Customer service change?
Oso3D
Posts: 15,085
in The Commons
So is the SOP now to close bugs due to inactivity without actually reading the bug?
Are we just supposed to keep reopening them ourselves, start new bugs, or what?

Comments
I am still waiting for Leo 7 to be fixed. Ticket has been opened for months with no action.
What was wrong with him, if I may ask? I know Lucian still has green eyebrows, that have never been fixed, but Leo seemed fine.
Apparently it's automated. Tickets just get closed out due to inactivity.
That's grand.
I guess that's why I've been waiting two months and counting. It says "waiting on your response" or somesuch. Response to what? Nothing has happened!
Leo 7
1. Height is baked into his body shape. When dialing in the body only it makes the body taller. This should not happen. None of the others do that.
2. His y trans is dialed to have him level with the floor instead of him being at zero
3. He has an crooked fingernail mesh (See picture).
I would really like the height thing fixed in particular. It makes using his genetics for other characters difficult since the height makes the characters huge with little heads.
Well I did open a bug about the Genesis 3 Female Vicoria 7 / Girl 7 causing an error that would crash-dump DAZ Studio and the bug did get fixed but I was never notified that it was being worked on or that it was fixed so after about 6 months and several new releases of DAZ Studio, I retested the procedural I used to cause the crash dump (lucky I included it in the ticket), and yes that was the only way I knew the bug had been fixed. It was a real bug in DAZ Studio 4.9.1.70 that is now fixed in 4.9.3.166 for the skeptical programmers and QAs of the world.
My experience with tech support is that nothing happens. But they're really nice about it.
I used to be a software developer. We had to divide our time between fixing defects and implementing enhnacements. We couldn't fix all of the defects, so we focused on those of higher priority. Some customers would call about old tickets, and we'd just explain the workarounds (if there were any) and our prioritization process (which sometimes relied on how many clients reported the same issue).
We'd sometimes have old ticket closing sessions where we'd attempt to contact the submitter and see if we could get permission to close it. Often we couldn't make contact or they wouldn't remember/care about the issue anymore, so we'd close it.
Overall, Daz has an advantage over most software companies -- they have PA's. From my understanding, a PA is self employed. She can choose to spend time fixing all reported defects for her product in a timely manner, without waiting on a corporate 'prioritization process'. Granted, the PA must balance time spent fixing defects with time spent generating new revenue streams, but it's entirely within their control.
This is good news for me (a customer). If I notice a PA taking time to respond and address issues quickly, it'll make me more likely to purchase from that PA in the future.
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Waiting on your Response usually means that you have an answer to your ticket, and they still need some Information from you. Have you clicked on your ticket in the ticket area and see what their latest Response is? If there's no question from them, just reply to the ticket and ask "What is the Status of this". I regularly bump my tickets like that.
Sorry, Bee, but that is not the case. After first reporting the issue, the problem was acknowledged and was on the DAZ end. About two-thirds of the textures that were supposed to be included with a texture package were missing from the texture package, rendering it unusable. After a month with no change to the available download, and no notification, I did respond to the "waiting for a response" status and was essentially told "Relax, we're working on it". Ever since then, more than another month, I have had that "waiting on a response from you" status. Again, what response? I'm still waiting on you, guys.
Insofar as priorities are concerned, that sort of triage may make sense when it comes to software bugs, especially for free software. But priorities do not apply to defective or incomplete products in any market. Prompt rectification of the problem is mandatory regardless of how many have lodged complaints or how many sales have been made. If its broken, you fix it, no matter how busy you might be with new stuff. If you bought a physical product and discovered that it was missing parts upon getting it home, would you accept a response upon reporting it that "we're really busy right now, but check back once a month or every once in a while to see if we're less busy"?
Still waiting on a response? Well, here it is.
What is the ticket number for this?
234940, Richard.
I've had a bug open for 6 months, which I'm pretty sure someone else reported at least a year before that.
I mean, honestly, most of my bugs are submitted mostly for Daz' benefit. I can usually work around them and if they say 'you know, we're just not going to fix this' I'd shrug and move on.
But hey, some of this stuff is _broken_.
Bugs:
If you use subd on instanced stuff in 3DL, shadows are not cast. That's probably been around for years, but I submitted a bug 6 months ago. Supposedly in their bug tracker.
In Iray, reflected light doesn't affect SSS. If you make a fog volume and a mirror, and a tight spotlight, you can see a glowing trail up until the light hits the mirror, then... nothing. The light is still reflected, it just isn't calculated into SSS.
