DAZ achieves new lows in customer support (but appears to have ambitions to go lower still)
crikett
Posts: 77
Today marks day 55 since I submitted a tech support ticket about a trio of installers that simply do not work. So I started trying to call DAZ to find out how one actually gets support for a problem, within the same quarter when you have that problem? Pretty much every listed number for DAZ resulrs in either a "no longer in service," or a wonderful message telling me that I can submit support tickets on-line now, and the call is then discontinued. This comes on the heels of my last two support issues: a very simple website issue that prevented a download that took a mere 7 weeks for a response and fix, and a sales support issue that took just under 7 weeks to fix - coincidently coming through just as I was filling out the complaint to my credit card company to reverse the charges. I guess getting working installers might be a nice Christmas suprise, but it would be really nice to have a timely respoinse. As someone that has been a customer since back in the Zygote days, and clearly remembers when DAZ had incredible support, the current company bears little resemblance.
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Indeed, as someone who's whole career was in customer support in the computer sector, I despair at the current levels of support, not just with DAZ. My local telecom providers (all of them) are just as bad and they dwarf DAZ in size and resources. I well remember our tech support staff had a 3-ring rule - a customer should never be left holding for more than three rings of the phone. Today, as you say, there is no phone access. So the argument is that support costs money so prices would rise if the kind of support we need is to be provided. Still, I pause to wonder whether the criteria is actually maximising profits rather than keeping prices low. Back in my day, I earned a decent salary in tech support yet the companies I worked for generally did very well, profit-wise.
I worked in customer support and tech support way back as well (before moving towards IT and Ops roles, and then consulting), and there is no doubt that most companies had better support back in the day (Apple being a possible exception, as their Apple Store support model seems to be a good balance?). I know DAZ as a company has likely run into scaling problems compared to 10 or 15 years ago, but suspect that somewhere, management has simply decided to cut the costs related to support (ie, headcount). This usually winds up cutting more than intended as it places an undue load on the experienced people they kept, which usually leads to some moving on, and then placing a higher burden on the few experienced people that remain, and you eventually wind up with an undersized department that lacks the tribal knowledge to do anything close to an efficient job. It is possible to pull out of such a tail spin, but it is a rarity in my experience.
As a customer, this will likely mean I will buy less, given the total lack of confidence that DAZ can support what they sell. Future problems will likely just be immediate returns as it won't be worth my time to even try and solve them (and even then, given the response time, I will may be inclined to handle the "return" through my credit card support).
Phone support was dropped a very long time ago, because people whose time zone and location made it practical to call were effectively bumping those who couldn't readily phone down the queue.
Which installers are these? Have you tried other instalaltion methods, if they exist?
I implemented this policy two years ago, and I haven't looked back.
I guess that's a me too. I have not raised a tech support ticket for such a long time because I felt it was a total waste of time. On the other hand, I have no problem with Sales Support and returning items that don't meet expectations is usually dealt with amicably and efficiently. So the inference might be that this is also the way DAZ would prefer us to go.
They are good with all sorts of support when I ask them. And sometimes I drop the ball when they ask for more details that is a lot of work to demostrate and I'm not in a mood to demonstrate it then. Truth be told, I shouldn't be submitting tickets that don't contain a step by step explanation on how to replicate it (I have often enough to know sometimes they can't replicate it, even though I still can easily, and I think it's because each individual product library winds up being unique and that doesn't lend itself to bug reproducability).
A recent price disparity (still unfixed on the product page) was resolved very quickly and efficiently last week. Credit where it's due (see what I did there?, heh).
That said, my technical tickets seemed to go to /dev/null. I don't bother anymore.
--ms
The isntallers in question are the GenerationX plug-ins/add-ons for Studio. I've tried all possible installation methods. I took apart the installer to look at the actual scripts and it seems that the base problem is that there just isn't an option for newer Mac OS versions, so it exits with no install taking place. I am planning to try and update and replace the script contents and see if I can make it work, though obviously getting an actual working version would be better (though that would require an actual response from support... and while I know that phone support was over and done, I was hoping to actually talk to someone at the company, but it isn't just the support numbers that are gone, there seem to be no public contact numbers at all).
