Is Discrimination Against Trial Users Common?

AsherAtSignalDesign · November 26

I am currently a teams trial user. OnShape has generally been amazing, which has been a great relief moving from Fusion.

However, I have run into one major issue, and I'm curious if others have been treated similarly.

I reported a bug in the Featurescript IDE that was causing it to output errors that did not correspond to the state of the code it presented. I made clear from the start that it seemed to be an issue with how the web app was handling cache and that it seemed to be analyzing code from one state and presenting it from another state, resulting in errors not corresponding to the visible code (generally corresponding to a recent version instead). I was able to provide an example to reproduce this behavior. When working between multiple Featurescript studios and importing one into another, errors would occur if the names were changed in the imported studio; the importing studio would not always update correctly to correspond to the new names.

I was not, however, able to get the support agent to take me seriously. He insisted on treating the matter as me not understanding basic programming issues: that there was a duplicate method with the same name, and I simply didn't understand. He ignored that removing the single instance of the method resulted in a symbol not found error, that there was no duplicate symbol, and that I acknowledged the state he was seeing from his end might for some reason differ from that in my browser. I later realized that this may have been specific to Safari (no one told me that I should use Chrome until I happened to independently discover as much later), but he took no efforts to try to work through narrowing down the source of the problem. Instead, he gaslit me that I was not experiencing such a problem and told me I simply needed to learn how to program, that I should review basic lessons. When I politely asked to speak with his supervisor, as he was simply ignoring the issue, he suspended my access to support.

Is it common for OnShape to allow their support staff to act on personal grudges and retaliate like this?

I was told that there is no avenue for appeal because I am a trial user, and that the only way it would be considered is if I signed up for a full subscription. No one at OnShape has taken any effort to review the egregious behavior by their support agent.

Is this sort of discrimination against trial users common? Is it simply accepted fact that trial users are second class citizens?

Apart from this, OnShape has been absolutely amazing. But even Autodesk—who bases their business model on abusing the user—didn't treat me this badly. Is it just a fluke?

martin_kopplow · November 26

I don't know about your specific case, but I 've been a trial user for some time before I got a pro subscription and I got support for my tickets during that time.

EvanReese · November 26

I have many good things to say about the support team at Onshape, and I'm certain that if there are bugs, they want to know about it, but I have sometimes experienced a level of terseness that implied some possible overwhelm on their end. I always make it my goal to be as clear as possible with images and videos so they don't have to try to digest a wall of text, and of course, proceeding with an attitude of gratitude. In your case a 2 minute Loom video would be communicative and conclusive. And, of course Onshape is a business and can afford to throw more resources to more lucrative customers, which seems fair to me. I assume you agree in principle here, but feel that the "minimum level of support" that you experienced is too low for anyone no matter their customer status. I can't comment on your specific experience, but I'm always inclined to apply Hanlon's Razor.

Is Discrimination Against Trial Users Common?

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