Publisher of MPT, Avanquest/BVRP leaves this user hanging

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Craig - 23 May 2008 01:02 GMT

Long and

I can't believe it.

I've been using Avanquest's MPT forums for a couple of years now. The
support has never been excellent but adequate. Today, their forums and
support just fell off the map.

I read a thread in Ideas & Suggestions where several people had
requested support for Mozilla's Sunbird/Linux and UTF-8 support. I
added to the thread, saying that I agree.

It was flagged as spam, removed and I was sent an auto-generated email,
essentially saying that I'd used a word identified as spam and I should
be more careful in the future. The message didn't indicate /which/ word
had been flagged as spam!

OK, I'll make sure that I just stick to alpha-numerics and no
exclamations, etc. I resubmit my post and <voila!> Same shenanigans.
So I poke around on the forums to see if anyone else has had this problem.

Sure enough, they have. Other posters had highlighted the ridiculous
policy of warning a user on a certain word... w/o identifying the word.
I post on that thread, essentially saying "me too" and, sure enough,
the post is flagged and the forum s/w dumps me to a page that says:

> You have been banned from this forum. Please contact the webmaster
> or board administrator for more information.

Of course, there is no way to contact the webmaster/admin via the board.
I go to Avanquest's website, submit a support ticket and receive a
notice that "this address is no longer monitored..."

I've now been on hold with their "tech support" for 15 minutes.

I'd recommend against buying anything developed or supported by
Avanquest/BVRP. I'll certainly be staying away.

fwiw,
-Craig

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XS11E - 23 May 2008 01:15 GMT

> I'd recommend against buying anything developed or supported by
> Avanquest/BVRP. I'll certainly be staying away.

Not me, I like their MPT and use it all the time. I have to agree
you've been treated very shabbily but I can't relate since I've never
registered my software nor ever used the forums.

I hope this works out for you but I wouldn't hold my breath if I were
you...... ;-)

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XS11E, Killing all posts from Google Groups
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Craig - 23 May 2008 01:27 GMT

>> I'd recommend against buying anything developed or supported by
>> Avanquest/BVRP. I'll certainly be staying away.
>
> Not me, I like their MPT and use it all the time. I have to agree
> you've been treated very shabbily but I can't relate since I've never
> registered my software nor ever used the forums.

Yea, MPT's great as long as it ain't broke.

> I hope this works out for you but I wouldn't hold my breath if I were
> you...... ;-)

At 40 minutes & counting, I appreciate the timely advice! <grin> Just
another reason to turn my back on closed-source, proprietary s/w.

-Craig

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XS11E - 23 May 2008 02:23 GMT

>>> I'd recommend against buying anything developed or supported by
>>> Avanquest/BVRP. I'll certainly be staying away.
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
>
> Yea, MPT's great as long as it ain't broke.

It's never been broke for me, it's worked to perfection ever since I
started using it with version 3.?.

> Just another reason to turn my back on closed-source, proprietary
> s/w.

I like and need software that works, that pretty much eliminates open
source.

I wasted years trying to make Linux work before decided it was exactly
that, a waste of time. It won't do what I need and apparently never
will.

I run Thunderbird and Firefox as my only open source, FF just isn't as
good as MSIE and, despite whatever you may have heard, it's less
secure. I use it ONLY when I need a Greasemonkey script. Thunderbird
works perfectly for me for email, I don't ask much of an email client.
It does not even begin to function as a newsreader. Like Linux, I
spent years trying to get OO to work, gave that up as well.

Open source is great in my experience if you're about two years behind
current hardware and software, two years behind won't allow me to do
what I need to do.

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XS11E, Killing all posts from Google Groups
The Usenet Improvement Project:
http://improve-usenet.org

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Richard B. Gilbert - 23 May 2008 13:10 GMT

> Long and
>
[quoted text clipped - 36 lines]
> fwiw,
> -Craig

If and when you finally get through to "tech support" the person you
speak with will speak English with a marked accent!

That's the way things are done these days.

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dold@96.usenet.us.com - 24 May 2008 20:47 GMT

> If and when you finally get through to "tech support" the person you
> speak with will speak English with a marked accent!

With the home office in Paris, France, a support person might be expected
to have an accent while speaking English.

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Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley Lake, CA, USA GPS: 38.8,-122.5

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Richard B. Gilbert - 24 May 2008 21:12 GMT

>> If and when you finally get through to "tech support" the person you
>> speak with will speak English with a marked accent!
>
> With the home office in Paris, France, a support person might be expected
> to have an accent while speaking English.

You mean that France has not yet outsourced technical support to India????

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