Wagnerblog

I enjoy good tools as much as the next guy, but when I am charged an arm and a leg for a tool – or in the case of Codesmith 3.0, the sum of $400.00, I expect everything to work. Well it didn’t. And that ticked me off. To make matters worse the customer service I received from the support personnel really stunk to high heaven.

I had two problems using the Codesmith app. Both were minor and did not prevent me from executing the core functionality of the product. But call me wacky, when I pay a ton of money for something I expect ALL of it to work. I contacted customer service only to have to go through a long and protracted argument with whomever was answering emails. Instead of acknowledging that my problem is indeed a problem, the person kept on insisting that he was right and I was completely mistaken for wanting something that works.

So here is my minority opinion. Codesmith your price point sucks. I don’t think the Studio application is worth the $400.00 that you are charging. No way. Sourcegear Vault, arguably a more complex tool, costs only $289.00 , LLBLGen arguably a more sophisticated tool only costs $220.00

If I have any sort of problem with either tool, no matter how small or inconsequential to these companies, I don’t have to argue with their support people.

As a side note I fully expect Codesmith to argue that in addition to me being unreasonable, their price point is probably too low. Lets see what happens.

Anyway, I’m in a minority here to be sure. But is it so unreasonable not to want to be argued with as a customer? Its as simple as that. Only in software circles is it acceptable to argue with your customer and insist that either its their problem or that its just a “minor bug” that one should live with.

Hmm I work in software circles…. hmmm … ah let’s not even go there.