Avid support, hold time nightmares

[Jon Zanone]

You must have hit the busy time – everytime I’ve called it’s been a reasonable wait (less that 15 minutes)…

My brother works customer service at Papa John’s Pizza… (“Dude! this pizza sauce is freakin me out!” “Relax, sir. Are you sure you took the top off the can?”)

Jon

“The Almighty tells me He can get me out of this mess. But He’s pretty sure you’re F%$#*D!”

[Philip Coccioletti]

Jon lets get serious… for all the time & money we have invested in our avids, let alone the assurance program of unrealistic hold times with Avid tech support… you suggest that we chill??? 15 minutes? We have never been so lucky. Obviously, you either work for Avid, never have a single client supervised edit, work out of your Uncles Tito’s basement, or have never experienced the term, “deadline.”

[Michael Hancock]

Phil, I know you’re frustrated but keep it nice. Jon is a professional like the rest of us. We’ve all had clients breathing down our necks, had deadlines loom large and menacing in front of us, and had a system crash. It’s called life.

Avid’s hold times can be long sometimes, yes. You say you draw the line at an hour–are you saying you’re willing to wait an hour, or you called and after an hour hung up? Keep trying back, early in the morning, in the afternoon, later in the evening. Put the phone on speaker and go about your day. When you get through get straight to your problem. Get your problem fixed, then ask what you can do to get through faster next time. Maybe ask for the contact information of the person in charge of the support center. Call that person and explain why you’re disappointed. I’m sure if all the techs are so busy they’re working on over a 1 hour hold time they’re probably not happy with the situation either, and complaining to them won’t help you. You need the person in charge to know you’re not happy. Ask if there is an express line you can call next time for emergencies. I don’t know, I don’t work for Avid. Maybe email would get you a faster reply. Again, ask them.

Otherwise, do you have an issue we can help you with, or is it hardware related (as in, your motherboard is shot and you need Avid to replace it)? If we can’t help you I do hope you get through to Avid soon. Nothing is worse than an approaching deadline, angry client, and a busted machine.

Good luck,

Michael

No project is ever finished, only abandoned in a state of near completion.

[Philip Coccioletti]

Thanks Mike.
Always keeping it nice here… and keeping it real. Very frustrating for many of us.
cheers

[Michael Hancock]

I completely understand your frustration–we had a brand new Avid that had to have a new motherboard and SCSI card within the first year. Turned out to be an HP issue (which they resolved very quickly), but it put us in an awful crunch and left us cursing up a storm until it was fixed.

I hope your problem is taken care of soon and it’s smooth sailing from here on out for you. Happy editing!

Michael.

No project is ever finished, only abandoned in a state of near completion.

[Jon Zanone]

Couldn’t let this one go…

I don’t have an Uncle named Tito, but my wife has a chihuahua named Tito. My production studio facilities actually occupy some of the most exclusive office space on the Front Range of the Rockies. I actually take time to marvel at the sunrise as I work to finish projects on deadline (I haven’t missed one yet). The sunsets can be pretty spectacular as well. I’ve seen them both, many times. My shows have worldwide exposure, and we get all kinds of clients. In fact, if I screw up, the possibility exists my company won’t get paid – and that affects a whole lot of paychecks. I am good enough to be hired by the company I work for over lots of other talented people, mainly because I can handle the pressure and make it look easy.

Yes, I understand deadlines, and the frustration of working through a problem with a client sitting behind me boring holes in my skull. I also have been working on Avids long enough to remember getting faxes saying customer support would not be open on the holiday weekend. I distinctly remember being on hold for HOURS waiting for C/S to come on the line. I also know, in the 12 years I’ve dealt with Avid they’ve been nothing but professional and have ALWAYS solved my problem. I know from being involved with the COW for the last couple of years, the majority of their calls have got to be from people who refuse to invest the time and money you and I have to buy qualified systems, and insist on trying make Avid work on Uncle Tito’s email machine from 1999.

I understand you’re frustrated, but keep it civil.

Jon

“The Almighty tells me He can get me out of this mess. But He’s pretty sure you’re F%$#*D!”

[Oliver Peters]

This isn’t a solution, but I might offer a perspective. In recent years, support reponse has definitely improved, but just in the past months it seems to have taken a turn for the worse. I suggest that this is an outgrowth of the software solutions. MC Soft has definitely had growing pains as witnessed by the fact that we’ve had all these point releases since 2.5 was first shown. My guess is that a lot of those owners are hitting issues – either real or operator error – that tend to clog up the support lines.

Be vocal. Make sure you express a professional concern to Marianna Montague (customer advocate) and it will get better. There is a lot of movement inside Avid management right now to go back to the basics – building products that work right, the first time. That also takes time. Hopefully this is a short term problem.

Sincerely,
Oliver

Oliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com