Customer Support

[OttovanZanten]

If I buy a PC that says MEDION on the box. I go to medion.com and fill in a contact form and get free technical support.

Yea I know, the RPI does not follow standard PC industry way of doing stuff and it's a foundation etcetera, you made your point earlier.
Also I'm not saying that I'm right and how I thought it was is how it should be.
It's just that when I purchase something and it has a brand name on the box and I need help I go to thenameonthebox.com and I get help. For free.
I personally have never seen a product for which this simple rule did not apply.

[RaTTuS]

step back - look at the original problem and lets work it out.

[OttovanZanten]

After days of waiting and recieving little helpful info (half of people who posted hadn't actually read my topic) I've turned to the Dutch nerd community @ tweakers.net and I got a buttload of replies within the first 2 hours. So I'm probably just gonna ask them next time. It's just so much easier then argueing with everybody who is somehow offended by everything that I type.

Really appreciate the offer though! Don't wanna imply that nobody's here willing to help, it's just a few people that jump on every post I made and I got some anger issues that don't mix well with some people on this forum.

[DougieLawson]

I personally have never seen a product for which this simple rule did not apply.

And the RaspberryPi with http://raspberrypi.org works exactly like that.

You're getting free support from here.

Or you would do if you could frame your questions without the anger and dislike.

[Massi]

After days of waiting and recieving little helpful info (half of people who posted hadn't actually read my topic) I've turned to the Dutch nerd community @ tweakers.net and I got a buttload of replies within the first 2 hours. So I'm probably just gonna ask them next time. It's just so much easier then argueing with everybody who is somehow offended by everything that I type.

lol
This topic is really incredible.
And this post is far beyond my level of understanding
We'll miss you.
Maybe

[RaTTuS]

After days of waiting and recieving little helpful info (half of people who posted hadn't actually read my topic) I've turned to the Dutch nerd community @ tweakers.net and I got a buttload of replies within the first 2 hours. So I'm probably just gonna ask them next time. It's just so much easier then argueing with everybody who is somehow offended by everything that I type.

Really appreciate the offer though! Don't wanna imply that nobody's here willing to help, it's just a few people that jump on every post I made and I got some anger issues that don't mix well with some people on this forum.

can you update your original post with the info that you have found to fix it for others that may have the same or similar issues

[OttovanZanten]

And the RaspberryPi with http://raspberrypi.org works exactly like that.

You're getting free support from here.

I'm not denying you guys are trying to help me. But usually if you go to nameonthebox.com you get to speak to nameonthebox-staff. Here you depend on the customers instead of the company. They also tend to know more specific technical stuff. So it's not exactly the same as dealing with, say the company which brand is on your desktop PC.

And this post is far beyond my level of understanding

And so is yours to me.

can you update your original post with the info that you have found to fix it for others that may have the same or similar issues

Sure. Hope it helps somebody.

[jamesh]

I'm not denying you guys are trying to help me. But usually if you go to nameonthebox.com you get to speak to nameonthebox-staff. Here you depend on the customers instead of the company. They also tend to know more specific technical stuff. So it's not exactly the same as dealing with, say the company which brand is on your desktop PC.

Actually, I don't think that is the case for everything. Consumer electronic, probably, although even that can be a struggle. But for most other things, it's very difficult to talk to a human. Even more rare to talk to a human that actually knows what they are talking about.

But that's neither here nor there. For the last three years the first and only line of Pi support is here. Its one of the reasons the Pi is so cheap, because the very high cost of paying for a support team is handed off to volunteers.

If a topic comes up that really needs Foundation help, then it either gets referred to them via here, or if its a kernel or software related problem, it can be reported via the github issue tracker.

[drgeoff]

The technical competence displayed in the answers by the vast majority of regular responders on these RPi forums far exceeds that of the official support people I have ever needed to resort to for any consumer product. And for some professional products too.

[kusti8]

The technical competence displayed in the answers by the vast majority of regular responders on these RPi forums far exceeds that of the official support people I have ever needed to resort to for any consumer product. And for some professional products too.

+1

I was on a while back with Microsoft support trying to get an iso for my VM since I didn't have another Windows computer to make the iso. I contacted them 5 times. The first one didn't know what an iso was. The second one said he/she would send me one, but it never arrived and the others were more useless than the others. Here there are tons of experts who have experience with many different subjects, much better than any support team.

[OttovanZanten]

Actually, I don't think that is the case for everything. Consumer electronic, probably, although even that can be a struggle. But for most other things, it's very difficult to talk to a human. Even more rare to talk to a human that actually knows what they are talking about.

But that's neither here nor there. For the last three years the first and only line of Pi support is here. Its one of the reasons the Pi is so cheap, because the very high cost of paying for a support team is handed off to volunteers.

If a topic comes up that really needs Foundation help, then it either gets referred to them via here, or if its a kernel or software related problem, it can be reported via the github issue tracker.

Not for everything. But in my experience over the years technical support has always been well informed, helpful and polite.
And even if it weren't the best... It exists. That was the only point I was trying to make, but people keep trying to convince me I'm wrong about the fact that many companies have customer support. Which kinda baffles me.

Okay, if my Pi explodes I'm sure people will put me in contact with somebody who can help me, and you act as if information is easy to come by on this forum, but what does one do if the forum is unmotivated or unwilling to help? I still have a lot of unanswered questions to which I never got a reply and nobody's posting anymore. Am I screwed because I accidentally offended somebody? Should I seek help under a new forum account? Should I get an Odroid?

