[Edit] I didn’t need to be rude to the tech support staff due to their failure to address the bug I reported.
I reported a bug in PhotoLab 6 to DxO. I explained it in great detail. I included six screenshots and the step-by-step directions to reproduce the bug. The bug, simply stated, is that if you apply a Text Watermark and Resize the image on Export, the watermark is badly distorted and the image is unusable. If you Export the image with a watermark and you do not resize, you can downscale the watermarked image perfectly, using a tool such as Photoshop, without distorting the watermark.
I posted this on DPReview, where another member reproduced the bug. So it is confirmed.
DxO wrote back, asking if I had uninstalled and re-installed the software. Nothing else. So to humor them, I did just that and confirmed that, sure enough, the bug is still there.
DxO wrote back, telling me to download a crash reporting tool. I explained that they clearly did not read anything I’d said, because the bug is not causing the software to crash.
This is a very infuriating way to treat a customer.
My guess is that if you reported it recently, as in the last few weeks, then the chances of it being fixed are slim to negligible. PL7 came out last autumn and PL8 will be out in about 4 months time. Thus, PL6 is ancient history.
Sorry that misses the point of how support have responded or ignored what a customer was reporting. Its this sort of problem thst used to be tsken up by staff participating in this fourm.
I think I’ll download the trial version of PL 7 and see if the bug is present. If it’s not there, then I’ll probably wait for PL 8 and upgrade when it comes out, because PL 7 doesn’t seem to offer much over PL 6, for me personally.
Stenis
(Sten-Åke Sändh (Sony, Win 11, PL 6, CO 16, PM Plus 6, XnView))
7
The backside of an approach like that is that this incompetent first line of support might miss to understand when to act on important info to the developers. If I compare the support and support response from DXO with for example Camera Bits (PhotoMechanic) that is a true support star and even the freeware of XnView I can see that for example Camera Bits sends out new versions often three four times a year with corrections and fixes and even new features. The same goes for XnView. What has happened with DXO? Well a few new versions with support for some cameras and lenses I don´t even own. Nothing that fixes pretty severe and irritating issues with Local Adjustments for example.
To be fair, the tool that they ask you to use collects log information.
This gives them the details of the software that is being run and also any messages that the software might be output that connect to the problem.
That said, the usual tech support equivalent of “have you tried turning it off and then on-again” as a first response can be a little frustrating sometimes. But once past this they are actually quite helpful and informative – although keep in mind that the tech support contact is not the dev team themselves.
For example, I have two bugs reported, one of which is clearly going to be fixed shortly (a crashing bug with an easy workaround in software), the other of which I have no idea what is or is not happening (a problem in the rendering pipeline which might be very non-trivial to address and which is probably specific to only one minority camera system).
I have not had a particularly good experience with the support so far (German). Every time “it’s my fault” or “it’s designed that way” or if you don’t want to admit the error - “will be put on a feature list for later versions”
I just try to get by without the support. It’s one of the reasons why DxO will never be my favorite RAW developer.
To be fair, DxO Tech Support hired a guy who has been difficult to work with.
I clearly wrote out and illustrated the steps to reproduce the problem.
First, he wrote back and told me to uninstall and reinstall the software. I did. Problem still there.
Then, he wrote back and told me to download and run some diagnostic program, while making the failure occur. I did. Problem still there.
Third, he wrote back and said that he had reproduced the problem, but that it does not exist in PhotoLab 7, so I should upgrade or try the 30 day free trial. So I downloaded the free trial and… yeah, he was wrong. He clearly did not attempt to reproduce the problem because the bug is still there.
So I sent him the output showing the problem and asked him to fill out a bug report so that maybe Engineering can fix it in PhotoLab 8.
I am certain of two things:
He will write back and tell me that he filled out the bug report;
He definitely, positively did not fill out a bug report
What you wrote might seem fair to you in the moment of frustration, but it isn’t fair in any objective sense. You had a bad experience with this support person, but to say he deliberately misled you and will not do his job in the future is defamatory. For some reason, you’re also assuming that the problem won’t be fixed in PL6 or PL7. If it’s a bug, DxO will very likely patch the existing and previous version of the software until end-of-support-life.
A possible (hypothetical) reason why Gee couldn’t reproduce the bug in PL7 is that he’s using an unreleased build that contains upcoming bug fixes. Hopefully that’s the reason, in which case he simply made a mistake.
No. Sorry.
First off, this guy’s instant reaction to ANY bug reported is, “Did you uninstall and reinstall the software?” i.e., “Ignore the customer and copy/paste”
Second, after I run through his hoops, he puts up more hoops. “Run the crash reporter!” But the software didn’t crash. Another copy/paste.
