SUPPORT POLICY CHANGE REASONS

Our goal with this policy change is to create a Support Policy that
will allow ULTRA to remain viable as a supported product for
many decades. We aim to provide quality support for all clients,
that need it and not just for our advanced professional users.

• Making ULTRA compatible with Windows 7 ( which was a huge rewrite).
  
  
• Writing our planned improvements to ULTRA, which is a massive list.
  
  
• Pursuing new software product ideas, another massive list.
  

1. Clients tend to use ULTRA very often and for a very long time. Our usage is many times that of software industry norms. We have clients that have used ULTRA daily for 15+ years.
   
   
2. Our clients prefer to own cutting edge computers.
   Again, most software clients (especially in business applications) tend to stay with their computers for long periods of time due to replacement costs and the hassles of transferring files, reloading software, etc. However, our clients tend to move ULTRA to new computers very often and this multiplies support calls for us.
   
   
3. Dependency on ULTRA is very high compared to ULTRA's price.
   When clients are highly dependent upon a software product, the number of support calls rises dramatically. Because of Ultra's low price, just a few support calls from clients makes our sale of ULTRA to that client unprofitable.
   
   These days, support for low priced, no-monthly fee products has moved to either "none", or "so bad clients don't bother". Otherwise, the software developer will soon be out-of-business (like the hundreds we've seen in the investment arena over the years).
   
   We do not want to be forced to go down that road any further than we already have.
   
   
4. Clients tend to install ULTRA on multiple computers.
   This is legal per our license agreement as long as the registered client only is using all of those instances of ULTRA. But software installations have become increasing difficult and problematic due to the poor design of the Operating System (Windows), and the general degradation of computing integrity. Therefore, those multiple installs greatly multiply our support requests.
   
   
5. Reliability of Windows based computing has greatly degraded.
   Microsoft's pursued a path of power/profit over providing a powerful and reliable tool for the user.
   
   When ULTRA was first released, we could assume that most client computers were operating as designed.
   
   Nowadays, due to:
   * Viruses
   * Spyware
   * Hidden processing to assist advertisers learning user habits.
   * The security software required to combat all those threats.
   
   Very few computers operate correctly. Most computers limp along and barely perform the tasks which their users ask them to perform.
   
   
6. Auto-upgrades of Windows and Security software.
   Any software that runs on a client's computer and communicates with the Internet is considered a threat with which new versions of Windows, Norton, McAfee, etc, are designed to interfere. When they interfere with Ultra's execution, it appears as an ULTRA bug because they take aggressive steps to halt Ultra's ability to execute.
   
   When these auto-upgrades of Windows and security applications occur on client computers, we get flooded with support requests because they often interfere with Ultra's ability to execute especially during communication with the Internet while downloading data.
   
   
7. Background processing.
   Basic computer engineering theory suggests that the user controls the computer using the tools provided by the operating system (Windows).
   
   That theory has been completely abandoned by the industry, and it has been disastrous for computer users. Modern computers have an enormous amount of software operating without user initiation and/or permission. This greatly slows down what the users really want to do with their computers. But the worst part is that since nobody really knows about the secret code, it is poorly written so its bugs often interfere with other applications that were initiated by the user.
   
   Since the user doesn't know what's running in the background, the application they initiated (like ULTRA), gets blamed for bad results. This results in a large volume of support calls for ULTRA especially with users running advanced functions of ULTRA.
   
   
8. Our support calls are not "usual and customary".
   New users with "usual and customary" questions are few and far between. Generally, our support calls are from advanced users and require significant amounts of research to figure out.
   
   For example:
   Determining why a system is producing a set of results can require hours of work. Almost always ULTRA is operating correctly. But the complexity of the advanced features makes it appear to be in error.
   
   For example:
   Same-day vs. Next-day issues generate an enormous amount of user confusion which hopefully we'll be able to resolve with ULTRA 11.
   
   
9. An ULTRA user's support needs tend to increase with use.
   Because Ultra's topic (investment strategies) is complex, its advanced functions can be complex to operate and understand.
   
   Because of this, our more advanced users tend to need more support instead of needing less. This is not usual and customary for low-priced software applications.
   
   Frankly, we've not included many valuable (but complex) features in ULTRA because of the fear of having to support them.
   
   
10. New clients usually require very little support.
    But when they do need some help we want to be able to help them instead of being completely paralyzed by a backlog of support issues from existing clients who are used to getting unlimited free support and expect such fast turnaround that they bombard us with repeated requests all of which greatly slow our ability to support anyone.
    
    For new users, it's easy to give up on complex ideas and be forced back to investment mediocrity. Giving people a tool to avoid the "buy-and-hope" strategy that only enriches investment companies, is why we offered ULTRA as a commercial product in the first place.
    

Lastly, Consider this Analogy

All software contains bugs. When you are running Windows, bugs are occurring constantly. However, most software bugs don't have major consequences and largely go unreported and are never fixed

ULTRA is different. Most every feature of ULTRA ends with a results file. If an error occurrs during the processing, it's very obvious. It can also be spectacularly complex tracing down a bug in a 10 system Composite over 68 years that only occurs if certain things line up. (We worked on one bug for 3 years only to determine it was due to a hardware bug in the IBM Aptiva.)

This complexity also means that at least 90% of these "bug reports" end up not being bugs but are instead due to client confusion. Early in our history we didn't mind spending hours chasing down these tough bugs because we wanted the software clean of all bugs. But ULTRA has now been running in the field for 15+ years. Now we mostly spend hours determining there is no bug in the first place.

With our recently rewritten ULTRA we have automated testing that confirms that results match the old version of ULTRA so we won't go through the phase where we want complex bug reports to come in.

Back to Microsoft. If they had "results" from Windows beyond just obvious things like whether clicking an icon actually started a program, and it they offered unlimited tech support on a $350 product, they'd be bankrupted immediately by the flow of support requests.

Further consider that many of these ULTRA bugs are so complex that only the software designer can find them and be trusted to fix them. So in the Microsoft example, it would be the equivalent of calling a "high level executive" to fix a bug. (Good luck with that...)

Lastly, consider that some clients have millions of dollars riding on the output of a $350 piece of software.

All this adds up to an unprofitable business model. The only other option was to close the business and abandon the ULTRA software. Instead of choosing that option, our "high level executive" worked 1400 hours over 21 weeks (for negative income) to ensure that ULTRA will survive as a product.