Let me get this out of the way. I am a Real Estate Agent and I show houses. There, I said it. Now what’s this I’m complaining about?
iBox BTH
We use these lockboxes (the photo is of the older non-BT version of the lockbox) commonly on houses to give access to other agents and inspectors and appraisers access to the house. The problem comes with the Android software called eKey. With eKey software, we need to update it every day to so that it is capable of opening up houses. Then when we are opening up a lockbox, we enter a PIN on our cell phone, and it communicates to the lockbox via bluetooth and tells the box to unlock.
While the software is looking for and communicating with the lockbox, it chirps at about 1 per second. Then it sounds an alternating tone of sorts when it is done, alerting us that we can open the box. The problem is that after this process is done, it should stop chirping. The older versions of the software did just that, stop chirping so that we can enter a house without killing the app.
The second problem is that the first time we open a lockbox, the software doesn’t want to communicate to the lockbox via bluetooth. I have to cancel it and retry it a second time, and then it will work.
Supra Support
I decided to call into Supra technical support to ask about these 2 issues. When I mentioned the first issue, the lady on the technical support line asked if after I open the lockbox if I could kill the app. Sure, killing the app makes the problem go away. I told her that I shouldn’t have to kill the app every time I open a lockbox and that it is probably a bug in their software and they should log it so that they can get around to fixing the bug. It took a little arguing with her, but she agreed to log it as a bug.
Next I asked about connecting via bluetooth the first time the app is opened. She asked if my bluetooth was turned on before launching the app. I responded “yes.” She said there are other reports of this happening and the solution is turn off the bluetooth on your phone before launching the app. I told her that I shouldn’t have to turn off bluetooth to launch this program and it is a bug and she should log it so that it can get fixed. She rudely responded “Well you asked for a solution and I am giving you one!”
What kind of support representative tells someone that I (the end user) have to do 2 things to work-around problems with their software? I have been using this software for years, and the older versions had neither problem. I am not looking for something that I can do on my phone to work-around the problems. I called to let them know of problems and if there was a known setting that would change fix it, or to let them know to fix their software. I did not expect “take this pill to resolve your issue for this moment” and then keep taking pills every time I show houses.
I didn’t put in all the words spoken with her, as I was almost in a shouting match with her. She really thought she was trying to help by telling me to kill the app at every house I show, and to turn off the bluetooth. What if I use the bluetooth for other purposes such as a bluetooth earpiece? So you are telling me that I can’t use bluetooth for anything else if I want to use this app successfully? And that I have to kill it at every house?
What a load of crap! What happened to customer support? Listening to the customers? This is clearly a software issue.
