Betalogue

If you are an assiduous Mac web reader, you have no doubt heard of the web page recently added to the Adobe web site which presents pseudo-scientific DATA aimed at demonstrating that a single processor Dell 2.5 GHz Pentium 4 machine is significantly faster than a 1 GHz dual-processor G4 for typical video post-production computing tasks:

“The Great Render Race”

After reading that page, I decided to send the following feedback through their “web site feedback” page:

The contents of this page are shameful.

First of all, your text is in direct contradiction with your graphics. The text mentions a 1 GHz dual-processor G4, whereas the graphics mention a 1.25 GHz dual-processor G4. Which is it?

Then the horizontal axis is in “decimal minutes” and yet you represent “54 seconds” as the equivalent of “0.54 minutes”, which is a very serious error. (54 seconds = 0,9 minutes)

Finally, the promotion of one platform over the other is not worthy of your site.

Here’s the braind-dead automated reply that I just received by email:

From: adobe@expressresponse.com
Date: Mard mars 25, 2003 12:06:14 Canada/Atlantic
To: igot@latext.com
Subject: ExpressResponse Usage Help File

We’re very sorry, but Adobe is unable to provide answers to technical support questions via e-mail. However, extensive complimentary online resources are available at

http://www.adobe.com/misc/ts.html

If you are a registered Adobe product owner, you also receive a period of complimentary, person-to-person support that begins with your first phone call, which you can make any time after you register. For a listing of phone numbers to call for complimentary support (and all the other Adobe support options), see

http://www.adobe.com/support/salesdocs/22de.htm

Thank you very much for visiting Adobe.com.

This is after submitting a comment through a page that is very clearly titled “web site feedback“! I understand that Adobe probably has to deal with countless attempts to use this form to obtain technical support (something that Adobe doesn’t offer via email) — but the least that their automated reply could do is include a word for those who did indeed use the form for its intended purpose, i.e. as a form for feedback on the web site!

I find this type of reply rather insulting. It doesn’t cost anything to write a proper automated reply.

This entry was posted by Pierre Igot on Tuesday, March 25th, 2003 at 9:14 pm and is filed under Macintosh. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.