Corel Customer Support - You be the judge

[tvwxman]

People have complained repeatedly about Corel's customer support. This post is intended to be a fact-based post on events that transpired between myself and Corel's email support. The goal of my commentary here is to provide observations only while avoiding counterproductive, emotional remarks. I don't want to give Corel any reason to delete this post or ban me. Of course I realize that may happen anyway if this is a company that hides the truth.

Here is an email thread that recently took place that started with me seeking help on an issue with ASP3 not saving GradFilterPro settings as a preset to apply to other images:

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Eric
Jul 3, 02:02 EDT

I am sick. I finally had to ditch ASP 1.x since I'm now handling Nikon D750 NEF's. I just installed both ASP 3 and paid the extra for GradFilterPro.

In what I assume is an incredibly bad bug, creating a preset using GradFilterPro completely fails as it will not apply the Grad Filter to subsequent images. This worked flawlessly on my old, outdated ASP 1.

ASP 3 confirms the issue too as seen when I go into the 'Manage' presets menu, highlight the preset, then click on the 'View preset settings' button. The grad filter settings are disabled.

PLEASE HELP!!

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JV Pascual (Corel)
Jul 4, 08:09 EDT

Eric,

Thank you for contacting Corel Technical Support.

I understand that the you are having issues with the program, let me go ahead and help you.

Could you send me a screenshot of the problem so I can investigate on the matter further?
http://www.take-a-screenshot.org/

Please do not hesitate to contact us with any further questions.

Regards,
JV
Corel Technical Support Services

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Eric
Jul 4, 20:48 EDT

JV,

Thank you for your reply. A screenshot would be inadequate to illustrate this problem. I can capture a screen recording of the issue and upload it to you. Do you have a shared folder on a cloud I could upload a larger video file?

Eric

----- follow up -----

Eric
Jul 5, 01:49 EDT

JV,

See the video I made of the issue here on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHDrx3o ... e=youtu.be

There is no sound, but I think it's easy to follow along. Here's what to look for. On the first picture, I make three changes.

1. I desaturate the picture

2. I enable the Grad Filter

3. I crop the picture.

After those three quick tasks, I then save what I've done as a Preset, and I call it 'Test'. Pause the video here, at 21 seconds. Notice that 'crop' and 'Grad Filter' are selected. Continue.

I then select picture number two, and attempt to apply the Preset to it. The crop fails. The Grad Filter Fails. Only the desaturation worked. At 36 seconds I examine the settings of that Preset and lo and behold, neither crop, nor grad filter are enabled - confirming what just happened.

Eric

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JV Pascual (Corel)
Jul 5, 05:31 EDT

Eric,

Thank you for contacting Corel Technical Support.

I understand that the you are having issues with the program, let me go ahead and help you.

Could you send a sample picture so I can test it on my end?

Please do not hesitate to contact us with any further questions.

Regards,
JV
Corel Technical Support Services

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Eric
Jul 5, 14:38 EDT

JV !!!

Are you an Auto-Bot?

This is insulting, please read my email to you, I have put a lot of work into providing you information, and you haven't responded to any of it!

If you cannot or will not help me, just say so.

I'm tired and frustrated and your lack of attention to this matter is disgusting.

One last try... read my email, and FIX my problem.

If you're not interested, then REFUND MY MONEY!

Eric

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JV Pascual (Corel)
Jul 7, 03:57 EDT

Eric,

Thank you for contacting Corel Technical Support.

I understand that the you are having issues with the program, let me go ahead and help you.

I just need the sample file and see if we encounter the same problem.

Please do not hesitate to contact us with any further questions.

Regards,
JV
Corel Technical Support Services

End ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Obviously there is no 'file' to send JV... this problem occurs on every image from every camera I've tried.

But more importantly, it appears almost clear as day that the customer support representative (JV) is either a non-existent human being who is actually an autobot loosely attached to a fake name and an avatar, or he is real and couldn't give two cents about a customer's problem. (How do you get paid for that?)

I posted this so you could judge for yourself.

But I have an opinion too: This is unforgivable, and a disgrace. Corel should be ashamed of themselves.

