An Open Letter To the Consignment Software Vendors

Dear Consignment Software Vendors,

You each have programs that hundreds, even thousands of customers have spent thousands of dollars on.  They utilize your programs to run their businesses.  These are real people, who work very hard, and who make your companies what they are today.

Consignment software and software in general, is a unique industry in that, to those on the outside, it can seem that software development is ‘magic’ or something only someone special can comprehend.  Software is like sausage – you don’t want to see how it’s made.

Software developers are normal human beings, who make mistakes.  They can be under time constraints or budget constraints.  Just like there is more than one way to install flooring in your home, there is more than one way to solve a problem with software.  Their solution to a problem, isn’t always the best one – sometimes, it’s the least-expensive or quickest one and sometimes, that causes problems for the users of the software.  As a user who spends $1,000 on a program, they can’t help but have the expectation that the developer attempts to own and fix every legitimate bug presented to them, and spends all day, every day, looking at the ways they can improve their software to make it easier to use, more stable, less error-prone, and more reliable.

A common response you’ll hear from the vendors is, “All software has bugs.”  You’re right, but to utilize that response to all bugs and deficiencies in your software, is a cop-out.

There is this seemingly-gray area where the software vendors will blame issues with their software, on the computers you’re running it on, or on some “seemingly far-beyond-your-understanding” issue that is so complex and ultimately, not an issue with their software.

Vendors, it’s time to stop this.  Not for us, but for your customers.  The Computer Peeps don’t get a “kick” out of proving your software is the issue or needs to be improved.  This is not a game, these are not opinions.  We ask on behalf of your customers, that you stop denying the issue is your software, when it is 100% verifiable.  You make yourself come off worse than if you would simply own up to the verifiable issue and let your customers know you’re going to take steps to fix it.  You’re wasting our time and more frustrating, is when you make your customers waste not hours, not weeks, but months on an issue.

So please, we ask that for the benefit of your paying customers, that you stop putting up such walls when legitimate issues are brought to your attention.

The Computer Peeps look forward to seeing a positive change amongst the vendors and regardless of what the vendors do or don’t do, The Computer Peeps will continue to be stewards of proper and secure system configuration.

Sincerely,

The Computer Peeps