performance..

 

Parallels staff has acknowledged some difficulty in replying to support requests perhaps because of unexpected growth.

In this thread Absolutely Zero Support. Disappointing...

Several users made similar observations.

A Staff member posted this reply in the referenced thread:

We’re putting out considerable efforts to improve support since the more versatile and genius Parallels becomes the more thoroughgoing treatment to support issues should be given.
You have been encountering a great deal of trouble communicating to Parallels support and that mislead you into thinking that in Parallels there’s a principal trouble with support.
It wouldn’t be a gross exaggeration to say that you felt aggravated with such treatments towards you when handling your trouble report in such a way, however, it would certainly be as much more again to say that not providing a solution quickly is something Parallels reckons as approach to the support of you.
We always do have willingness to listen to customer’s issues and then provide a solution as soon as possible.
But you should be aware of fact that In the event the problem is connected to Beta it’s not easy to sort it out quickly.
Please send me a private message with your contacts so the dedicated Technical Support Engineer engaged in Beta release operations could get in touch with you and give update regarded to the current situation.
Please submit KPs logs for review as well, be assured these reports will be of great value to our QA staff which will be able then to reproduce your problem in lab as well as for Engineering staff to include the permanent fix in upcoming release.

Thank you in advance for your dedication, knowledge and patience on assisting Parallels Support in resolving Beta related issues.
We would not be where we are today without the customers’ reporting and assistance in getting relief of Beta bugs.
__________________
Best regards,

Emil

Also, utw-Mephisto posted a reply he received from parallels Staff regarding support.

In a nutshell is states that "It is not acceptable that you or anyone else runs into trouble getting a hold of support. We're adding more people weekly, but we're still going through the growing pains of being a very small company with a suddenly huge product."

The are aware of support issues and they have offered some resolution. Try to PM Emil and see what happens.

cheers

 

The problem with that staff posting, is that it has been posted every couple of months, with slightly different wording, ever since the first GA of PD. If they were adding more people on a weekly basis, then complaints regarding a lack of support would have disappeared. They have not. I find it appalling that people are paying for support calls, and still getting no response.

To be fair, a lot of the problems could stem from their acquisition by SWsoft, in which case they should be more open about it. People might be more understanding.

 

Actually, according to InfoWeek, SWsoft acquired Parallels three years ago. Since the parent is funded by some of the largest venture companies in the world, there is no good explanation for the absence of support.

Charging $30 for a support call, and never calling back comes dangerously close to fraud.

 

Three years? Didn't realise that. There is even less of an excuse for the abysmal support, then.

Parallels should be held to some sort of SLA regarding paid support calls, and if they fail, they refund the money.

 

I have no plan to pay the $30 and have called my credit card to get the charge taken off. It took me two full days of searching forums to get Vista working on my Mac. To this day there is still nothing on the support page of their website to address the "ASCI power error" message you get when trying to install Vista. Can you imagine someone trying to install it using the wizard and getting no help when they get to the error message?

 

It might be really helpful for you to post what you needed to do to complete the Vista installation, if you haven't already done so. It could save others some time. I think the "How To" forum would be ideal.

 

I won't buy any upgrades because there is no support

I have been reading many many posts regarding support problems. I was even prepared to pay for support. But then I read that people paid and they never received the callbacks for support.

Therefore, I will not purchase any upgrades to this software if/when they are available. The word will get out that you are on your own when you buy this product. I think many users will probably share this view and not purchase a newer version.

I am stuck with two installations of Windows XP. The boot camp installation no longer works with Parallels for Mac, so I use it by itself (i.e. just booting into Windows). I made the mistake of starting up the boot camp installation from Parallels after I had forgotten that I had used the hibernate function in a native boot to Windows earlier. I have been unable to completely recover in spite of a number of Windows repair installations, reactivations, etc. I have a virtual HDD with Windows XP with applications that I wish to run concurrently with the MAC.

At least I can hibernate/suspend each Windows installation separately since the operate independently.

The message: Don't put out a product that you can't support. People should not have to rely on other well-meaning users to help sort out their issues.

