Questions you would ask if you were attending MGT

[BobNaughton]

Tim, I would also like to thank you for all the time you put in to gather up all of the information and act as a spokesman for all the BB Community who could not attend the MGT. As you said you are not an employee of MSUS just a fellow customer. You didnt have to do this, but you went out of your way to try to address to MSUS our concerns. and to reply back to us as candidly and informativley as you could. Thank You

[TimKennelly]

Thank you all for your kind words.

Bob, I can guarantee Jörg and Eric would back me if asked that I did not "try" to address to MSUS our concerns, I did communicate them in no uncertain terms.

Politely, respectfully, but firmly and where I felt what I was saying was being discounted I repeated the issue in more depth.

Neither MSUS, MSDE, nor Jörg or Eric are evil or diabolical (in fact, they are good people) and they are not just after our money, although they certainly want it , but ultimately it won't matter whether it's on purpose or on accident, real or misunderstood, if the company and it's leaders do not fix issues AND communicate well with it's customers they will lose customers and that is bad for all of us so there is a great need to address the issues and improve communication.

This is true with any business, but is ever so much more crucial with small companies and both of these gentlemen know this philosophically and now graphically if they did not before.

I hope to see improved communication and bugs being addressed faster beginning very soon which will benefit both the company and us, their customers.

And I agree Norm, we can hang together and help the company improve where it needs to with constructive criticism or we can hang separately.

[Jeanton]

Thanks Tim for taking the time to ask all our questions, everything is allot clearer now and will keep on supporting Macro Systems in the future.

Thanks again you are a good man.

[DraCoAustralia]

Tim, thanks for taking the time and making the effort to ask Jörg Sprave questions on behalf of members of these forums.

My company has been the Australasian distributor for MacroSystem products for thirteen years and I believe we have an excellent record of customer support and communication.

My understanding is that the comments and responses you posted in this thread are the words of Jörg Sprave. I am therefore perplexed that your post implies that Jörg Sprave made the following comments in regard to Jeanton's questions:

Jeanton:
As you are in Australia neither Jörg or Eric are responsible for how it was handled in your area, but in general if the company cautioned you that this was new equipment on a totally new operating system (Linux) then the onus in general is on you (and me, etc) for deciding to buy it.
If at your end they told you it was all working good, whether in general from whoever is “The Company” in Australia or your dealer, then they were not very ethical in my opinion.
If it was they just did not do a good job of cautioning you about the current actual functionality of the unit when you bought it (which I believe is the case in the USA) then it’s somewhat “buyer beware”, but also shame on the company or dealer to an extent.

If these were the comments of Jörg Sprave, then I have no issue with you posting them. If, however, they are not his words, I consider them entirely inappropriate, given that Jeanton's questions were directed at Jörg Sprave and given that the ethics and business practices of my company were not questioned in any way by Jeanton's list of requests.

Greg Marsh
Director: DraCo Systems Australia

[TimKennelly]

Greg,

I am curious how you could possibly interpret that anything here was inferred as a direct quote from Jörg?

I know how to use the quote function, for example:

I am strictly a user and not an employee of MSUS, nor an official (or unofficial) spokesman for MSUS.

So the following is just my personal opinion and my take on things and not “Official” facts, policies or statements of MSDE or MSUS.

I think that pretty unequivalently states that these were not direct quotes from Jörg, but my take on hours worth of talking to him over several days, is the first thing posted and is even labeled a disclaimer.



Second, I supplied several "If" scenarios ranging from intentional deception to no fault

if the company

If at your end

If it was

I think those clearly express that I made no judgement on the specific circumstances of how the sale presentation of the S4P was handled in another country, but rather listed possible scenarios and my thoughts on them.

I am happy that you are givng good service to your customers if that is true and I have no reason to doubt that and there is no accusation or statement there at all regarding Australia so I am puzzled what you think is inappropriate.

My actual only statement regarding Australia

neither Jörg or Eric are responsible for how it was handled in your area

was that Jeanton should more appropriately be asking questions, officially reporting problems or complaining to whomever is responsible in her geographical area which apparently is you (or perhaps the local dealer if your country uses that system) and even that was used as a general philosophy as I described regarding properly using company hierarchies for official reporting and complaining.

This BB is a great place to learn and share things, but should not be considered the official place to register bug reports (should go to tech support) or complaints (should go directly to MSUS) for North American customers, let alone customers in other areas of the world.

As for Jeanton's questions, I requested questions in general as I was going to MGT where the German head and the USA head were going to be as a courtesy service to my fellow users and if you reread Jeanton's questions you will not see Herr Jörg Sprave's name even once in any of her posts.

They were simply questions in response to my invitation to ask and I answered them to the best of my ability.

PS - You mentioned "these forums" as in plural, I don't know if that was just a grammatical error or you are actually referring to multiple forums, but this was the only forum I took questions from and answered on regarding the S4P.I do also participate occasionally on Carroll Lam's List, but did not take questions from there. Does Australia have a Cassie forum?

[DraCoAustralia]

Tim,

I have no intention of getting into an argument over semantics, or the correct useage of grammar when discussing forums. The quotation I used from your post specifically referred to Jeanton's questions and specifically refers to "The Company" or dealer in Australia.

Am I correct in assuming that, from the framing of the thread, Jeanton would probably have expected that his questions were to be directed to Jörg Sprave and that you intended to report his (Jörg Sprave's) responses?
In that context, I would ask you to advise how much of the following response to Jeanton was actually said or implied by Jörg Sprave.

