How You Lost a Customer

[Wm_Harmon]

I will never even consider our product again for two reasons: 1.) After spending 60 minutes on hold on your licensing phone support, I gave up. I know it is a Saturday, but I was never told you were closed, I just gave up. and 2.) Your licensing process is non-functional and stupid. I've tried every number on two different documents to try to get the numbers I need to install your product on my customers server and not a one of them worked, so I wasted my Saturday and caused my customer to waste theirs as well, opening their data center on a otherwise closed Saturday. I purchased an Anti Spam / Anti Spyware / Anti Virus product from one of your competitors and their backup software installed itself with no problems and actually worked better by default than your product did after 4 hours of wasted time. I'll file this under "Lessons Learned" and get on with my life. My only true regret is that this customer is stuck with your product for at least the next 12 months until the support package I foolishly sold them ends, at which time I'll activate the product CA and be done with it.

[DanielBickford]

Hello,
We do apologize for the difficulty in getting your licenses. There is a new licensing process, and there have been some issues experienced by some customers. We regret this difficulty, and have worked through all of the known issues. If you are continuing to have problem, please reply tot his thread witha specific problem and we will do our very best to resolve it. For a little better description of the situation, you may want to take a look at the following article:
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=275688
The entire Backup Exec team is working diligently to make every customer as happy as possible, and hope over the next 12 months we can change your mind about Backup Exec. We have worked very hard to make Backup Exec the best product it can be for data protection, and we would hate to lose a customer over a temprorary process issue.
Thank you for your feedback!
Daniel

[Jeff_Stener]

You're about to lose another customer. I have been using Backup Exec since 7.3. When I heard last year that Symantec was buying Veritas, I groaned. This licensing web site and download site is a fiasco. I just got approved to renew maintenance on our Veritas software, but I may not. Why should I shove the money out the door just to get bounced around on the phone like I did yesterday? I purchase from CDW-I have a good relationship with my rep, and I told him what is going on. They sell other backup software besides Veritas, so I wouldn't even have to change vendors.

When I started at my present company, they were using Arcserve (now Brightstor). I moved them to Veritas.

Fix this ...STUFF...or you'll lose another customer.

[Authorized_Us1]

I too am almost gone,. I have spent over 2 hours on the phone with licensing in the last week so I could get the new and improved (hhhhahhh) BE11D. In the last 5 or so years, I had spent less then 3 hours total on the phone with Veritas for any reason because their stuff worked and licensing was easy. So, I get the software downloaded and installed to end up spending yet another 2.5 hours on Tech support so I can get my windows server to talk to my NW servers just to find out that my backup speeds went from about 1GB a minute to 90Mb a minute ON THE LOCAL BOX. and my backup speeds. Humm, Support contracts up at the end of this month, what to do, what to do?

[Eric_Sabo_2]

Seriously I have been a customer since version 8, this by far is the worst product ever. On 7 upgrades so far, not one has been successful! On most of them I have to re-do the backup job completed - this are upgrade from 10.1d where the 10.1d is working just fine. On some of the servers, I am getting a "ran out of memory" - the fix for that is defraging the hard drive seems to work. On a 64-bit server, I installed the evaluation version because of the licensing portal was screwed up only to spend about 2 weeks on a support call because every time I went into the "new job" GUI the BE console would freeze. Quality has been going down hill ever since Symantec got this product. No one from Symantec ever listens to the customers. Another thing is support for this product is limited at best meaning the knowledge is lacking articles that actually tell you how to fix problems. I have to much invested in this product to switch at this point - so I have to work through my problems with BackupExec - I just wish quality would get better with this product.

[Mike_Roden]

Please add me to this list. My four remote agent Domino server backups have failed every night since I upgraded from 10d to 11d. I have to come in the next day and redo them manually. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. Everything was working fine before the upgrade.

[Russ_Perry]

Mike,

Under a topic called 'How you lost a customer' probably isn't a good place to get help with a Domino backup issue here... First of all, if you'd really like help, start another thread with the specific failure you're encountering.

In general, if the backups are not working overnight when they are scheduled there may be some Notes maintenance processes that are running during the scheduled backups that are causing the failures. Check into what is scheduled and schedule the backups around it. The Domino agent has not changed significantly between 10d and 11d so I wouldn't think that merely the upgrade caused the problems. Also be sure that if you upgrade Domino you check the SCL as the supported versions are specifically listed.

Russ

[Mike_Roden]

Russ,

I have posted my issues in several other topics. I am not the only one having these issues with this upgrade. My backups are scheduled exactly as they were with 10d, so the problems are with the upgrade. I'm not sure why I got singled out here as others in this thread expressed their frustration as well.

This will be my last post here. If this problem doesn't get fixed, we will find another solution.

Mike

[Russ_Perry]

Mike,

I didn't intend to single you out here but among the mostly licensing issues listed that are process related, yours could truly be an issue for support. I'm sorry if I offended you in any way. I've seen you chime in on other posts but didn't know if they pinpoint the issue(s) you're having. In one instance you stated that Domino selections are slow to enumerate and in another you state that your backup jobs stop without completing. If these are your main issues, I will work with what you've already posted but, if not, as I said in my last post, if you start a new thread with precisely the issue you're having with Domino backups, I can probably help.

