Parallels email support?

P

pkh

Bit poster
I just requested support via email through this page: http://www.parallels.com/support/p,2
and got a hard bounce (details below). Is email support working? Has anyone else seen this? Is this a temporary glitch?


Bounce details:

The original message was received at Tue, 12 Dec 2006 13:21:47 -0500
from mail.parallels.ru [62.213.72.100]

----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
<desktop@rtlocal.parallels.ru>
(reason: 550 Host unknown)

----- Transcript of session follows -----
550 5.1.2 <desktop@rtlocal.parallels.ru>... Host unknown (Name server: rtlocal.parallels.ru: host not found)

[ Part 2: "Delivery Status" ]

Reporting-MTA: dns; mx1.parallels.com
Received-From-MTA: DNS; mail.parallels.ru
Arrival-Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2006 13:21:47 -0500

Original-Recipient: rfc822;desktop@parallels.com
Final-Recipient: RFC822; desktop@rtlocal.parallels.ru
Action: failed
Status: 5.1.2
Remote-MTA: DNS; rtlocal.parallels.ru
Diagnostic-Code: SMTP; 550 Host unknown
Last-Attempt-Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2006 13:21:48 -0500
 
Yes, I just noticed the same thing. I'm trying to evaluate Parallels and so far, I'm not impressed. :(



The original message was received at Tue, 12 Dec 2006 16:49:54 -0500
from mail.parallels.ru [62.213.72.100]

----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
<desktop@rtlocal.parallels.ru>
(reason: 550 Host unknown)

----- Transcript of session follows -----
550 5.1.2 <desktop@rtlocal.parallels.ru>... Host unknown (Name server: rtlocal.parallels.ru: host not found)
Original-Recipient: rfc822;desktop@parallels.com
Final-Recipient: RFC822; desktop@rtlocal.parallels.ru
Action: failed
Status: 5.1.2
Remote-MTA: DNS; rtlocal.parallels.ru
Diagnostic-Code: SMTP; 550 Host unknown
Last-Attempt-Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2006 16:49:54 -0500
 
.
It's probably overflowing with a plethora of ill conceived ramblings from mac people who complain first and read later.
.
 
Constant,

What exactly am I supposed to have read?

Searching on the following before I posted all turned up nothing pertinent:

email bounce
support email (a good number of people complaining that support doesn't reply, but no bounces)
delivery failure
email failure
undeliverable
mail.parallels.ru

And a quick scan of the past two weeks of topics in 'General Questions' also turned up nothing.

I do see now that I missed searching on "returned mail", which turns up a single relevant post in an unrelated thread. That post was still entirely useless to me, and not in a place where it might possibly seen by support, so I don't see that much was lost.

-pkh
 
He was referring to searching for your <problem> before sending a support request. It may suprise you to note that Parallels is a very small company with a very innovative product for your platform. You may need to understand that and adjust your methods of solving your problems. Please understand that it is much more useful to ALL Parallels users for the developers to develope rather than addressing 100s of requests for support from people who fail to exercise a search and try to understand their new platform before blaming Parallels.
 
Actually, it did surprise me today when I learned that Parallels is a small company.

I didn't think of the forums as an option until after I'd sent the support request -- I tend to follow the path suggested by the provider when looking for first-level support (after looking for google-level support). In this case, I went to the Parallels home page, selected 'Support', scanned the FAQ, searched and scanned the relevant portions of user guide, and only then did I send a support request. Had the forum been listed on the page, I would have searched here first.

Regardless; they shouldn't be advertising free email support if they don't have the staff to provide free email support -- it's that simple. And if they want a more self-sufficient userbase, they should absolutely have a link to these forums on their support page. (I cannot find a link here anywhere, from www.parallels.com.)

Also-plus-even-more-so: as far as I can tell, my question has *not* yet been answered on the forum (I'm not terribly surprised; it's vaguely esoteric), so I would have ended up sending them a support request anyway. (While perhaps posting in parallel in the forum.)

I'm a little confused by the assumption that I'm a nitwit -- is this the common response when someone points out an infrastructure failure around here? Or is it, as constant implied, because I'm a Mac user? :)
 
.
I said things about Parallels email support.

The way I read it, you're not using any host OS.

My apologies for not indulging you. ;-)
.
 
pkh said:
Regardless; they shouldn't be advertising free email support if they don't have the staff to provide free email support -- it's that simple. And if they want a more self-sufficient userbase, they should absolutely have a link to these forums on their support page. (I cannot find a link here anywhere, from www.parallels.com.)
Click to expand...

There was a similar product called Win4Lin by a very small company that used a similar method to what Parallels is trying to use. Win4Lin gave free email support too, but only for hard bugs or something else they thought was their problem to fix or at least acknowledge - so they really only replied to those (but did it sometimes within an hour). The email lists gave most of the support from users, and they became excellent over time to the point that support emails almost disappeared.

You are right about the forums being hard to find, and probably need better organization too.
 
Support

They only reason this company is still alive is because VMWare hasn't released their product for the mac.

The lack of support is pathetic and their software doesn't work! I have tried Linux VM's on the mac and half of them have kernel panics on boot. I wasted $40 on this product.

J
 
.
jnevik,

Lucky you posted that. Otherwise the rest of us would have been completely unaware of your technical ineptness.
.
 
jnevik said:
They only reason this company is still alive is because VMWare hasn't released their product for the mac. ... I wasted $40 on this product.
Click to expand...

So next you can pay ~$200 for VMware and continue to complain on another forum. If you have a problem, as soon as you do, post in the proper forum to get responses to your specific problem. You will find that the VMware forums are at least if not more hard-nosed about posts that don't express an actual desire to get an answer for a problem. Welcome to the cross-platform world, where your particular selection of a host OS does not matter. You will just have to get in the queue and try to communicate to others, just like the rest of us do. It's tough to become a regular person isn't it?
 
.
I read a bit at the wikipedia link, and I couldn't find anything that made either of the acronyms, yhbt, or pdnftt.

What does it all mean?
.
 
Please Do Not Feed The Trolls

In my decade and a half moderating mailing lists, I've dealt with real trolls, and I really haven't seen one here.

We really don't need the sarcasm, and personal attacks, but other than that, we just seem to have a difference of opinion on how the forums should be run. The best way, IME, to solve this sort of problem is to have a moderator who takes an active hand in shaping the list persona. It takes significant time, experience, and tact, and Parallels may not want to assign resources to the task.

I've been watching the signal to noise ratio go down in these forums lately, and I'd rather see it head in the other direction. We don't need these meta discussions, since they aren't going to get us anywhere unless a moderator steps in and does a lot more guidance. I've accepted that the how to forum is not useful as a place to find tips and solutions because it's cluttered with questions. I think it should probably be eliminated if it isn't going to be moderated, which would solve a lot of the problems we are having here.

So let's stop telling each other what to do, and limit our posts to technical, Parallels related subjects. We'll all waste a lot less time that way.

Thanks.
 
^^good post^.

It is only understandable though for people to get frustrated then let off steam, when the help they thought they were intitled to turns out to be non-existent.
cheers,
chrisj303
 
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