Jeanton:
As you are in Australia neither Jörg or Eric are responsible for how it was handled in your area, but in general if the company cautioned you that this was new equipment on a totally new operating system (Linux) then the onus in general is on you (and me, etc) for deciding to buy it.
If at your end they told you it was all working good, whether in general from whoever is “The Company” in Australia or your dealer, then they were not very ethical in my opinion.
If it was they just did not do a good job of cautioning you about the current actual functionality of the unit when you bought it (which I believe is the case in the USA) then it’s somewhat “buyer beware”, but also shame on the company or dealer to an extent.

Tim, I am not attacking you here. But I have put a lot of years of hard work, blood, sweat and tears into selling and supporting these products and I object to my reputation being unfairly compromised. If Jörg Sprave said these things, I would accept that I may not have handled the situation properly. But Jörg Sprave is in a position to know how I run my business. You are not. So if these are your personal responses to Jeanton's questions and not based on Jörg's responses to them, I would ask that you say so.

Oh! and by the way, you may recall that discounted Loyalty Orders had to be finalised long before we or anyone else had seen or touched a Casablanca S4000. For that reason, we offered our Australasian customers a 14 day period during which they could return their units for full credit if they were not satisfied. None did. In those contexts, your use of words like 'then they were not very ethical in my opinion" and "shame on the company or dealer to an extent," are hardly appropriate.


Greg

[Alan]

Thanks very much Tim for all you have done for us. I guess our dealers have been as frustrated as us customers in being kept in the dark. As you say there is a hierarchy in a company from CEO to end customer. The final responsibility has to be with the CEO. Thanks for waking up the top of the tree. Its easy for the top of the tree to forget that we are the roots feeding it.

I've had my S4000 since May last year and am still pleased I bought it. HD is fantastic on my PS3, and I have never lost a project. I must also say that the support given by Martyn Dalby and Michael Dyson in the UK is superb, without them Cassi would have died here long ago.

Cheers Alan and thanks again Tim.

[TimKennelly]

I have no intention of getting into an argument over semantics, or the correct useage of grammar when discussing forums

Actually, that is exactly what you are doing Greg.

So if these are your personal responses to Jeanton's questions and not based on Jörg's responses to them, I would ask that you say so.

I did, twice now.

First off, I thought that was self evident in the original post and secondly in response to you that those were "scenarios" and my opinions of them and that they were not even specific to Australia.

I know we are both speaking English, but apparently there must be some cultural misunderstanding that you don't get it in the original post or my response, but you are turning this into an argument of semantics and I use my time online to help fellow users and frankly you are not a user so are wasting my time now.

I will waste them this one last time.

For the life of me I cannot see what you don't understand about my statements.

I clearly stated I gave the questions here to Jörg as a print out, but did not discuss these actual questions verbatim as many of them were pretty blunt, even a bit unfair, but said in understandable frustration.

I had multiple long talks with Jörg and then I answered the questions here to the best of my ability from those talks.

Again, I gave "scenarios" and my thoughts on those "ifs" as I had no and have no idea how Australia handled them and never passed judgement therefore on how Australia handled them.

My reference to Australia was strictly to point out to Jeanton that he should work through the appropriate geographical channles.

Jörg and I never even discussed that type of thing, but I do know as an exec he would agree with that business philosophy of proper chain of command.

Regardless of whether you are "attacking", refuting, arguing or questioning me, I described a few possible scenarios and gave my opinions on them and therefore they are completely appropriate and I strongly disagree with and resent your accusation that they are not.

I understand you not wanting your reputation besmudged, but it wasn't.

So I will make it plain to you for the third and final time.

I made no accusation about how you handled the sale of the S4P as I don't know how you handled this release.

I do on the other hand find you as a foreign distributor publicly coming on this USA Users Bulletin Board and stating that I said something inappropriate both unusual and offensive and most certainly inappropriate.

I suspect you may indeed be a fine fellow, but continuing this line of argument any further argues against that, rubs me wrong and wastes my time.

If that is not good enough for you then you are out of luck, Greg.

[TimKennelly]

You are welcome Alan and I agree, responsibility increases in direct proportion to how high in the hierarchy of an organization one is.

I believe open communication is critical in the successful functioning of an organization and the communication must run in both directions for optimal results.

I strive to facilitate this where I can in all organizations I am involved in.

As mentioned, everyone should use their appropriate official channels, but this BB is an ideal tool to pool common knowledge so sharing experiences, tips, bug reports, work arounds, etc benefits all.

My continued compliments to Macrosystem US for making this BB available to it's customers.

[Jeanton]

This is nothing to do with my dealer in Australia he has always been very professional and helpful in support and sales and have adressed my problems with the machine through him aswell. This issue is with Jorge showing of the S4000 range on YouTube last year that was for me misleading. He showed a product with all bells and whistles on it, but when we received the machine it had none of it and still not have. I mean with that all the format in and out puts that you could do on this machine as I said before it doesn't do a WMV file with sound. Most users of the S4000 must have seen this footage and made there decision to buy this product based on that and that's what I mean with being mislead. When you buy a car and they show you all the features in it, you'll expect it to be in there when you pick it up and complain if you don't get what you have been promised and paid for.

When asking those questions I never intent to cause any trouble for any one involved so I am sorry if I did.