Russ

[Joshua_Small]

Licensing?

The licensing process is godly compared to the support process.

[maxi_maximus]

I also have had issues with licensing but the software has been out for around a month now and ive had all my installs running in Eval mode. There is no need for a license yet.There is still another month to go before i need to look at implementing licensing and iam confident that Symantec will have the problem resolved by then!!! (They BETTER).

So basically if you are having problems with licensing put it in eval mode.

[Wm_Harmon]

Okay, so you are having problems chewing gum and walking at the same time. I can understand, but maybe your project was just a little too abbitious to be undertaken at year-end. What do I tell my customer? The way he sees it, I made a poor choice for their backup solution I am the waitress delivering the bad steak to the table: as the customer sees it, it's not the cooks problem, it's the waitress delivering the steak, and at the end of the day, it's the waitress who doesn't get the tip. But I digress... You asked what the message is I'm getting. It's this one: "The Serial Number and Customer Number combination entered is invalid. Please try again. " when I try to enter both the customer number and the serial number. I get like messages when I try the other licensing choices: NONE of them work and it's now Pearl Harbour Day and I'm feeling truly sunk! I've tried every combination on the Licensing Portal and not a one of them will allow me to register. From other posts I've seen, this has been going on since the 26th of November, that's a dozen days. A DOZEN DAYS! Please tell me "it ain't so..." I am at your mercy. I hope all of this ill-will is worth stopping the software bandits you are after, because you surely stopped one cash paying customer from toutting your product over a "temprorary process issue". Again, you tell me how to restore my customer's faith in my choice of software after waiting 12 days for the resolution of a "temprorary process issue" and we'll take it from there.

Thanks for your honest reply and I do hope you can understand the position you have put me and my fellow "trench-mates" in over this so called "temprorary process issue".

Regards-

Wm Neal Harmon

[Wm_Harmon]

Yeah, that's why I spent the hundreds of dollars I did, so I could put my customer in eval mode and I can come back another time to do something I should have been able to do WITHOUT ERROR the first time I tried! I'm sorry, but I think it inexcuseable for this to have gone on for so long. "Work-Arounds" are something you do for off-the-wall problems that happen once in a blue moon, not a simple install.

[Joshua_Small]

Hi Maxi,

Please be aware that's a highely risky proposition.
If you put it in eval mode, and nothing is sorted out by the end of the evaluation... what do you do?
Because once you deploy something, a customer generally expects it to stay operating, not just operate for two months.

[David_Woodcock]

Hmm, let's see.

10d, no support calls.

11d. Within 1 day

1. !> 35 Selection list problem.
2. Exchange 2003 crashing on remote agent
3. Domino machines requiring daily reboots after job hangs
4. SAP agent needing 6 days of SEV 1 support to fix a login problem.

Still a great product, BUT there's no way 11d was ready for release.

Now I'm off to log my 5th support call...

[Vladimir_Vuci1]

Hi!

From my previous experience with license certificate from Symantec when you receive them you have to wait for 24 hours before you register them on licensing portal.

Also, I have to say that when I had a problems like yours, just simple e-mail to emea-licensing@symantec.com (and there is probably similar one for other regions) with basic data in it from license certificate (like PO number, Customer number, Certificate number and Serial number) would solve it in couple of hours. At first, I was also very disappointed by problems on licensing portal, but then, I was getting replies from emea-licensing really fast and with correct keys (or license files) so that I have no trouble to install product or give customers the right keys that works.

Best regards,
Vladimir Vucinic

[maxi_maximus]

Hi Joshua

I don't understand why this is so risky. I have many clients out there with 11d licensing issues at the moment. Quite a few of them are on eval. We need backups! We don't have a license! So its put into eval so that we can run backups. I don't see where the risk is.

The licensing issues should be resolved by the time eval expires. If not then regardless if i use eval or not we are in trouble.

So eval is definitely the only way out of the licensing problems at the moment. No risk involved whats so ever. Once we receive the licenses they will be installed without any impact on backups or restores.

[Joshua_Small]

My experience is from version 9.1, however the installation of licenses reinstalls half the product.

My service packs unapplied and I lost most of my settings.

It also involved two reboots which is nothing I wanted to do during business hours.

This is the risk I speak of.

[maxi_maximus]

In that particular case that you mention thats understandable. I will keep this one in mind!! I have never come across this. My customers have no choice i need eval mode to do backups.

Lets hope Symantec fix the licensing ASAP!!

Thanks for you input Joshua!

[Rick_Wagner_2]

Just as I will never put Symantec AntiVirus on any system again, I will now add Backup Exec to that list. As long as I am at it, I might as well lump Ghost into the fray and just consider anything Symantec as junk. Symantec, you can kiss me (and all of the licenses I sell and recommend) goodbye.