repost : Who's fault is it

The question has been raised recently - who should pay for the time involved in fixing a problem that isn't actually related to the fault they rang about.

I know that is a cryptic question but the longer explanation is following.

The caller rang up saying that the application involved was continually crashing their computer and was costing them lots of downtime and lost worktime etc. After nearly 4 hours of diagnosing and many expensive long distance phone calls let alone the time involved or wasted in the diagnosis - the fault is finally found to be another companies rival software installing system files that conflict or corrupt the original application.

Now how do we ever prove that they have purposefully or innocently made their application corrupt ours. Who do you bill for that lost time. Or do you simply put it down to "Customer Service"

This question has been raised a number of times by all of us - and no one can come up with a correct answer. The following could be some possible outcomes

1. Bill the Customer - The customer decides that they are paying too much and will go with the competitor instead. This means lost business

2. Bill the Competitor - They then turn around and bill you for any faults that they claim are from your software affecting theirs. This could then be put further into them falsely claiming against your software. Result --> your company could go broke

3. Take it on the chin - Well this seems to be the most common option taken by everyone. The problem here is that you still really do lose out. Why should you be supporting someone else's application when they couldn't be bothered to write it properly in the first place. On the up side - your client remains happy and you don't end up with a war between companies.


Well i have had my little whinge for the day. I will be posting this on my other blog as well. It is at a new address. http://helpdeskhell.connect2us.net