[inopinatus]

I think this is a terrible attitude. I will never implement it in my own support model. People shouldn't have to pay me in order to report a bug in my system. Arguably I should pay them, because one report is the tip of an iceberg of silent affected customers.

More often than not, what most people want is simply an acknowledgement. They're not seeking a bug bounty. And definitely not the brush-off you just gave the GP: when someone's house is on fire, you don't demand prepayment for the water.

[jjjjoe]

Cloud 1:many (community) Support here.

You absolutely do not have to pay us to report a bug, period. The same day this bug was filed, one of my colleagues ([e-mail]) jumped on the report and started asking questions to determine what was happening.

It seems to me that the GP's complaint is that this process was too slow: too much back-and-forth, too little dedicated attention to get the problem figured out immediately. That's a frustration which is easy to understand.

The point about support contracts was most likely intended to emphasize that if your livelihood depends on a service, you should have an agreement in place that guarantees you can wake up an engineer on the weekend.

[Bhullnatik]

You don't demand prepayment for the water, you already got it (through taxes).

[pyvpx]

no, when your house is on fire the property-tax funded fire department comes and attempts to put it out.

the "free tier" of municipal services is actually just a form of socialism!! eek!

[lazylizard]

adam smith. tragedy of the commons. so we pool our resources together and hire a contractor to handle the commons for us.