e8d65ebb-6b81-45aa-ab5b-7506df7b9b07 Posted March 25, 2011 Report Share Posted March 25, 2011 (edited) *** A few comments regarding Roxio's support for Retrospect. *** (Updated March 25, 2011 at 9:58 p.m. Pacific) (For the basis of these comments, see my previous post on Recovery failure.) My initial contact with Roxio tech support, using their public e-mail "contact" and the info on their Web site, led me to understand that, unlike the vendors of other relatively expensive system and utility software I use, Roxio appeared to provide no free tech support, not even chat or e-mail. Their "per incident" charge is an $70, and they won't waive the charge if the cause was a defect in the software or documentation. Their current "knowledge base" is minimal -- fewer than 150 entries for "Retrospect." However, as I learned from replies to this post, there's a KB from a previous EMC "community" site. (See replies below.) The forums seem to get minimal use. A reply also pointed out this is a new forum, and the prior forum had more activity and experienced members who were participants. I contacted Roxio customer service to express my dissatisfaction and got a helpful person who provided me the following URL where you can post tech support issues: http:selfserve.roxio.com/retrospect I couldn't find a link to this page on the Retrospect support pages. Note that if you go to: http://www.roxio.com/enu/support/retrospect/contact.html and clisk "Ask here" under "Contacting Support", you're taken to a form that appears to let you submit an issue to tech support. However, you get a stock reply saying you don't have an ASM, so this doesn't provide even initial free support. The customer service person told me the URL he provided wasn't yet posted on the Web site, so maybe this post will help someone else. *** Update *** Well, even with the "private" URL, I just got the same stock response that Roxio wouldn't provide any tech support without an ASM or per incident charge. Seems Roxio can't get their software, tech support or customer support straight. This isn't the kind of vendor I would ever advise a customer to put faith in. Edited March 26, 2011 by raoul Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lennart_T Posted March 25, 2011 Report Share Posted March 25, 2011 Their "per incident" charge is an excessive $70 For $70 you don't even get one hour of work from a decent consultant. No matter how many hours Roxio have to spend to resolve your issue, it will still cost you just $70. I think that is very reasonable! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
e8d65ebb-6b81-45aa-ab5b-7506df7b9b07 Posted March 25, 2011 Author Report Share Posted March 25, 2011 For $70 you don't even get one hour of work from a decent consultant. No matter how many hours Roxio have to spend to resolve your issue, it will still cost you just $70. I think that is very reasonable! I'm an experienced software developer and IT consultant that charges by the hour. Here's what's fair: Roxio can charge me by the hour for competent consulting to help me where I don't understand or have a problem caused by something that Retrospect should not be expected to handle or document. OTOH, if this is a software or documentation defect or deficiency, Roxio will pay me the same for helping them identify an correct the problem with their product. I don't charge my clients for repairing problems with my own work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
008e3f8f-ac2d-4494-8f82-24d5c4ae8d5b Posted March 25, 2011 Report Share Posted March 25, 2011 The forums seem to get minimal use. This Retrospect forum is only about a week old. The old forum has been used quite extensively... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted March 25, 2011 Report Share Posted March 25, 2011 Actually we have been very generous about providing free support to customers over the years. We even had a very long support grace period during the transition from EMC to Roxio. When a customer purchases Retrospect they get 30 days of free support. When a customer has the trial version they get free support. For users that do not want to pay $70 per incident they can purchase a support contract that includes a year of support and free updates to the product. Charging for support has to happen either by increasing the cost of the product to all customers or by charging a fee to those who need support. It is a pretty common practice in the software industry. Even Apple and Microsoft charge something for tech support. BackupExec who is the primary competition to Retrospect also charges for tech support. If you want to check out 3000 KB articles on Retrospect go to http://kb.dantz.com. That KB is slowing being moved to the Roxio KB. If you want to view 5+ years of forum content, you can go to forums.dantz.com, although the server is SUPER slow these days. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lennart_T Posted March 25, 2011 Report Share Posted March 25, 2011 I don't charge my clients for repairing problems with my own work. Maybe not, but do you sell complete solutions for under $1000? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
008e3f8f-ac2d-4494-8f82-24d5c4ae8d5b Posted March 25, 2011 Report Share Posted March 25, 2011 Maybe not, but do you sell complete solutions for under $1000? I would wash your car for that! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
e8d65ebb-6b81-45aa-ab5b-7506df7b9b07 Posted March 25, 2011 Author Report Share Posted March 25, 2011 If you want to check out 3000 KB articles on Retrospect go to http://kb.dantz.com. That KB is slowing being moved to the Roxio KB. If you want to view 5+ years of forum content, you can go to forums.dantz.com, although the server is SUPER slow these days. Thanks for the pointers. The forum admin might want to pin a message explaining the forum status, etc. so new forum members know about the other KB and message archive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cygnis Posted March 26, 2011 Report Share Posted March 26, 2011 If you want to view 5+ years of forum content, you can go to forums.dantz.com, although the server is SUPER slow these days. Have the old forums been moved to a different server or something? For me, they were only moderately slow before, but immediately became super-slow when the new Roxio forums opened. (In fact, I can hardly access them at all now; they won't load in Firefox, and only the main page will load in IE, with other pages timing out.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jelenko Posted April 21, 2011 Report Share Posted April 21, 2011 My two cents. I've used Retrospect since it was 5.x. My take is that Retrospect is designed for professional use - i.e., people who are rather expert at system administration and, if needed, have expense support from their company to pay for support if needed. I've had a fair number of problems using Retrospect, but none of the alternatives are perfect either. By far Retrospect has the most sophisticated set of features to manage and tailor your backups. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.