Shitty Computer Techs Part 1

Sorry for lack of updates lately. This post would be partially why.

Most of you know, I "work" as an independent contractor for a company here in town. I'm contracted out through my computer repair business that I've been running for the past 10ish years. Over the years, I've built up a clientele that's generally sustained me during my best and worst periods as a business owner.

A few of my clients happen to be franchise owners all working under a nationwide network of insurance repair/restoration specialists. Basically, the company you pay insurance to, contracts out companies like these to do the work. Each of these insurance companies generally require estimates to be written in a piece of software called Xactimate.

Most people will sing the praises of said software. It does what it's supposed to for the end user.

For the techs installing it and, to an extent, supporting it, not so much.

Xactware is the publisher of Xactimate. My first install of Xactimate came back in 2001. That install was easy since this franchise hadn't used it at all and we didn't have to worry about data. Pretty much every update since has sucked major shit.

And not just major shit.

Shit through a coffee straw for at least 10 hours a day.

This is further compounded by their approach to technical support. Before I get into that though, there's more to explain.

Basically, the Xactimate software operates in profiles. Each profile is basically the insurance companies the particular business wants to deal with. State Farm, for example, has their own set of price lists to build estimates with along with a number of other guidelines. All of that is different for someone like Allstate or USAA or Metlife.

The single biggest issue is that when one insurance company starts accepting the standard for a particular version of Xactimate, then the business itself has to carry licenses for multiple versions of Xactimate until the rest of the insurance carriers catch up. This costs extra $$ each month to the tune of at least $50 per user license you want to "upgrade" to a multi-license.

Nevermind the fact the Xactware techs could just make some goddamn software that's backwards compatible. Or at the very least, give them the option to "Save As..." in an earlier version's format. Nope...probably affects their bottom line way too much.

There's also fault with the insurance companies mandating X version of Xactimate or we won't do business with you. Pretty much every other business model I deal with will accept information at least 3 versions old. Quickbooks comes to mind with their internet banking/support/end of life model. You got a version over 3 years old, sorry, no support for you. To me that's fair enough. To top it all off, it's not even a complete number change for versions. Quickbooks at least goes by year for example. Quickbooks 2008, 2009, 2010, etc. Xactimate? 25.0, 25.1, 25.4, 25.5, 27.0... and NONE of them are backwards compatible. So if State Farm says "25.5 only!", it doesn't matter if you're on 25.1 or 25.4, you have to upgrade if you want State Farm reps to do business with you.

That, my friends, is complete and utter bullshit.

So anyway, back to the Xactimate portion of this story. When they release a new version, I cringe. It's never just a simple upgrade. There's always something more complicated involved. Usually I have to uninstall a version that won't be used anymore or I have to uninstall the client software completely and reinstall it.

The version I installed for my customers in late May/early June was version 27.0. Oddly enough, the install went smoother than I had expected. Shortly after the install though was when the problems started to surface. Across all 3 of these franchises and one completely separate insurance repair business that uses said software, they were having issues with "disappearing text".

..ok.

The first I heard of it was when the owner of the franchise in Elizabethtown called me and told me about it. She was irritated that they were having to save their progress essentially every minute or two in order to avoid losing work. She had already done what I had trained her to do prior to calling me. She had spoken with the Xactware reps to see if this was a common issue. The Xactware reps told her:

"It's a Keyboard/Mouse driver issue."

She says that to me and, I admittedly gave it some thought as long as it was an isolated incident. While researching it further, I got it out of her that it was happening on 6 of her other workstations.

The local franchise had it happening on 2 of their workstations.

The Owensboro franchise had it happening on 1 of theirs.

The independent company out of Morgantown had it happening on 1 of his.

So quick math:

10 workstations having this problem across a 4 city area.
7 different sets of keyboards and mice across 2 different interfaces (PS2 and USB).
A generic Keyboard/Mouse driver that hasn't changed in at least a decade.

...and the Xactware rep stood by his Keyboard/Mouse driver issue claim.

So I jumped through his hoops and some of my own. I tested out every possibility from a malware infection, to uninstalling/reinstalling everything completely from one of the smaller franchises to even all out wiping a workstation exhibiting the symptoms and reloading everything, including Windows, from scratch to no avail.

Now I'm convinced it's a bug in the software or some sort of simple setting. After getting nowhere with the Xactware reps, I pretty much just told the franchise owners to just save frequently and wait for the next patch and that if it got too maddening, keep hounding Xactware about it until they fix it.

This brings us to earlier this month. Version 27.1 is now out. During the course of any upgrade, I'll get online with a rep and ask for shit to look out for. Am I going to have to uninstall a previous version? Will they need to activate their license key for the new version? Will we need to install a "D" (for dual license) version of the previous one in case some insurance companies aren't up to the latest version yet? The answers to those questions were No, Yes, No respectively. He even said "this is just a service pack, not a complete upgrade".

I also brought up the disappearing text issue again and my confidence in their support staff dropped further when he sent me a link to a support bulletin that had nothing to do with text disappearing. Matter of fact, it didn't even use the words "text" or "disappearing". It was related to a database issue where estimates would get their names changed.

So I pretty much rescinded to the fact that I was in for a long day. I did the backup before the upgrade and started it. The initial part went smoothly, converting all of their data over to the new version, etc. The subsequent workstation upgrades sucked. The installer kept giving me an error at the point where you select which version to install (27.1...). The error?

"No version selected."

...there's a green check next to 27.1.

"No version selected."

...gotta be fucking kidding me.

So back to the Xactware reps I go. His response?

"You need to rename the Xactimate27 folder located in the Application Data and Program Files directories to something like "Xactimate27Old".

Ok really? WTF does that actually have to do with an installer not being able to recognize a f***ing checkbox?

I put him on "hold" while I followed his instructions. Not believing a damn word of them, I RDP'd into another workstation to test my own theory out while doing his instructions on the actual workstation I was at.

Renaming Directories? Fail. Same error.
Uninstalling/Reinstalling? Win.

Despite seeing this with my own eyes, the Xactware rep said it wasn't necessary to do that. I pretty much cut him off after that and just went about the task I was assigned. The installations on the rest of the computers went smoothly and just when I thought I was going to get out of there relatively quick...

"HEY THERE'S A NEW BLACKBERRY APP I WANT YOU TO SET UP BEFORE YOU GO!"

Ugh...

So I go look at this app. This app looks useful and time saving for writing estimates. Unfortunately, they have to do the following to get it to work:

1. Set up a local install of Xactimate 27.1 on a dedicated machine.
2. Buy an entirely new license key. Note: This is not the same as a client access license to even access the data. This is just the key to install the software and identify your account on the Xactware servers.
3. Buy/modify an existing license.

Ugh^10.

Mostly because I knew explaining this to her was going to be an entirely pointless endeavor, but she'd hound me for the answers to "Why?" anyway.

Although I do have to say it was rather entertaining watching the look on her face when she realized her laptop was going to end up being the guinea pig for this. So...

...I uninstalled the network versions of Xactimate off said laptop. Then as I'm getting ready to install the version she needs to sync up with the app, I start getting people asking why they can't get into Xactimate. I go to a workstation and try to open the software.

"Unable to connect. The database 'xm8_shared' doesn't exist."

...oh fuck/shit/piss/goddammit?