Take the example of one reader who found he had to upgrade the software on a number of Cisco routers in order to meet his auditor's security requirements. While a little unhappy that his Cisco equipment didn't have enough secure remote management to begin with, the reader dutifully went ahead and ordered the software he needed. Once it arrived, however, it quickly became obvious the software was not going to work. Even though it had been drop-shipped from Cisco's warehouse to his reseller, it turned out to be so old it could not even recognize a lot of the hardware.

The reader assumed this would not be a problem. "No worry though," he wrote. "They are all covered on 24X7 Smartnet contracts, so we can just get on the line with Cisco and get up-to-date copies, right? Whoa, there big fella, not so fast. After an hour or so I finally get a human on the line. Cisco tells me I have to go back to my reseller and return the product and get 'what I really need.' I say I have bought what I really need but it was sitting in someone's warehouse gathering dust while new versions - with things like bug fixes and updates for new hardware - were released. Could ya' please just email me the software or let me download it, I asked politely. Oh no, they say. I'm stuck with what the vendor sent me except I can return it if I want. You get whatever is shipped to you, with no rights to the current version I was told. What a load of crap. I have no say in whether they want to send me some old crap and charge me $6K for it? We have purchased over $60K worth of gear and software in the past 45 days and we are debating whether we should return it all. We are sorely tempted."

All too often, of course, not even the newest version of the software will fix the problem. One reader who had recently upgraded to version 9.0 of Veritas Backup Exec for Windows found he could not successfully backup a device. After some digging on the Veritas website he found a description of his problem along with this notice:

"Veritas Software has acknowledged that the above-mentioned issue is present in the current version(s) of the product(s) mentioned at the end of this article. Veritas Software is committed to product quality and satisfied customers. There are no plans to address this issue by way of a patch or hotfix in the current or previous versions of the software at the present time. However, the issue is currently scheduled to be addressed in the next major revision of the product. Please be sure to refer back to this document periodically as any changes to the status of the defect will be reflected here. Please note that Veritas Software reserves the right to remove any fix from the targeted release if it does not pass quality assurance tests. Veritas' plans are subject to change and any action taken by you based on the above information or your reliance upon the above information is made at your own risk."

Naturally, the reader was not happy that Veritas has chosen not to fix a bug it clearly knows all about. "Since I purchased upgrade protection I will get the next version in December when they release it, but in the mean time I have a piece of useless software," he wrote. "But, wait it gets better. I called tech support about this problem and I was told that I would have a 39 min wait. So I called sales and described my problem to them. The sales person I talked to said, 'Only 39 minutes? That's great for us.'"

Even when the vendor tries to help fix the problem, it may be too late. A reader who is among many on Dell's forums complaining of failures of Powervault 210 and 220 drive arrays says Dell has been quite accommodating about replacing parts and firmware, but that's not good enough for mission critical storage needs. "We're hoping the combination of all new hardware and current firmware will resolve it, but how do we ever know for sure?" the reader wrote me. "They cannot regain our trust at this point. There's no way to know until you've gone for years without failure. In the meantime, we've decided our business cannot run our application, for which downtime is intolerable, on Dell storage, so we're looking at SAN solutions from HP/Compaq and Sun."

Finally, we mustn't overlook our friends at Symantec. As I reported earlier this week on my UnFairUse page, Symantec has acknowledged that bugs in its product activation for Norton AntiVirus 2004 are forcing some customers to re-activate whenever they re-boot their computer. "So what's Symantec's solution for making sure you don't run out of permissible re-activations," notes one reader. "You guessed it -- don't reboot your computer."

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