 

I think it is important to not judge a product by individual reports of insufficient support. Forums by their nature condense together failures to find solutions; all those who have got their queries answered will not be visible here...

 

..and that is even more confounded on this forum as they have failed to seperate final and beta products into their respective areas (a big mistake IMO). One cannot expect the same levels of service on both, and a lot of the beta noise should not be in the general product forum at all.

 

The damage of bad press.

Anyone in any sort of customer service field (e.g. medicine, sales etc.) knows that when a customer is happy with a product, he/she might tell a few associates. However, when someone is unhappy with a product or service, they will not hesitate to tell many more people of their bad experience.

 

I'm new and don't know how to start a new thread. I agree. Parallels customer service sucks big time. I too paid and left my number - no answer. Beta 3120 never did work on my computer and I almost lost all my files in windows. I am back to 1970 which did work just fine. Now I can't install parallels tools. It was asking for the disks and said I was missing the cab files. I have repeatedly uninstalled Parallels and reinstalled Parallels to no avail. I have wasted dozens of hours trying to figure this damn thing out. It seems nobody is having the same problems. The only way I could even get to the parallels installer was to do a *.exe search under windows. I tried the VM install parallels tools and it didn't even have the decency to come up with an error message. I will look for a reply to this but I am off to spend the rest of my time investigating boot camp. I have lots of work to do and have wasted enough of my time. I should note I am using Windows XP, have abided by all the setting suggestions by Parallels so please don't post these in any replies. I am not a rooky, just very frustrated.

 

When will guys learn that as soon as you put something called "beta" on your machine, you're on your own.

 

Parallels has some responsibility for this. They've never properly separated the beta activity from the production activity in these forums or anywhere else. They tout the newest beta or RC as an upgrade, and it is quite seductive for folks hoping for a solution to protracted problems.

If they never to anything else before going production with the current incarnation of Parallels, they should appologize to the userbase for this absurd process. If it weren't for the huge unpaid citizen support group here many people would have gone off and never returned. And a lot of folks do leave.

They might just as well put up a sign that says "If you don't like our service, go to VMWare.com" because that is the only other game in town - and they at least do have a proper beta program that is not intertwind with production code and support activities. Well, they don't have production code, of course, so that makes things a bit better.

There are times when I question whether Parallels really has production code and I'll bet a paycheck I'm not alone. These snatches of genius they drop on us in a maelstrom and tangled cacaphony of production support and beta testing fits and starts can take you only so far.

 

To start a thread, go to the forum main page (not to a thread) and click the thread starter link above the thread list.

When you installed the beta, if you installed the tools from the beta, you have incompatible tools and Parallels app. You need to uninstall the tools from your VM before you can install the old ones.

You may be best off creating a brand new VM with 1970, installing your OS, tools, and applications, updating, and attaching your old virtual disk as a second drive to recover your data files.

Betas are not for production for good reason.

I'm curious -- what does "almost lost all my files in windows" mean? It would seem you lost them or you didn't, or maybe you lost some of them? Inquiring minds want to know.

Suggestion: When you get the VM working, make a copy of your .hdd file(s) using the Finder, and make another backup every time you are about to try something new (such as a beta) so you can get back more easily. FWIW, I back up my entire machine to an external drive before I install ANYTHING, including (or maybe especially) Apple updates. I've been glad I did several times. It's a real time saver.

Good luck.

 

Hey, thanks for your kind reply to my not so kind post. I am very frustrated. Almost lost all my files means when I installed the beta version, Tools would not install so I did not have the shared folder. I could not even get into the VM as the mouse and keyboard would not work. I was at a loss as to how to get into the windows operating system and hence thought I lost everything. I used the wrong words - I should have said I thought I lost everything. I've done all the uninstall stuff you mentioned. Even went through the windows operating system to delete anything that had anything to do with tools. The problem with having to reinstall the VM is that the windows install key is only good for 2 or 3 installs, then you have to phone them for another key. I called them several time last time for a new key and I got the runaround. It took me several times over 3 days of calling them back and finally got to someone who actually believed I was not pirating copies of windows. Thank you for your solution...I'll try it....making a new VM.