[Kneops]

I have had a few cases with ASP2 in which I contacted support. One was about too much red in the raw files produced by my Fuji XT1 (Nikons D700 were fine). This or something also caused my rgb exports to give the wrong reds. This has been reported by Corel as a bug but hasn't been corrected yet. I also stated several times that the default raw conversion from these raw files is not good and take a lot of time to correct.

The other thing was about red dots in the pictures which the jpegs from the camera had not. My first report about this was about a year ago I think. Lately I reported this again with new sample images. The response was ok, not a robot (!): 'I remember that customer (or at least it was a Dutch customer) last year when we had a discussion why AS 2 had these red pixels. I'm afraid, the RAW file of his Fuji XT1 still has these red pixels. The JPG looks fine. Good news for us is that Photoshop CC2015.5 (latest version) has the same problems with his RAW only that pixels are not pink but slightly purple. So I suppose that there is something in the RAW file itself. Might be the camera that isn't that good as he expects.'

The good news is that they do take a look at the samples and recognize the problem. What I didn't like was that they suggest the camera might not be so good (then why are the jpegs good) and that they apparently only compare their findings with the results from Photoshop/Lightroom. I'm a Linux user, so I could only test with ASP2, Darktable, Rawtherapee and Lightzone. They all produced these red spots. Someone from the Fuji forum pointed out that Darktable has a defringe option which took away these red dots immediately. I'm a Linux user, but for this case I wanted to be sure and bought a Windows Home license and installed it in a VM environment. Then I installed trial versions of Capture One and SilkyPix. Both default showed no red dots whatsoever. So, only comparing with Adobe software is not a good thing imho. I couldn't test it in DXO because the XT1 is not recognized.

In general, I think the response is ok, although a bit too easy when it comes to conclusions. Communication could be much better though. Alex is doing his best on this forum, but there is no way knowing what problems are worked on and which ones are not. Also corrections of severe problems takes too long, like all the problems Linux users are reporting, and the missing image bugs. I haven't updated to version 3 yet because I don't see any benefits of doing that when image quality is not improved and there are only new bugs. But I also believe complaining doesn't really help. I was now able to compare 6 raw convertors and ASP is the best when it comes to easy of use and speed, except for image quality and the tools to correct image problems. So I will keep on supporting ASP. I think customer support has improved in the last year.

[tomshopping]

I personally found Corel’s tech support to be very useful in evaluating ASP3!

I was on a trial license so I didn’t think to open a ticket, but I did anyway at the suggestion of Corel and other users. The issue was the regarding EXIF data not being read properly, which you will see posted to this forum as well.

The tech support was responsive and polite, but thoroughly unhelpful. After a few exchanges, I was told there was nothing Corel could do without my providing massive amounts of system audit, configuration, and inventory data from not one by two different programs: the Microsoft msinfo32 tool and a winaudit open-source program that he wanted me to install. I appreciate troubleshooting process, the scripted nature of tech support, and the need to rule out customer-caused issues. However, what would be much more productive is to actually look at some sample images exhibiting the problem since it’s incredibly easily to replicate. Tech support was not interested the files, would not say whether they've seen the problem themselves, nor could describe any notional problem that they would be looking for in the data that they requested. It's as if to say--I'm going to assume the problem looks like a needle, so give me a haystack in hopes that I may find it. Sorry, I’m not sending a complete system inventory when you can’t even provide a valid reason why, won't tell me if you've seen the problem or been able to replicate it, and it’s a waste of everyone’s time if it won’t actually focus attention on the problem: ASP3 reading these specific files. Trust me, the problem isn't my machine or its configuration--it's Corel's software.

I have now tested Capture One Pro, DxO Optics Pro, Microsoft Live Photo Gallery, Windows Explorer, and IrfanView. All can read the EXIF data without issue. Why can't ASP3?

I was very excited to try ASP3 at first. I became very concerned when encountering the EXIF issue. However, the lack of response on this forum and the complete waste of time working with tech support decided it for me: ASP3 is off my evaluation list.

I’m very grateful for the opportunity to have experienced Corel’s service as a potential customer, as if this is my experience before I’ve actually bought something, I can’t imagine how it would be afterwards.