The Quality of technical support for PowerDVD

Crunchy Doodle

Newbie Location: Southern California Joined: Jul 31, 2008 10:12 Messages: 8 Offline

Solved by

Jul 31, 2008 11:02

For me, it depends on how I requested it. When I needed help upgrading from PowerDVD 7 Deluxe to PowerDVD 8 Ultra, I sent a message to technical support and received a reasonably prompt, fully detailed and useful solution. I was actually a bit shocked it was so complete and just right.

For my second, possibly easier problem, I used the phone support I got along with my purchase. CyberLink appears to out-source their phone support to India. Being an experienced software engineer, I knew exactly how to explain the problem I was seeing. I wanted to use the S/PDIF optical output of my SoundBlaster card to feed the raw 5.1 SurroundSound audio directly from the DVD being played by PowerDVD 8 Ultra to my Yamaha 5.1 sound projector speaker system, and the "use S/PDIF" option was not showing up in the audio configuration of PowerDVD. I incorrectly assumed this would be a fairly common problem that they could make some useful suggestion for. Not in this case.

It was quite painfull trying to explain to the so-call technical support person what the problem was. He obviously had no technical background and had no idea what I was talking about. I'm guessing he was looking for some key words in my complaint he could plug in to his computer and hopefully get some kind of response. It was hard holding my temper after the third or fourth run-through of the issue. I finally demanded to speak to someone else. After being on hold for some minutes, I was connected to someone who said he could solve the problem. Needless to say, his solution was totally bogus. He was just trying to get rid of me.

I found the solution with more internet searching. It was a simple problem with another application reserving the S/PDIF resource for itself, thus preventing PowerDVD from using it. I can release the S/PDIF hold with one simple mouse click and get full 5.1 SurroundSound through to my Yamaha speakers from PowewrDVD when I need to.

So, on-line support is quite good.

And phone support is terrible.

Bye.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Jul 31. 2008 11:03

Jong

Newbie Location: London, UK Joined: Jan 06, 2008 14:03 Messages: 5 Offline

Aug 01, 2008 14:22

Sadly it is a truism in today's consumer software industry that the quality of support is almost universally inversely proportional to the cost of the product.

Typically freeware and shareware are directly supported by the software developer who is desperately keen to get feedback from users to improve his product.

The more expensive products are developed by large software companies who are petrified of wasting support resources on "idiot users" who barely know how to turn their PC on, let alone understand the complexities of software. So they shield themselves behind layers of "support", which assume zero knowledge by the user, have zero knowledge themselves and work solely from solution databases. If you are not lucky enough to have one of the handful of common problems then you are told to "nuke and pave" either their software or the whole PC, since you surely cannot be trusted to do anything more safely.

Trouble is this largely cuts the development group from their users and results in many bugs going unresolved for months or even years. Sometimes persistence can get you through to 3rd line/4th line support. Sometimes, as in the case of Cyberlink, they just stop talking to you once they cannot find any more inane hoops to make you jump through.

I think you were lucky your first problem had either made it into the support database or landed in the hands of a rare, gifted 1st line support person.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at Aug 01. 2008 14:24

Rayj2011

Member Joined: Jul 29, 2008 12:37 Messages: 65 Offline

Aug 01, 2008 17:30

I really don't like mixing my political and social views on this type of media, but I feel I must....

I was disappointed to see that Cyberlink outsources their customer support to India!!

I know there are qualified people here that could do the job as well as need the job. I might add they would do the job better!

I encourage Cyberlink to reconsider who is doing their customer support.

It is things like this that can swing a prospective buyer of a Cyberlink product to a competitor product..... I have been know to choose other vendors when I find out their loyalty is not with the U.S. citizen.....

Sometimes the bottom line is not the correct think to be worrying about.....

As I am in the demo evaluation stage of PD 7....I curiously will wait Cyberlinks response.....

Jets2011

Senior Contributor Location: Canada Joined: Sep 29, 2006 05:26 Messages: 760 Offline

Aug 03, 2008 23:57

"I have been know to choose other vendors when I find out their loyalty is not with the U.S. citizen....."

CyberLink is a Taiwanese company, so it has nothing to do with loyalty. The problem is they may need to outsource the phone support to a company that provides a better quality service. Who cares where in the world they are located, as long as they can communicate the solutions well in the language they are supposed to.

However it does sound like the solution that Crunchy Doodle was looking for, would definitely not be in any database, as it took some trouble shooting for sure.

No one is ever satisfied with tech support I think, because there is never an easy answer to every single person's question/problem. I know that CL does care, and does try it's best to provide quality service.

Hopefully someone there will read this and see if there is anything that can be done to improve.

Dave

Dafydd B

Senior Contributor Joined: Aug 26, 2006 08:20 Messages: 11973 Offline

Aug 04, 2008 09:23

daveed94 - Dave,
Thank you for posting an answer to David (Crunchy Doodle).

Ray, multiple posting the same issue or contents at more than one location is called spamming.
http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/3552.page
You were given an answer on the forum. Do NOT spam this forum.

Dafydd
[Moderator]

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at Aug 04. 2008 09:31