The Death of Support (even when you pay)

Posted: March 2nd, 2009 | Author: Nathan

UPDATE: Several weeks after posting this I got a call from another support agent looking to help. Turns out the error was a problem was cryptkey thinking someone was trying to get around its security. He sent me two files (NETDC.DLL and P3SRVR.DLL) to overwrite the ones on the server. FIXED! You may download the files here. Keep in mind your problem may not be the same as mine. I take no responsibility if using this fix breaks your machine.

I had the pleasure misfortune miserable experience of calling Primavera (now Oracle) for support today for a problem we are having with P3, our scheduling software.

They have a knowledge base article that details the process of installing their software on a Windows 2003 terminal server running Citrix, but despite following those steps precisely we’re getting an error when running the software.

As you can see from the pic, I waited on hold for over two hours (they picked up around the 2:30 mark).  I also queued up their “Chat Support” option but had similar results and closed it after about an hour.

If I were calling HP to get support on a printer at my house I’d expect this.  However, we spend over $1,000 per year for support on each of our P3 licenses.  We have similar support contracts with other software vendors (thank you, Meridian) and rarely have to wait more than ten minutes.  When paying that much I expect to be able to reach a human in under an hour, call me high maintenance if you must.

Update 5/2/2009: If anybody is interested, the error we were receiving was “P3 Registration Cannot be Validated” and then “INITIALIZATION: FILE_NOT_FOUND (-1).” As it turns out they have been unable to get the software running at all on Windows 2003 R2.  They suggested a rollback to R1 (no easy task since R2 came OEM with the server).  Would have been GREAT if this were in their knowledge base and we would have known before we setup all the other software on the server.

Tags: primavera |

---