[kusti8]

If your questions are so complex that no one's asking it could be either:
A) Too long.
B) So advanced that no one here has any idea what you're talking about (customer support wouldn't bee that effective here anyways)
C) you're asking too much. We won't do your project for you.

I may have missed some things.

[DougieLawson]

The technical competence displayed in the answers by the vast majority of regular responders on these RPi forums far exceeds that of the official support people I have ever needed to resort to for any consumer product. And for some professional products too.

+1
Can we get Ed Miliband to carve that on his pet rock?

[Massi]

Not for everything. But in my experience over the years technical support has always been well informed, helpful and polite.
And even if it weren't the best... It exists. That was the only point I was trying to make, but people keep trying to convince me I'm wrong about the fact that many companies have customer support. Which kinda baffles me.

Okay, if my Pi explodes I'm sure people will put me in contact with somebody who can help me, and you act as if information is easy to come by on this forum, but what does one do if the forum is unmotivated or unwilling to help? I still have a lot of unanswered questions to which I never got a reply and nobody's posting anymore. Am I screwed because I accidentally offended somebody? Should I seek help under a new forum account? Should I get an Odroid?

Out there there are something like 4 milion raspis.
There's a problem with tech support to just you.
For sure this is a foundation problem, lol.

Btw, the biggest problem in your flooding the forum is (apart flooding the forum..) that you WANT an answer. You want it right. You want in your times. If not, all the world has to stop for you.

Well, this is not how the world works and not how this forum works.

Level of microsoft tech support is "please turn it off and then on again"
In this forum there are guys like dougie that explain you how the raspi works, how circuits work, how to code something, how to check your system and how to spill a beer.
And, you know, this is FOR FREE, just because they are volunteers.
For free, my dear friend, does not mean that they are obliged to do something. Means that they help who deserves it.
You are right, not all the forum is made by dougies (and this, in the end, is a good thing), but all guys in there try to help each other.

I have not the answer to your problem (even because after the tenth post i got tired of your flooding), but you can be sure that even if i had it, i would have preferred to spend my spare time with some newbies asking with the willing of learn something.

But, as you say, this is a bad place not helping you and there's a better place out there to get TECH SUPPORT.

[OttovanZanten]

If your questions are so complex that no one's asking it could be either:
A) Too long.
B) So advanced that no one here has any idea what you're talking about (customer support wouldn't bee that effective here anyways)
C) you're asking too much. We won't do your project for you.

I may have missed some things.

Is there something wrong with this question?

I think I remember reading that the I/O errors are usually associated with SD Card corruption. Do you guys think this is the case? Because it doesn't give me those errors all the time and when it finally boots I can change settings and download files on to the MicroSDHC without problems.

Because I don't see why it's impossible to reply to this.

[OttovanZanten]

Massi, if you would have actually read what I posted you would have known that I clearly stated that

I'm fine with how it works here
It's just that I thought it would work differently
I didn't try to complain about how it works here
I didn't claim that this form of tech support is inadequate
I didn't claim that anybody is obligated to do anything
I don't have a problem with anything here. I'm just trying to explain to people that

many companies have customer service. since they don't seem to believe that.

That. is. all.

And no I don't want the world to adjust to me. I just thought that if it were impossible to get an answer on this forum there might be a different channel, as forum members have stated. So, since I hadn't gotten a reply yet, I was wondering how I would be able to get ahold of those people who can help with difficult problems.

You're making a thousand assumptions based on nothing. Go hate on somebody else.

Edit:
I also never said that this is a bad place for not helping me. I specifically stated that people are either unmotivated (since there are already a thousand topics to reply) or unable to help. It's probably one of those two right? I did not say they were unwilling. I'm assuming people just don't know what's wrong. That's why I started to ask about Customer Support, because there míght be people out there who áre able to help me.

Again... assumptions...

And this is exactly why I requested this topic to be closed. I knew it was gonna go in this direction because of miscommunication.

[DougieLawson]

Is there something wrong with this question?

I think I remember reading that the I/O errors are usually associated with SD Card corruption. Do you guys think this is the case? Because it doesn't give me those errors all the time and when it finally boots I can change settings and download files on to the MicroSDHC without problems.

Because I don't see why it's impossible to reply to this.

It's too speculative.

"Do you guys think this is the case?"

Well yes we do, or no we don't but how can we know without a crystal ball.
Remember we're not in the room with you, we can't see the stuff you can see on the screen, we don't know what commands you've entered to try to fix it (or if you're unlucky to make it worse).
We don't know what hardware you're running on.
We don't know what USB devices you've connected.
We don't even know where you are or what timezone you're in or other locale info. [Location: should be a mandatory field on the forum registration, it would fix so many problems with so much less effort. We'd know your keyboard layout, we'd know your first language and we'd know when you're going to visit the forum next. It would help with the I18N problems.]

It might pay to read http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html and http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html

The second of those (written by the guy who wrote PuTTY) covers the best ways to describe your problem in fewer words and with less sarcasm.

But with both documents their general thrust is you don't say "It doesn't work", you say "When I furgle the widget with the foobar, I expected this ..., but I got this ... . I've looked at http://www.example.com/furglingwidgets.html but it doesn't explain the 0xbeefcafe error code I'm seeing. Has anyone else seen this and how did you fix it?"

[texy]

OK, that's enough mud-slinging. The OP's question(s) have been answered.
Closing thread,
Texy