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0 Replies Last post: Oct 27, 2009 6:56 AM by continuum  

support beyond the forum - how do you handle it ? posted: Oct 27, 2009 6:56 AM

Click to view continuum's profile Guru 12,680 posts since
Dec 18, 2003
I don't know if this applies to anyone else ... anyway maybe we can find a way that suits all ...

What do you do if a problem can not be fixed with a short answer in a post and the user asks you if you can fix the issue via a remote-login ?

I specialize in vmdk and snapshot problems and in most of the cases this problems really require more work than a short reply.
So occasionally I agree to fix the issue via a remote-login. This happens more and more often since ESX 4 appeared.

In maybe 33 % of those cases the users are nice and keep their promise to make a donation or post a success report.
In the other cases the users make me regret having helped them at all.

Worst example so far : I spend a whole saturday night recovering data from a user-mistake on ESX 4 - the user promised to donate 1000 dollars.
When the work was done I never heard from that guy again.

Last case was yesterday night - all in all I spend maybe 2 hours on a deleted snapshot - 30 minutes via a remote-login.
The work was successful and the user promised to make a donation ... which of course never arrived.

Obviously a lot of frustration is building up ...
If it goes on like this I guess I will soon stop to invest more than 5 - 10 minutes for a users problems - just to avoid this feeling of beeing cheated.

Do you have similar experiences ? - if yes - how do you handle such cases ?

What do you do if you see a post and you know that you could fix the problem if you spend maybe a full hour on it - do you spend the time ?

Ulli


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