How to Piss off Your Customers – PTC Version

As an engineer, I’m always looking for tools, software or hardware, to make my job easier and faster.  This is necessary because management never can grasp the fact that every time they add another status report, it takes time out of your job.

Anyways, I saw a small article on Design News that PTC had released a freeware version of Mathcad, called Mathcad Prime.  This was probably a previous version of the Mathcad software, and if I can get something to make the algebra easier and less error prone, I’m all for it.  There are times when you need to do the S transforms (for example, adding filtering) and algebraic manipulations (partial fraction expansion anyone?) are very cumbersome by hand, and error-prone.  Generally you know when the result is wrong, then you have to churn through the whole thing again to find out where you made your mistake.

Mathcad Prime promised to make my life easier.  Since my workplace has IT Nazis, the quickest way to review the software was to install it at home.  Both work and home are Win7 64bit, so whatever I encountered at home, most likely will be the same situation at work.

One day I’ll write an entry on IT departments, but suffice it to say that most don’t realize there is a difference between your ‘administrative assistants’/accountants and engineers.  Engineers can work with (and many times, need) free software.  The time frame usually cannot be the glacial timing reserved for managers and accountants.  Engineers need to get the job done now, not 3 days later.

To give you an idea on how back the IT Nazis here are, I have to put in a Help ticket to remove icons from my desktop.  I can’t even do that.

Back to PTC’s Mathcad Prime. 

I find the free page, download the software and install it.  Upon start-up, I get the splash screen, then a window that announces that Mathcad Prime has stopped working and will be closed.  No option to see what the error was, just a nice ‘close’ button.  I figure that I need to reboot.  So I reboot and get the same result.  Now I have no illusions about support for freeware, so rather than call and complain, I head to PTC’s website.  

Now I encounter the first problem.  The only way to get to the FAQs and troubleshooting on their website is to have an account.  The problem is, it isn’t just a registration, you must have support contract.  They have dozens of Forums, but all the troubleshooting and help is locked up behind a paid support window.  This idea must have taken some kind of serious brain damage.  Now, instead of helping myself on this free software, I have to contact their support.

Since I’m working from home, I send their support an email.  I also used my work email to ‘register’ this lump of unworking dreck, I ask them specifically to respond to my home email.  Of course, I put that at the bottom prefaced with the admonition that I really don’t expect them to read that far.  And guess what, they don’t.  I have to wait to Monday to get the support response. 

In my email, I carefully outlined the situation, even to the extent of telling them that it’s the free version and I’m previewing from home.  The response I get immediately proves that I’m dealing with an idiot.  He gives me a link that’s behind the paid support wall.  I get a very nasty page directing me to go pay for a support license.  I copy this, send it to him, again telling him that I’m working from home and send this to my home email.  The response, two days later, goes to my work email.  At least now he outlines, in the email, what I should do.  It involves replacing a file.  Easily done, the problem is, it doesn’t work.  That happens, if everything worked after the first fix, you probably would not need engineers.  However, the idiot still cannot seem to understand where to send his responses.  I email back the negative result and wait.

Now things get interesting.  I actually get a call at work from the regional sales manager.  He makes all the right noises about how things should be handled and says that he’ll get my problem resolved, hopefully the same day.

You can guess the results.  I have not heard from either the sales manager or support for over two months now.  After a month, I uninstalled the software, documented my experience with PTC and recommended that my company never deal with PTC for the main reason that you can’t rely on their support.

Maybe if we paid for support, the company would be more responsive, but the support person I dealt with gave me no reason to think he was even remotely intelligent.  That’s not a good sign.

Will PTC lose customers over this?  I hope they lose enough customers to give their brain-damaged management a kick in the ass.  Releasing old software as freeware can be a good inducement to get customers, when they can see the good stuff you can do with their software.  However, you have to be intelligent about this.  It would have been fine if the software came with the caveat that there was no support.  Or if I was told that in either an email or on the phone.  Of course, without support, some of the inducement to upgrade (pay money) is lost.  It would have also been fine if they stated that the program does not work under my operating system.  Stuff like that happens.  HOWEVER, when you ask for help and they run and hide without a word, that does not say good things about the company.

The problem is, at this point, the brain-damaged management of PTC will probably pronounce that they will never, ever, release free software again.  Instead of fixing the problem.  And it’s an easy problem to fix!  All you do is state that the only support for freeware is the online troubleshooting, create a forum for getting the freeware working and you’re done!  And, duh, you have to let people have access to the troubleshooting.

This is why PTC management is brain-damaged.  Of course, they can prove me wrong, but I doubt if they are smart enough to figure out how.