If hacking the installer doesn't work, and I am somewhat skeptical that it will, then the next step will be building a VM with one of the supported versions, and then looking at the pre/post install delta and seeing if I can manually copy and update configs from there to my regular system.
crikett said:
Ah, I had this problem! I will look tomorrow and truy to remember what I did to get them working... It involved downloading the zips, extracting pieces, creating new folders and inserting pieces into Daz Studio itself. There is still one plugin that doesn't seem to work but I have two redundant alternatives so that isn't an issue. I'm not sure that speaking with someone over the hone would help much since you can describe the problem with a ticket and the creator of the plug-in has passed away.
...at least they don't have virtual "reception bots"...yet
At least for technical problems the support is sometimes (often?) not to blame, when the solution for the problem depends on the PA delivering the faulty product...
So in my - not too long - list of technical tickets I have right now that are unsolved... sent 4 months, 8 months and 2 years (!) ago. All the problems could be reproduced by the techs and were "reported to the bug tracker". In the case of the 2 year old tickets, I got a message that it was solved 4 months ago, but that was only partially true so I told support so and they could reproduce the error in the updated product and reported it again...
So for me, contact with the support is good... the people behind that first line probably are quite busy and if something has to go to the PA it depends which PA it is to get a solution.
In several cases it was easier to find out what the problem was myself and find the solution, too (which was the case in at least 25% of the problems I reported) and THEN send a ticket with the problem and the solution, so the error could be removed for those customers that might buy the product after me...
It's not Gatekeeper? You might want to check the Mac FAQ thread, if you haven't.
I have no idea if that product even works with newer vesions of DS. I will see what I can find, I have it but not installed since many years.
Right now it works on windows and DS 4.21. I remember once when I had to install files manually because GenX2 had problems, but last time DIM did the job.
No, it is definitely not Gatekeeper... some of the old installers just don't run in current (last five years) versions of OS X since they require deprecated libraries and scripts. In this case, the scripts start to run but don't actually do anything since Rosetta no longer exists.
I think some of those older installers did open in 7-Zip to get the content out.
Just to update... I did finally get contacted from Daz on the support... though just one back and forth so far of repeating what I'd already inclided in the ticket. In the meantime, I've tried unsuccessfully to create ARM entries in the installer script, as well as simply removing all options and having it go to Intel64 as the only option, but also no success here (I suspect this may be an issue with my only having found the documention for the current version of Install Builder rather than what was most likely used a few years ago with these products). I've yet to find anything that seems to be a file archive that I can open, though looking at the package contents there are clearly a few contenders. I haven't created a VM yet as a way to hopefully extract, and copy the installed files, but that still seems a likely (though very time consuming) path - I'm hoping that Daz support may be able to just provide the files (or even a list of what is done in the installer as I think it will be easy to miss a change in the deltas). I think I will also look at extracting the data from the Windows installers, making the assumption that other than the installer itself, there is likely no platform specifc files (and I think getting the data from the Windows installers might be easier/possible).
Otherwise, failing all of that, maybe just setting up a VM to actually run these items on the (admittedly somewhat rare) occassion that they are needed.
criket, have you tried using Crossover?! Crossover allows you to create a "bottle" to run the installer in a simulation of Windows. I used Crossover many times when I had a Mac, and wanted to run old Windows installers.
I forget the price, but it is well worth it. It's certainly easier than what you've endured so far.
Unfortunately, I don't think it works. The installers were designed to work in the era of OS 9 and early Windows. OS X was introduced and the installers ran using Rosetta. Eventually, Rosetta was deprecated. In my experiments, the installers for Windows and OS X wrote to different system folders with appropriate permissions so simply placing the files where they should be isn't enough. You could use Crossover to activate the Windows installer but you can't make it write to the proper OS X system folders.
I should say that this isn't strictly Daz's fault. In this case, they are the broker for a vendor who has passed away. It isn't clear that they have access to the assets that the installers use.
Bolded for emphasis.
Also, it could be a lack of bodies to fill positions in the service (food and retail mainly) industry in general. You see it everywhere, all the people who used to work in that sector left after COVID for numerous reasons, not wanting to be dealing with Karen-esque customers anymore being one of them.
could just be Daz lost a lot of their CS people to other remote or warehouse jobs.
