On Fri, 28 Mar 2003, Michael Schwendt wrote: >> yep this is all guessing and mental masturbation. maybe I made the main >> point of my post about these rhn options a bit too subtle... >> there is a phone number to call for sales questions. Anyone who really >> cares about this issue should be using the phone number. At this point >> I'm assuming anyone who keeps posting about these issue to the beta list >> are just freeloading posting-junkies, like myself, who have no real >> intention to ever buy any of these product, and just like wasting >> bandwidth by exploring the boundary of the definition of spam. > >Actually, public feedback on what users and potential customers >think about the comprehensibility and clearness of Red Hat's product >information pages, and what they think about the pricing itself, is >far more interesting and relevant than any attempts on cutting down >the remaining traffic on this (probably already dying) list. I think >the sales department would revise the web pages if they got many >repetitive questions by phone. But consider all those visitors who >don't call them and who misunderstand the pricing model. Imagine >someone got a false picture and ordered and later learned that the >renewal of the annual subscription is much more expensive. Surely >something you would to avoid, even if it were only once. It doesn't >really matter on what mailing-list this comes up. As you know, >people from Red Hat read these lists, too. Sure, Red Hat people read these lists. Most of us are engineers however, although there are others too. Assuming that people in sales and marketing are on the list though, and are reading all of this is a perhaps wrong assumption (I have no idea). By contacting the right people and doing so directly and explaining what products you want and what services, and at what price points you consider reasonable, the person on the telephone will be able to make note of another customer's feedback. While people at Red Hat such as myself, and other engineers often offer help here, or comment on things like this, we are not one the decision makers here at Red Hat, and so individual people posting here are not going to get counted by the bean counters. Some may assume since they've reached "someone" at Red Hat, that we will then pass on this information/request/whatever to the appropriate people at Red Hat. That is generally a bad assumption because: 1) I have no idea who specifically at Red Hat would be the proper person to contact, other than to call our phone number myself and spend my own personal time being a middleman (with no personal benefit) 2) Comments to Red Hat by myself will be likely treated as an employee suggestion, and carry much less weight than would a number of actual customers providing direct feedback to Red Hat sales people, etc. over time. I do in fact try to provide customer feedback internally to some people. This results in responses coming back to _me_ though, and not to the customer, and generally the responses come back in the form of "internal employee to internal employee" and not in the form of "internal employee to customer", and so it isn't always easy to translate something as a middle man. In short, any customer who wants Red Hat to provide alternative solutions at alternative prices needs to contact Red Hat directly, preferably via telephone and provide this information directly to the sales department. It is the only way that I personally know of with which to provide feedback and request products and services. The more people who do this, the better that Red Hat can evaluate customers requirements and try to work them into profitable business models. Also, this isn't just to the customer's benefit, it is to Red Hat's benefit as well, as it lets us know what people want. It only works though if the proper people hear the message. -- Mike A. Harris ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris OS Systems Engineer - XFree86 maintainer - Red Hat -- Phoebe-list mailing list Phoebe-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/phoebe-list