As my email address is in several places on mozilla.org, and I also run the licensing@mozilla.org mailing list, I get a fair amount of mail asking for support for Firefox or Thunderbird. (This is despite Before You Mail Gerv, which probably needs updating for this issue.) Usually, I redirect people to the support page, and hear nothing more. But one guy recently responded to that with:
OH, I see, your about as helpful as the BS website you are referring me too. You both must be wanting money before you can do anything...what a rip off.
Leaving the personal abuse aside, it's amazing to me that someone can say that something they downloaded for no cost is "a rip off"...
Posted by gerv at December 24, 2004 3:54 PMwhy not redirect to mozillazine forums?
Posted by: ZZ at December 24, 2004 4:19 PMNote: Not everybody has a good text-understanding. This seems to be one of the guys with a err.. not so good one.
Posted by: jm.one at December 24, 2004 4:47 PMha ha ha
IMHO the support page could use a little remodeling. It's not really intuitive that there are free options at first glance. I think the model should follow the "download for fre free or purchase a CD" policy on the rest of the site, and make the free options a bit more prominent.
Most users don't know what newsgroups are. They aren't really mainstream. Support Docs should be #1. Then Forum.
Posted by: Robert Accettura at December 24, 2004 4:56 PMWe get such messages in Mozilla Europe as well :)
Posted by: pascal at December 24, 2004 5:25 PMProbably confusing the concept of "rip-off" with "bait-and-switch."
That last being a reasonable reaction if one encounters a big bug, and assumes that they have to pay for support to fix it.
Posted by: Axord at December 24, 2004 6:03 PMI look after donations@mozilla.org and I see a lot of support questions. I try to help as best I can and also point out the MozillaZine forums and Gunner's FAQ. I get abusive messages about FF being awful/rip-off and IE being better sometimes; I tend to ignore those.
Posted by: Dave Murray at December 24, 2004 6:16 PMI don't see why that would be amazing - there are lots of things that actually are a rip off, but have no up-front cost. Even Microsoft Office is available as a free download these days...
Posted by: michaell at December 24, 2004 6:45 PMhaha.. and in the guys sig was it some promo for avant or some other IE add-on?
Posted by: Joey at December 24, 2004 8:13 PMJust goes to prove that some pepole can actually operate a computer and still cant read. I think its a bloody miricale they actually must have dragon working prety good to get their email working like this! sorry will have to work on the firefox dragon interface later... can you make my C++ work with dragon beter while your at it too it makes too many typo'es ??
thanks FIREFOX IS #1
Tim
I know the feeling, Gerv. This is a "conversation" I had with someone 1½ year ago: http://tenser.net/thunderbird.eml
Posted by: David Tenser at December 25, 2004 3:08 AMmichaell: so where can I download Microsoft Office for free (legally)?
Posted by: Gerv at December 26, 2004 10:39 AM