| December 2, 1999 | 02 05 04 61 99120201 |
Ms. Deborah NLN
Customer Respresentative
sitefeedback@netscape.com
Site Feedback
Netscape Communications
General Store
501 E. Middlefield Road
Mountain View, CA 94043
| Subject: | Delayed Processing follow up |
Dear Deborah,
Thanks for your response today on my letter dated November 30, 1999 reporting a problem with Netscape 4.7.
Please advise how to notify Netscape of a technical problem, and how customers can be effective partners with Netscape to resolve performance problems quickly and at minimum cost.
Periodically, the browser crashes, and there is a Netscape screen that says send this stuff to Netscape to report a problem. We have never done this because we don't won't want to cause Netscape extra expense. Our experience shows these problems do not repeat, so we assume these are inevitable momentary failures of complex systems interacting together. This happens about once every two days or so in different situations, so total occurrances probably approach a hundred. But they are easily cleared by closing Netscape and opening it again. We can recover our former place using History. These are not big deals.
The problem we reported on November 30 is different. It is repetitive and consistent, and so it impacts performance. The problem does not occur on other systems we have similarly configured, so I am prepared to assume it is a subtle configuration issue of some kind, but that can only be determined by investigation. Netscape is the proper forum for conducting the investigation, since you have an interest in maintaining performance in order to support your competitive posture, and to meet responsibilities to customers to provide products in good working order.
Typically other vendors have a web site for submitting notices of performance problems, and we get a response with a problem number. Netscape has always seemed to be a forward thinking vendor, so it stands to reason you have a similar system that is an industry standard.
In your letter on December 1, you stated...
Please advise whether the problem has in fact been reported, to whom it was reported, and acknowledgement that an engineer has responsibility for review and follow up.
If the customer does not hear back from Netscape on a performance defect, how will the customer know the problem is cleared. If there is no feedback to the customer what business metric is in place to assist Netscape in clearing the problem, and assisting the customer in deciding how to proceed?
Sincerely,
THE WELCH COMPANY
Rod Welch
rowelch@attglobal.net