terminfo, termcap, etc

[Daniel M. Frank]

In article <218 at desint.UUCP> geoff at desint.UUCP (Geoff Kuenning) writes:
>Not to sound like an IBM fan (I'm not), but the reason IBM is #1 is because
>they let the user yell and scream, and they talk reasonably back.  It's called
>"smoothing ruffled feathers".  It may be satisfying to yell back, but that's
>just going to make the customer go away.  IBM didn't get to be #1 in
>sales by losing customers.

   Just an observation by someone who has tried to get some fairly simple
technical information out of IBM support:  everyone I talk to at IBM is
unfailingly polite, and abysmally ignorant.  People at IBM kept asking me 
whether Xenix was a hardware product.  One fellow I know tried for a
couple days to get some information; he was shuffled from one 800
number to another.  He was trying to get a PC question answered. Someone
gave him a mainframe support number.  When he tried to explain to them
that he didn't own a mainframe, they gave him an 800 number for someone
who could sell him one!

   In short, the ideal would be to talk to someone polite and knowledge-
able.  My next choice, though, is someone abrasive and knowledgeable.
Most folks, in my experience, aren't irate when they START trying to
get support.  They are irate after talking to a bunch of ignorami,
polite or not, for a few hours.


-- 
	Dan Frank
	    ... uwvax!geowhiz!netzer!prairie!dan
	    -or- dan at caseus.wisc.edu