In a way that I can’t recall now, I ended up on the web site of a company called PC On Point. Browsing through their site I found a design error in which a click on some of the buttons on the download page did not lead back to where it’s suppose to, but instead to the same page (html file) under a different subfolder, which resulted in a “404 – Not Found” error. According to my warn the webmaster policy, I sent an email to the the company’s support email address.

This is the email:

From: X@X.com
Reply-To: X@X.com
To: support@pconpoint.com
Date: Jul 11, 2005 12:48 PM
Subject: Website error

Hi,

When browsing your website I found an error.

After going to the “Download” page, clicking on any of the menu items
(Home, Overview, Contact) will try to link you to the page in the
download subfolder instead of the original page at root. So clicking
on Home will send you to: http://www.pconpoint.com/download/index.htm
instead of http://www.pconpoint.com/index.htm

Regards
Amit Morson

http://www.techmount.com

Needless to say, this is a simple matter, a one minute html correction and nothing more, so I didn’t give it a passing thought.

Two and a half hours later I received the following response from pc on point support:

From: support@pconpoint.com
To: X@X.com
Date: Jul 11, 2005 3:17 PM
Subject: Re: Website error

Hi,

We are very sorry to say that we don’t see any paid order from your name or email address,

Can you please let us know the exact name or email address you used at the time of ordering or your order number.

Or did you get registration receipt? if yes … please forward that to us.

This will help us assist you better.

Thanks!
K.K

Now, I’m not a customer of PC On Point, never was, and as you will soon find out never intend to be. Stunned from their reply I quickly replied with this email:

From: X@X.com
Reply-To: X@X.com
To: support@pconpoint.com
Date: Jul 12, 2005 1:04 AM
Subject: Re: Website error

Are you joking? Did you even read my email?

I was hoping that this response will prompt a real human to answer the mail. As you may already understand it wasn’t the case.

This is the response I got this time:

From: support@pconpoint.com
To: X@X.com
Date: Jul 12, 2005 3:33 AM
Subject: Re: Website error

Hi,

Sorry for any inconvenience.

PC on Point Easily finds the cause of errors that result in PC problems.

It Fixes any/all sort of corrupt files hidden in your computer and lets you Avoid reformatting and common reboot errors.
It safely repairs errors on your computer, removes bugs and restores the overall performance and speed of your PC.

It also addresses errors that cause general slowdowns, system freezes etc.

As, Poorly designed software can easily leave traces behind, so applications you removed in the past can still be cluttering up your computer.

These PC problems are usually caused when you improperly install/uninstall software. Minor things like shortcuts to non existent programs, redundant files, invalid application paths result in bugs and errors that can cripple your computer.

It easily rectifies all the following issues with your system as well (with ease).

# Missing file associations, Missing startup programs, Invalid device drivers, Invalid application paths, Missing DLL files.
# Missing help files, Missing system fonts, Invalid Shortcuts, And many more PC problems!

So, If you wish to Try our software please go to : http://pconpoint.com/pconpoint.exe and if you wish to make a Purchase for PConPoint,
please go to : http://www.pconpoint.com/purchase/

You can here place your order either by the means of Credit Card Purchase or by Online Check for a sum of $37.00 (Single PC License).

When your purchase is successful, you will receive two confirmation emails, one from us with your registration information,
and one from clickbank with a digital receipt for your purchase.

Also, you can surf the other links of our site using the following :

Home : http://www.pconpoint.com, Overview : http://www.pconpoint.com/overview.htm, Contact : http://www.pconpoint.com/contact.htm

Please let us know, if we can help you any further.

We are always here and happy to assist you better.

Thanks!

H.K

Something is seriously wrong with this company’s automated response system. It either doesn’t recognize real intent, which such systems should be able to do, I know because I worked for a company who created one; Or it isn’t tweaked right; Or even worse, that the system will never send any incoming mail to be handled by a human agent.

Trying one more time I sent the following email to a few additional possible recipients:

From: X@X.com
Reply-To: X@X.com
To: support@pconpoint.com, admin@pconpoint.com, webmaster@pconpoint.com, sales@pconpoint.com, business@pconpoint.com
Date: Jul 12, 2005 6:45 PM
Subject: Re: Website error

Hi,

Since your support email is continuously answered by automated canned
responses that have nothing to do with the subject and content of my
email. I will try to direct this correspondence to a few other email
addresses in your organization, and maybe than I will get a human to
see this. After all it is YOU who are suffering from the website
errors and the inadequate (yes, it IS a very big understatement)
communication with your customers.

Regards
Amit Morson

Of the five emails, two bounced back, sales and admin (what? No sales email???), two were not answered to this moment, webmaster and busines, and the single answer came from support again. This last interaction is a little confusing. On one hand it’s unlikely that any serious company will not direct incoming emails to sales@ and admin@ to anyone within the company. On the other hand, a small operation will not budget an automated system to answer emails. So, what gives?

As expected not much have changed in the manner of response:

From: support@pconpoint.com
To: X@X.com>
Date: Jul 12, 2005 8:36 PM
Subject: Re: Website error

Hi,

Our software name is PC On Point.

PC OnPoint scan your PC’s registry for invalid references, and correct them, which will result in increased computer speed and a better browsing experience in general.

The cost of PC OnPoint is $37+ tax.

This is our one time payment scheme and you are having our lifetime subscription.

You won’t have to pay any more monthly/yearly charge or any other extra hidden charge.

You can use our product as long as you wish.

We also provide after purchase technical support to our costumers for absolutely free.

You can purchase our product only either by Credit card or by Online Check.

Please try the following:

http://www.pconpoint.com/purchase

When your purchase is successful, you will receive two confirmation emails, one from us with your registration information, and one from clickbank with a digital receipt for your purchase.

Best Regards

K.K

With no intention of investing any significant amount of time in this I browsed around to find details about the company and product. As expected (again), the application is not better than the support. Here is what some people say about it:

I DL’ed the app and ran it. It found 205 “problems” , but said it would only fix 95 of them in “unregistered” mode. I told it to proceed with the fewer number of repairs, but it nothing whatsoever. I re-ran the program and it returned the same results, obviously not having fixed anything. As such, I feel this thing is a shady app.

I also have tried out this program and found 238 errors, even though registry mechanic didnt find the ones that pc onpint did find. im very confused

I also downloaded the app only for it to tell me I have 320 problems of which only three can be fixed unregesterd. Well, it did not do a thing as to fix. I sent them an E-mail as to warrantee or refund if I’m not satisfied, I also asked why it was showing me me all these problems. I included the fact that Norton, Spysweeper, Trend Penicyln or spy-subtract came up clean with no problmes. They E-mailed me back a link to the page to buy the software. This was a waste of time as I already new how to buy it, but they did not seem to even read the E-mail I sent with questions. I’ve since E-mailed them one more time asking them to read the E-mail first before sending me something I do not need. So far, with that kind of service, rest assured I won’t pay for it unless they give me some answere’s.

Some other commenter went ahead and called it a “Shady business”. In this case, the comment might not be very far from the truth, at least it seems the company and it’s product are not very serious about doing business.

A lesson is to be learnt here. If the customer support is bad, that’s exactly what the customer-to-be will expect from the product. A bad customer support interaction will lead to a lost customer.

Update: On July 22nd I received the following email:

Amit,

Thank you very much for bringing this to our attention

Best Regards,

-Michael

Too bad it takes so much time to get a human reply. I don’t know from which of the email addresses my last email was picked up since this last reply came from the domain web2.noadware.net