In reality I haven't gotten to test the fix for the bug I reported, but for the purposes of discussing my thoughts on support I'll assume it is. I was asked by UncleDave what conclusions I would draw from the experience. Since I'm supposed to represent Nero customers that's a fair question.

As to my overall support experience, I'll have to find a reason to contact support once Nero 8's release issues are worked out. I don't expect to wait 7 days to get the first human response from support. 24-48 hours should be ample time to at least take a quick look at my support request and send out a pretty much cut and paste message directing me to their support info tool with instructions for using it and getting the results back to them. I've spent years in tech support, and I've been in some bad support situations. The one thing I can guarantee will drive away customers is giving them the impression you've forgotten about them.  

Ultimately the role of tech support comes down to customer service. Just fixing a problem isn't enough. When you're done interacting with a customer they should be happy with their experience. They should feel like you did them a service, rather than like you finally got around to answering them.   Since the problem I was waiting to get support for was only an inconvenience, and didn't keep my from any of my day to day activities the time wasn't an issue for me. However, I don't know that I would feel the same way if I were Joe 6 Pack and this was my first experience with Nero support.

Once I got support it was top notch. The tech was able to reproduce the problem and get it in the hands of the developers quickly. I'm sure the fix was something simple, so I'm not surprised that they've apparently gotten it coded and scheduled for the next update. If I had been contacted by support within 24-48 hours of submitting the web request I would rate this as excellent support. Considering the wait I can't rate it better than fair. If this were something time sensitive (say within a week) it wouldn't have been good enough. You'll never get better than a fair rating from me with a 1 week turnaround time. Not if you had Charles Babbage himself answering emails.

I was left with one issue that I haven't even been able to reproduce since reporting it, so I don't expect support to be able to find it either. I'll have to see if I can find a combination of conditions that reliably reproduces my Nero Digital AVC playback problem (player crash) and submit a new support request. At least I'll have another chance to check out Nero's support response time.

Back to the original question. I suppose if I were giving Nero a grade for my support experience it would be a C. As I said, you can't do any better than fair with a 1 week response time.  

Rich Fiscus