I actually don't think this is this is what is going on. Creators make their products, package them, and Daz3d creates the metadata, and posts them for sale and download. Support can troubleshoot if there is an issue with Daz Studio, errors in a script, morph, or mat than can be seen in a text editor etc. Otherwise, they contact the creator to fix the problem. In this case, the creator has passed away and so can not do support. The company does not have the power or legal right to reverse engineer a creator's product. Exactly like Amazon, the company can accept a return, contact the vendor, and deal with a broken product that way. They can't disassemble a product to update it. This is an unusual situation where technology was rapidly changing and, in this case, the installers were never updated.
I don't know if OP knew that Dimension3D is dead, so I won't dogpile on them too hard, but if I was in OP's position, I'd take the L and ask for a refund at this point.
tbh, they should update the GenX2 product pages stating the original vendor is deceased and by purchasing the product you do so at your own risk with the knowledge that support past DS4.x is unavailable.
I think the first step is to find out if they can rebuild the installer for modern Os's. We don't actually know what is in their possesion, and it is suprisingly hard to explain why an installer designed for OS 9 and early OS X doesn't work on non Rosetta macs.
I raise rickets, but now always return.
If they fix it, well I can buy in 6 months time at a reduced cost.
Doesn't matter, the product isn't reduced because they are dead. There isn't a wanring about lack of support, or delays in support.
It is NOT the customer's job to make allowances.
Still waiting on an additional response from DAZ... I wasn't aware that the creator had passed away. Not sure if it is recent, but still a pang of sadness whenever hearing such news. Though from a support point, I understand, even if the original creator is alive and well, that there could be support issues with older products just because of the paths life can take us. I don't expect DAZ to be able to carry out all levels of support on products, as this doesn't seem reasonable. I expect responses... timely resonses and updates as to where things stand and what courses of action might be available or are being looked at.
I've been looking at a number of utilities to try and hack through the installers and extract the files, though so far without luck. In short, the installers are designed to prevent that. I would suspect that such installers are built by DAZ, though not sure (they may just supply the needed items/info for a branded DAZ installer). If they did build the installer, then they should have either the means to update the installer or provide the extracted files - this is my main hope. If the basic product simply doesn't work with an ARM processor, then I know I am reaching a deadend... though, there is nothing I've seen with this that seems to suggest it wouldn't work (or at the very least, be able to use Rossetta II to use Intelx64 files).
These would be very useful to move over some older characters to G3, and then have them available for newer utilities, but thinking more and more this is something I may need to run in a VM with an older MacOS or Windows version (or dig up an older computer). My main frustration here is the sad state of DAZ's support.
I dunno, I would think, unless there's an Estate involved requiring that product to still be sold (at which point they should find someone who can help them update it), then it should probably just be pulled from new sale entirely if it's being shown that X or Y on one platform or another is no longer working because the world has moved on from the technology that used to be in place that it's dependent on. Yes, they should update the documentation for anyone who already owns it with the warning, "the installer no longer works as of version x.x of the OS."
..after Draagonstorm passed on Zev0 and others stepped/teamed up to continue releasing and updating the many wonderful resource products that come in so handy for custom character design. it is sad that GenerationX didn't receive the same response as it has also been a resource I often depended on.
the loss of GenX was part of the reason I was reluctant to adopt G8.
Back tpo update things... the tough part is, I iopene the original support ticket on 9/15. On 11/14 DAZ finally responded, basically asking for the same information I had included in my original request for support (mainly how I was trying to install). It has now been a month since then, and my response, and I am still waiting for a further response! I kinda want to scream, but that doesn't really do much.
Of course, dexpite their total lack of help or even any kind of response, I have made progress! While the archives I was downloading for manual install proved no use at getting to extract, and while the DIM installers failed while installed from DIM, I was able to find the black maginc combination of things to get the files from the DIM installers and now appear to have the product installed! But, the installed product now shows up as GenX and Gen X2 Bundle, and not the separate products I have serial numbers for... I tried entering my serial numbers, but neither were accepted. Of course I have since updated my ticket explaining that the goal posts are now dramatcially closer, and what I need is just a working Seriasl Numbner!
If I am calculating correctly, I think I stand a chance of getting this as soon as mid-Febuary? At least, if they don't re-ask for information I've already provided, then I guess Mid-May? Oh well, at least a possible end is on the horizon!