On 2/19/06, Lars Jensen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I'm talking about business ethics. > > There is no ethical issue (assuming that you do whatever you say you > will do). It's a marketing decision.
If the customer has not paid for it yet, it's not unethical to ask for a fee to support him, although it might not be wise. If he has already bought it, it may be an ethical question, though, unless you're dealing with high profile customers and have made a contract that actually clarifies that support does cost extra. In any case, if you provide something and the customer thinks that you've not provided enough to him to make it work, then it's quite clear that you can't charge him to clarify this, don't you agree? What Apple and others do it quite borderline already: They make you pay FIRST (if you have not paid for extra AppleCare) and only if it turns out that it's not your fault but a bug or whatever on their side, they reimburse you (or, rather, choose not to charge you). That is something I'm very unhappy with, though, and I'd give them a lot of shit if I'd ever get caught in this. After all, I've experienced a lot of cases where rather imcompetent "service" people would not see that the fault is on their company's side, and if they had charged me then, I'd go berserk (mind you, these are even cases, where, after about 5 more calls, I got to someone who understood it better and agreed that it was their fault just like I kept on trying to show them earlier) Thomas _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe or switch delivery mode: <http://www.realsoftware.com/support/listmanager/> Search the archives of this list here: <http://support.realsoftware.com/listarchives/lists.html>