The guy gets a support email and uses copy/paste to dispatch it as fast as he can, and hopes it will go away so he can tell his boss that he’s handled more support emails than anyone… which is really easy to do if you ignore everything the customer says and you just zap out a copy/paste response, right?
The support rep should have read what I wrote, ask any needed questions, try to reproduce the bug, and then report the bug to Engineering? As in, he needs to do his job and stop passing off busy work to the customer.
I completely agree with this. But what is his job? DxO is making changes as an organization that aren’t good for customers. Instead of DxO working for its customers, DxO is making its customers work for them.
I’ve posted here about my experiences with Nik support, which included interactions with the support manager and the PO: they are the same and worse. The responses I got showed that not a word I wrote was read and considered. It was all generic procedure, and nothing asked of me pertained to my actual problems. Questions I asked weren’t answered. No attempt was ever made to reproduce the problems I reported, which were very easy to demonstrate. And after more than four years of trying, the problems still aren’t fixed. If this is bleeding into PhotoLab support, it isn’t because of one individual.
Thank you for your feedback and for sharing your experiences. We acknowledge the frustrations expressed in this thread and are committed to improving our support services.
Regarding Marshall’s comments, we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused by our support process. The agent who tried to help you is a new member of our team (with only 10 days of experience at DxO). There is a beginning to everything and no one is perfect!
We must maintain a respectful environment, and thus, we will be taking action against any inappropriate language used in this forum. For example, calling one of our agents a “major jerk” is unacceptable.
Thank you for your understanding and patience.
Best regards,
P.S: What Marshall calls the Crash Reporting Tool is a diagnostic script that collects a range of information about your system. Not all of the data contained therein is always needed, but it saves us from asking for various information several times as part of the problem analysis, which is why we often ask for this additional information first.
Dear Fabrice, thank you very much for your comment.
However, the focus here is only on one member of the team. All understandable arguments, which I don’t think anyone is questioning. However, if you also read the other posts, it seems that this is not just an isolated incident caused by an inexperienced support employee. And, as I have now found out, sometimes support gets personal too.
I can only confirm how some people here react to this or avoid support in the meantime.
It would be nice if DXO had some kind of arbitration board that you could turn to if things don’t work out at all with support.
Thats in effect what used to be here when there was regular staff participation
As I know from twice there taking up and resolving problems support had failed to deal with.
Dear Fabrice,
I edited my comment about your tech support team member.
I re-submitted my bug report. I received a response. This response again asked me to run the DxO Diagnostics app (at least I wasn’t asked to uninstall and reinstall again). So I ran the DxO Diagnostics app and sent back the data.
But, really, the tech support person just needs to file a bug report. There’s nothing for tech support to fix; there’s just a bug in your software which makes it impossible to apply a watermark and also downscale (resize) an image on Export. I can do one or the other, but not both, that’s all.
If I apply a watermark and output at full resolution, I can downscale using external software, such as Photoshop, and it works fine. The only problem is that this is more time-consuming than just outputting a watermarked image with downscaling at the same time.
It would be even better if PhotoLab allowed a text watermark with a drop shadow, because when you have bright areas in the corner, the watermark does not appear. So sometimes, I need to output without a watermark and manually create a drop shadow watermark using a brush in Photoshop.
@Fabrice I agree that resorting to name calling is unacceptable and it is about as useful as asking the customer to de-install and re-install the software, which should be accompanied by appropriate guidance about backing up databases, the fact that any edits done with the new release do not have backwards compatible DOPs/'database etc.!
The classic cliché when “mocking” IT support is the “have you turned it off and back on again” sketch, which can indeed get the user back working again but may fail to recognise the potential “tip of the ice-berg”.
With issues like the one reported it is important not to eradicate the issue and lose the opportunity to gain an insight into a bug, be it transient or persistent as this one appears to be.
If the uninstall/re-install recommendation is on the support script please remove it or at least downgrade it from the first item on the list!
Front line support should be amongst the best not simply “canon fodder” and need to be able to get to the heart of the issue and not just repeat some script verbatim.
Use the newbies to go “play” with the software and attempt to reproduce some of the problems reported so that they can gain an insight and then move them to front line support.
The adage that “the customer is always right (until proven wrong)” should be the mantra of all support personnel and with DxO users it is essential or you will find more topics like this one cropping up.
I believe that the downloaded tools may be of value in this case but would suggest that it should be accompanied by a request to activate appropriate logging then reproduce the problem and then run the software to extract the logs that (hopefully) have captured additional data to aid further diagnostics.
@Fabrice-B this is not the first complaint about “lack lustre” responses from DxO support in the forum, lets hope that it is the last we see here and is replaced with topics that detail the problem experienced but either say nothing bad about DxO support or praise the support given, while complaining about the nature of the “bug”/“feature”, of course.