Hi Houston,

>Pardon me for jumping in - but I think you have 'support' in the wrong context. The discussion (on this part of the thread) is revolving around support for custom written applications, in particular VFP applications.

Obviously, Microsoft wouldn't help on the business part of the application. But if a customer experiences an extreme slowdown, system crashes, etc. caused by your application, then a customer often contacts Microsofts first. They analyze the problem and contact you with their findings. This is quite a common issue when writing server applications, especially web server applications. If a COM component or ISAPI extension is badly written, the error appears to originate from IIS.

Also, in some companies there's a dedicated support department. Users of VFP application contact them, not the vendor of the VFP application. If the support department can't provide an answer, they pass the issue on to Microsoft, the software developer, etc. The end user is never in contact with the vendor in this case.

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Christof