Dealing with Software Support

I was invited to a call with some of our users who wanted to explain some of the problems they had in a particular feature of our software. One of the problems was actually an issue with a massively-popular 3rd-party software we integrate with, so they wanted me to log a bug with the 3rd-party on their behalf.

A reasonable request I thought, but I really didn’t want to have loads of phone calls/email chains back-and-forth with support. I just wanted to log it and forget about it. Luckily, I am a developer so I have a good understanding of all the information Support/Development would want.

This company that I logged the bug report with must be one of the Top 10 software companies in the world. So you’d expect their Support to be of a high standard. Due to the fact that the bug report is still open at the time of writing, I’d better keep their identity a secret, otherwise they could easily look up my name from the bug report and my anonymity is blown.

The feature is that you click a button, then their software will open a dialog with some data pre-filled in. If their software is currently closed, it still opens the dialog (their software is just temporarily open). In this scenario, when you save/close, then their software is supposed to close back down completely. However, it was getting stuck and you had to use Task Manager to kill it. This problem can be recreated consistently every time.

So I put together a great description of the problem, the recreation steps, the version of Windows, the exact version of their software I was using. I told them our users have recently upgraded from ‘X’ edition to ‘Z’ edition; and I was using ‘Y’ edition and can now see the problem after installing ‘Z’ edition so the problem is definitely in this new edition. Since I didn’t want to provide them with our software to recreate the issue, I even found some of their software with a similar feature and recreated it on there too. But to make sure they definitely didn’t consider it to be a problem with our software, or their other software product, I found another 3rd-party, free-to-use software and recreated it there too.

So I’d say they have a 100% chance of recreating that themselves, and I had proven it was a problem with their latest iteration of software. 

Within an hour, I get an email asking questions. So it seems I failed to provide them the information required:

• What version of Windows are you using?
• What exact version of our software are you using
• When was the feature last seen working?

I had literally given him all those answers. So I reworded my original report and put them in bullet points. He then mails back saying he cannot recreate it and would like a demo. Unbelievable. I can recreate it everytime, our users can recreate it every time. It’s not a Windows issue because I was using Windows 8 and our complaining users are using Windows 10.

He specifies that the demo must be on Windows 10. Why? Is he just trying to mess me about? You can’t expect someone to have access to various computers. The version of Windows is irrelevant.

Regardless, I accept and I set up a Virtual Machine. It’s like a fresh computer install so maybe it is better than my work computer to prove this is a bug. I put their software on it, even created a brand new account. However, now my user doesn’t have the Premium licence but I accept the trial, so had 14 days. I can recreate it every time. Surely he hasn’t tried hard.

So I arrange the call, share my screen and I demo the feature to him. I ask if he did the exact same thing. He then tells me the main difference was that he was using the very latest version. Is he trying to wind me up? I told him the exact version, he asked for the version, then didn’t use it! Surely if he couldn’t recreate it on the latest version, then he could have checked on the version I was using; then rejected the bug as fixed. Instead, I waste an hour configuring the Virtual Machine and another 30 mins demoing it to him.

He was supposed to send me instructions on how to update because it wasn’t as simple as clicking a button. However, he didn’t bother and I found the instructions after some Googling. He was right that it was fixed…or kind of. I tested it several times and I saw the same issue again. So I tried some more and it worked for maybe 30 times then failed. So it’s intermittent. So I tell him it’s not perfect. He wants another demo because he can’t recreate it.

So I demo the problem and he said he cannot help because he noticed I’m “not using the Premium account” and he is in the Premium support team. I told him I do have a licence, I was just using this account to rule out if it was a problem if you had a large user profile: basically doing his investigation for him.

However, I have to deploy a new Virtual Machine since the settings don’t allow me to sign in (seems to be some restriction from our IT department). So after setting up yet another Virtual Machine and signing in with my work account (with the Premium licence), I do another demo. However, the intermittent nature means the issue didn’t happen and the meeting had already lasted 20 mins. I was pretty bored clicking a button and closing a dialog for that length of time. So I said if I had time, I’ll try and record it happening, but in the meantime, I’ll send him the recordings I had from before (with the Standard account).

After a few days, he says that he is going to log a ticket with the Microsoft Windows 8 Support Team, so I ask him why. It doesn’t make sense when the issue occurs on both Windows 8 and Windows 10. He said it was because it only happens on Windows 8 since I had demoed it working on Windows 10. I told him again that I have recreated the issue with the latest software on both Windows 8 and 10, and using 2 different user accounts. The recordings I sent him were Windows 10. It was just that the issue was intermittent and coincidentally worked during the time I was demoing it.

He apologises for the misunderstanding and would need some time with his ‘senior’ to come up with the way forward. A few days later, he says that his senior wants me to arrange another call to test out some scenarios. I told him I didn’t understand what the plan was. He apologises for the misunderstanding, but there’s some scenarios that we need to test. I told him I didn’t understand what the plan was: am I doing a demo? or am I watching them do a demo? He apologises for the misunderstanding, but he wants me to deploy another Virtual Machine and create a new user and demo this to them. Surely, I needed to know that and set up a Virtual Machine and new user account before we start the call. It would have been a bit awkward if I set up the call, he asks me to demo it on a machine I wasn’t logged into and with a user I hadn’t even created.

I told him I didn’t understand what the plan was. Why do I need yet another Virtual Machine and user account when I recreated the issue already using 2 accounts, 1 Windows 8 physical machine and 2 Windows 10 Virtual Machines? He said they had attempted to recreate the issue with multiple users and on different Virtual Machines, but since the problem seems to exist on my Standard account, then he would like me to verify it on another Standard account.

Let’s recap: when he concluded it was a Windows 8 issue, I told him it wasn’t because I’d recreated it on Windows 10. It seemed that me demoing the feature working on Windows 10 was the thing that he picked up on, and completely disregarded everything I wrote and said. I had told him on that call it was intermittent and I had seen it fail that same day on the same Virtual Machine. Now we are in a situation where I had told him I had recreated it with multiple users, but he is still thinking of that demo I did where it was working. Not only was it Windows 10, but I was using my Premium account at the time. So now he has this idea that the problem is with my Standard account.

I think I need to take him to a hypnotist to train him to forget the existence of that demo. What’s he going to claim next? That because he saw it working on a Friday, then it’s a Monday to Thursday issue?

My dream of just logging the issue and them instantly confirming the bug was completely ruined. 

It’s dragged out for a month or something daft and I feel like I have invested weeks of time investigating it. This is literally his job and I am doing his work and telling him how to do his job. It’s ridiculous. 

I keep saying to my colleagues that it seems that he is trained to mess people about so they drop the issue then they don’t have to fix anything. It’s a bizarre strategy, but what other logical explanation is there for his behaviour?

I like our system: Regardless of whether Support can or cannot recreate the issue, the bug gets prioritised based on what they know. If it is deemed high priority then it will get sent to Development, otherwise probably gets thrown on the backlog and we might look at it in a year… or never. But I think the key aspect is that we always believe our users, so it does get logged (“the customer is always right”). Well, I guess we get evidence like a video or screenshot, but I had already provided those – and we would never dismiss video evidence. 

As a side note: I wish that low priority bugs were dealt with faster because it will discourage users from reporting them if they think we will ignore it for a year. Maybe they can be given to Junior Developers to clear down.