Acronis

02/04/2008 2:01:00 pm PST
Update -- Well.....three hours after leaving the VM, Acronis was kind enough to return my call. It must be one busy tech support call center. The same guy that I've used in my last three calls called me back. I beginning to think Acronis' call center is out of this one gentleman's living-room located somewhere in third world and connected to the 800 number via VPN. Through his often mumbled and heavily accented voice, he asked me to repeat the message I left on the VM three hours ago (They apparently couldn't be bothered to listen to it). He then gave me a lot of hmmmms and ummmmms and then proceeded to tell me that new instructions would be sent via email and please get back to him. At this point his VPN link must have died because all of a sudden the call went one way audio. I could hear him but couldn't communicate with him. I hung up in disgust.


I'm beginning to regret my decision to purchase Acronis SnapDeploy for our companies imaging platform. We've run into some problems with deploying out to some newer workstations where the SD client just seems to drop the IP stack. At this point, Acronis' tech support has been less than helpful. In fact I would give them a D grade only because I wouldn't want to be mean and give them a F. Their tech knowledge base has no useful information with regards to this program (or truth be told any problems) and the tech support forums are littered with abandoned threads that Acronis apparently can't be bothered to answer. As a corporate customer, I expect and demand that companies that I purchase "priority" support from bend over backwards so I can service my clients. To date I have placed three phone calls for two different issues to "priority" tech support for help. These were the results.

1. The first call, the voice prompt gave me the depressing news that I wouldn't be able to talk to an engineer as they were all busy (probably listening to pissed off customers) and I could leave a VM. After begrudging leaving the VM, I received a call back a couple hours later from a gentleman with a very thick accent. Five minutes later after apparently not listening to me, he tells me to run a basic test and email him the results. I haven't returned the results because of the issue I'm currently having.

2. The second call I make I actually get an engineer (I'm pretty sure the Indian fellow I had on the last call). I explain the issue and he again makes no effort to either explain the problem or work through the problem with me on the phone. His first and only effort is to email me instructions on patching the program (A patch I might add that should have been available on their website for me to just download). The email states if the patch doesn't work, then run TrueImage rescue disk and collect and email back some data for tech support. The only problem is I don't own TrueImage nor do I have any idea what or where to find a TrueImage rescue disk.

3. My third call was made today to follow up on the emailed instructions that were apparently for TrueImage not SnapDeploy. I got the voice prompt to leave a VM.

This is starting to piss me off. I paid for priority service and I'm beginning to think I've been had.
-PC