Post by OlavOne thing is for sure, Bob Zale can and will never change his mind, and will
never ever admit he has misjudged whatever situation. He is complete unable
to listen to what other have to say.
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Not exactly true.
He did once that I know of.
A few years back I was looking for something to upgrade to from
QBX/PDS 7.1 & DOS, so I bought PBCC V2. I didn't have a credit card at
the time, and was living in Asia, so I got my friend to buy it on his
card and I paid him for it. Then I registered with PB in my own name,
and received email newsletters, addressed to me, for a year or 2. I
seem to remember them even sending some real paper ones back then, did
they not?
I never did much with PB as I was doing different work at the time,
and the DOS systems still did the work okay for me. But I wanted to
learn Windows programming.
Then later PB released V3, so I decided to get the newer features. I
had my own credit card then, so I tried to use it to purchase the
upgrade. When asked if I wanted the "new" manual also, I informed them
that their first manual offered with V2 at $30, was such a useless
piece of work, that I would forgo the "opportunity" this time.
I don't know if it was my professional opinion about their manual,
conveyed in what I thought was quite a humorous, satirical way at the
time, or the fact that they just did not believe me when I explained
for a second time the original purchase arrangements.
Something ticked them off, and I got a total runaround on my credit
card number. They kept insisting I had not provided all the right
digits, which was a load of baloney.
This nonsense escalated through all the usual silly rhetoric - stomped
feet, spilled milk, etc. - but I just carried on with my calm,
reasoned explanations here on usenet, until finally a light blinked on
in somebody's brain.
"Bob Zale" got involved, gave me some more silliness for a day or so,
then realized I was right, and backed down.
He switched to private email, sent his apologies, and then surprised
the life out of me by giving me the upgrade free of charge!
I thought - "Okay - he has some rogue employees that he wants to keep
employed for some really strange reason, but wants to make good on the
bad treatment they gave me - a customer - so he spotted me an
upgrade."
That's cool.
A funny thing happened along the way.
In sorting out the crap that had gone on initially, I purposely posted
here the actual true correct credit card number as a part of the email
evidence proving my story. The reason I know he had received it
correctly right in the beginning, was that he then gave me an "Oh my
God" - "you've just posted your real credit card number on an open
forum! You had better cancel it immediately."
I just gave him a "Duh, okay!", and what I didn't tell him that as
soon as the boneheads in his order department had started screwing me
around on the number a few days before, I had IMMEDIATELY cancelled
the card/number - days before I posted it, hahaha! Their attitude and
treatment of my upgrade purchase attempt had been so far off the
normal practice of business that I just didn't trust them with it at
all!
Anyway, my point is, that he admitted his mistake and took action to
make up for it.
However, the incident left a sour taste in my mouth, and since I was
getting out of programming and into other things, I decided not stake
my career on being able to maintain any reasonable relationship with
PB.
I sometimes wonder how things would have progressed in my life had I
not gone this way, but PB never did come up with an IDE that had half
the debugging utility of QBX anyway, so it became largely irrelevant
to my life.
I must be still interested in PB - I still read this stuff posted
here. One good thing that has come out of this recent nonsense is that
I have downloaded and am looking at Thinbasic, when I have time.
By the way, Happy Trails is NOT my real name, hahahahaha!