In Iray, thin film doesn't work with Spectral Rendering turned on.
Plus a few other things that haven't been updated in 6-7 months.
software updates only get rolled out when a new version is available.
And if the bug is in something you can't control, you have to kick it up a level.
I understand that they have to do triage. It is the condescending attitude of tech support that I object too. They almost always tell me to do something that I have already done and indicated in the original request.
Honestly the dissmissive attitude of customer service, has turned me off March Madness. I think I will take a pass.
Hi Will,
sometimes they have trainees with the task to close old requests. That's what I was told as I protested against it.

And yes - they do it without regarding the content neither the importness.
But at least my affected bug report still is open (inactive) since over one year.
But even the normal discussion with them is really bothering.
Current situation: To veryify an iRay crash situation, I was asked to check it with the most current version, perhaps the current beta.
As I asked for the install instruction that way, it wouldn't destroy my normal working setup, the discussion circled at least 10 times without receiving any install hints.
If you use DIM, it is preconfigured to install the beta version in parallel with a stable release version.
Just because you see no progress on your report doesn't mean that it isn't getting fixed. They do fix the bugs and they are rolled out with the next release version.
Evidence suggests that's, at best, occasional.
Leo does it too?
was just working on a scale-less josie7
You have to include in your report a way to reproduce the issue otherwise they can't fix it if they can't produce the same thing.
I've worked in QA, and believe me, I do.
Some examples:
3DL instance shadow bug:
Create a flat plane (50 m, say)
Create a sphere.
Select sphere, select Create> New Node Instance(s), and, oh, 10 instances.
Create distant light.
Render, note shadows from sphere and its instances.
Select sphere, Edit > Object > Geometry > Convert to SubD.
Render, note shadows have vanished.
Iray reflected light SSS bug
Create a plane. Convert it to Iray Uber, set Metallicity to 1, glossy weight 1 (making it a mirror)
Create a cube. Convert it to Iray Uber. Give it Refraction Weight 1, Refraction Index 1, Thin Walled Off, SSS Amount .001 (this might require tweaking, basically creating a 'fog')
Create a spotlight, spread angle 5 (tight beam), luminous flux 50000 or so. Aim it at the mirror such that it passes through the fog and should reflect through the fog some more.
(In this case, I provided a scene file with everything set up, to make it easier)
Render.
Note that there is a bright white line following the path of the light through the fog, which is what you'd expect. It hits the mirror... and stops. The light is reflected, but the reflected light has no further SSS calculations applied.
Thin Film Spectral Rendering Bug:
Create an object with dramatic thin film. (I find using some sort of rippling pattern for thin film thickness, and Metallic Flake thin film is particularly dramatic) One dramatic easy method is to use my Soap Bubble shader.
Render and behold how cool it looks.
Turn on Spectral Rendering.
Render and wonder where the thin film went.
And so on. There are a few other content bugs that I pretty much have given up on, too.
I haven't received any notification of old requests getting closed recently. Did you get an email saying your request(s) were closed, Will?
Most of my help requests are about product errors, not Daz Studio software bugs. The response I get to most reports is that they'll report it to the bug tracker. I have dozens of reports that have been open for many months with no action beyond that. I can't count the hours I've spent documenting product problems and listing specific steps to reproduce those problems. Sometimes brand new products will get fixed quickly. If the product is not new, the chance of it being fixed is not very good, in my experience.
A problem I have cycling through promos when using my kindle was dismissed I felt rather rudely. It took a long time to dismiss me and they apologized for taking so long to be insulting.
I have an 8 3/4 Kindle and my fingertips are bigger than the tiny circle you tap to go to the next image and more often it switches image size instead. It's frankly annoying and so unlike every other image series elsewhere which uses left and right zones instead of a teensy tiny little circle which you have to hit just so.
It's sometimes even hard for me to get the mouse to hit the right spot on the PC though the Kindle is much worse. They told me to get glasses.
I have the same problem on an iPad Mini. It's nothing to do with eyesight, and everything to do with bad design. If they told me to get glasses I'd tell them to get tae...
An update on the issue that I mentioned in my earlier post. Richard obviously contacted customer service on my behalf (thanks, Richard!), and I received assurances that they would attend to the matter. They apologized for the inconvenience and I am more than satisfied with their response. Generally, I have been happy with DAZ customer service and, in my case I'm willing to chalk it up to an isolated incident. I don't usually gripe about such matters in the open forums and my faith in their customer service has been restored. I thought it only fair to say so.