JohnnyDean

No Customer Service in a Parallels Universe

Installed Windows Vista a while back with Boot Camp but I haven’t spent spent much time in it due to Parallels 2.x not being able to run Vista from the Boot Camp virtual. So, I was obviously excited when the Parallels crew announced version 3.0 which supports Vista via Boot Camp, as well as many other long-awaited features. Two upgrade purchases (on for each iMac) later I received the confirmation email which informed me the publisher would deliver my upgrades within forty-eight hours.

Seventy-two hours later I still had no upgrade instructions and the website, nor forums, made any mention of the upgrade process. Neither was upgrade functionality contained in the application itself. I found the full-version download (or so it seemed) but I was not about to take a chance ruining my current install and risk having to install Vista again, so I waited. Three days later I placed a support request with customer service via the web support form and promptly received an automatically generated email assuring me I would be contact within seventy-two hours.

Well, another three days cam and went… and then some. Finally, on June 11th, I became frustrated, downloaded the full version and began my install which worked perfectly. If there had been clear instructions this whole thing could have been avoided. To top it all off, nineteen days later, on June 29th, I received this blunt, two sentence reply:

Thank you for contacting Parallels Customer Service.

Download upgrade from our web site:
http://www.parallels.com/load/1

–
Best regards,
Catherine
Parallels Customer Service

Thank you!? Thank you is an insult after nineteen days. Sorry for the rant but this seems to be a common theme nowadays, a decent product, packaged well and followed up by a ridiculous lack of customer service.