I just received a response dated 10pm on December 22nd, stating that if I didn't respond within 48 hours - ie over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day - then they would assume the issue was dealt with and close it! Nice work, Sony. Luckily, I am around to respond and keep it open :-)

Dave

Let's be fair.... I have received similar response letters from NewBlueFX and Red Giant. It seems to be an industry standard approach. I don't like it, especially when they can close their support ticket if they respond with "Yes it is a problem - there are no planned fixes for this version." By the way, every IT dept. I've worked with over the past 10 years does it this way. SCS is not alone in this.

I manage IT support at my company and MY standard is response within an hour (but usually more like minutes).... or 24 hours at the LATEST to at least acknowledge an issue. Users are very happy.
But yes, some companies don't do so well. -- probably way short staffed.

This has been my experience with SCS support as well. Typical 1-2 month response time and the response is reinstall or uninstall other applications which may be interfering with Vegas. Support even once asked me to uninstall .NET, and Vegas uses .NET. I have also been asked to uninstall a Wacom tablet driver and I do not have such a product or driver installed. A response like that just checks off another month or so.

With support tickets that go on over 8 months, SCS support does not seem to read the ticket history when responding. I have been asked to do the same thing by SCS support in the same ticket.

SCS support cannot debug their way out of a paper bag. Maybe they can handle "How do I' stuff, but I have only reported "this crashes Vegas" or "this result is corrupted" type things with example VEG projects most times.

It is pathetic that we must respond in 48 hours, where they might take months to respond. With such a long response time from SCS we might be away from keyboard by the time they do respond.

Not all companies are alike. I invite you to visit TVpaint's user group and you will see how responsive the developers are to complaints and requests for future features and also how supportive of each other the users themselves are. The company is small and lives in Metz, France, but many of us from all over the world have met with some of the developers personally as they have visited us in our home studios or we have met with them at animation events everywhere throughout the years. If you do go there at:
http://forum.tvpaint.com/index.php
browse quickly and at random through all the fora and notice how many avatars depicting cows you will see present in almost all of the threads; each one of them represents a member of the development crew, the management, or the sales force. We all know their names and the names of members of the beta team are not kept secret -- on the contrary, they are also listed on the credits in the Help>about tab of the software.
EDIT: I almost forgot to mention that this software has functioned in this manner for 20 years now and is the world's oldest animation software in continuous development.

Just wanted to add that the tech guy from Sony said the reason he asked why I was using 32bit was because he wanted to know what my source footage was. So he was not as clueless as I originally implied. That said 1.5 months to answer a tech question is pretty useless to me. I found a workaround to the bug and moved on long before getting a response.

My experience with the tech support of most software and ISP/web hosting services has been similarly miserable. This includes SONY, who did respond, albeit slowly and mostly unhelpfully, in the one instance I contacted them several years ago.

My biggest gripe is that the techs who respond to issues don't seem to read the entire message about the issue, replying with a batch of mostly-useless suggestions that are often steps I've already taken and mentioned in my original message/request.

I try to be very thorough, accurate and clear, citing as much relevant information about my problem, its symptoms, and what I've tried to resolve the issue prior to contacting them. To wait two weeks or more for a response that ignores the fact that I've already done what they suggest, is infuriating. I address any questions asked and supply additional information, if it is requested.

I haven't had to contact many companies for support, but of all the companies I've dealt with, CoffeeCup, a vendor of web-authoring and related internet software, is easily the most responsive of any I've encountered. Knowledgeable company reps frequent their user-based community forums daily, sometimes even on major US holidays, with general suggestions for users having difficulty with their software. In the event the user doesn't receive helpful information to resolve the issue, it's suggested that he/she open a support ticket. And these support tickets are responded to very quickly, often the same day they're opened.

It may come as a surprise that I don't have a very good relationship with CoffeeCup, given the foregoing praise. But I have to be fair and recognize that they support the purchasers of their product better than any software vendor or online tech support service I'd had to deal with.

Well put, my experience exactly. In the past I've usually ended up making a video demonstrating my problem in order to get support to understand what I'm talking about. Otherwise I usually get canned answers and useless workarounds.

SCS need to improve this side... seriously...

Got the same experience just like cbrillow for my hosting company, they respond extremely quick, and give help to the point... and give calm.

I have never sought help from SCS because of the magnificent support on this forum. But I have sought help, or more often reported what seem to be bugs, with several other companies and I get the impression I am talking to a machine, with a limited list of responses all aimed at fobbing me off.

Unfortunately the industry standard for support is just canned answers and assumptions that the user does not know what they are doing.Having to provide a video seems a bit extreme as they should have the ability to see you reproduce the issue by sharing the desktop. It is very strange that this is not utilized even though it has been around for ages.