The Weird Support System

Some of you may not be completely aware that earlier this year BIA transitioned from an open, Mantis based support system for bug/issue reporting by customers to an e-mail based support system. The reasons for this are not so apparent, the only thing I've heard from BIA's end is "it's better". The question is, better for who? The trouble with this new system, is reporting is not highly visible, take for example if I spotted a bug in the current version and reported it via e-mail, there's a chance that someone else has reported it as well, resulting in two separate cases, requiring two separate responses.

So how does this rate in the efficiency stakes? it doesn't. During the start of the year there was a lot of discussion among military customers that BIA support on the forums or via e-mail was pretty much non-existant. This continued until only a few months ago actually, and despite the advertised 24-48 hours for a reply, this is regularly not the case. In one instance, I reported a relatively minor issue on the 8th of May and didn't receive a valid response to the question until the 29th of July. So what do we blame it on? The Game After Ambush contract or the change over to the "better" support system?

Either way, questions aren't being answered, perhaps they're happy to let people do their job for them?

Jamie.