[AVolta]

Thank you for your comments. Since I am usually available to answer the telephone during business hours, and (usually) answer my Email several times a day, there seldom remains questions that our customers must seek advise on forums to answer - So I welcome all comments, good and bad.

Ability Systems' products are extremely adaptable and accommodate a great range of value added OEM applications. But because of this they lend themselves to a particular type of support problem. I don't know if you are the same party that has presented me with this problem, but since my negative experiences have been extremely rare I cannot help but think that there may be an association - So even if my response doesn't apply to you, I think the problem of support in general will find an interest to the forum community.

I was recently contacted by the customer of one of our OEM's, who was successfully using a cutting machine purchased from the OEM (with our software) and needed another machine. To save expense, rather than purchase another machine from the OEM the customer replicated the hardware and purchased the controls software directly from us. When the customer contacted me for technical support this presented me with a problem, but it was a problem which I am accustomed to handling.

The problem was that I felt obligated to protect the OEM's design investment (even though in this case the OEM had not asked me to do so), but at the same time support the software that we had sold to the customer. The manner in which I handle this type of thing is to direct the customer to the documentation that we provide, and offer to clarify technical issues relating to our products that may need further explanation.

In this most recent case, I recall obtaining specific permission from the OEM to assist this customer using knowledge that I had of his system (I thought the OEM was gracious indeed!). OEM's that write their own software for Indexer LPT typically don't have this problem, since they can write Indexer LPT serial numbers into their software. In this case, however, the OEM used one of our application products, which cannot attach its setups to specific license numbers. (We will consider adding this capability in the future).

In the following support session, I directed the customer to a written portion of our documentation that provided for making the two computer systems functionally identical. However, the customer explained to me that he did not grasp the English language sufficiently to read the documentation, and wanted me to take control over his computer on-line (with software he wanted to send me) to make the settings for him.

During this session I tried to explain two reasons why I could not attend to his request. 1) I would not run remote control software protected by another company's Copyright and 2) I interpret my role in technical support to assist in the understanding of design components, and especially not to circumvent this process by actually taking control over program settings.

Anyway, if you are not this customer I apologize for the lengthy explanation. In any event, you are most welcome to call with questions that you might have or outstanding assistance that you might need. Unfortunately, to date the only documentation that Ability Systems has is written in the English language, and I am only prepared to provide support in English.