EXISTING CLIENT SUPPORT
(Effective 02/01/10. Subject to change at any time.)

Existing users are limited to 15 days of free technical support after the purchase of a Major Software Upgrade, which is an upgrade that a user buys (as opposed to free upgrades we often release).

In the past a large part of our client support requests were beyond what is "usual and customary" for a software provider. In the past we've handled those at no charge "well" or "poorly" (and everything in between), largely dependent upon our workload at the time. Lately our workload has been so enormous, we've been solidly on the "poor" side.

In the future we are committed to supporting
clients with "excellent" support at all times.

Because clients tend to use ULTRA very often and for a very long time compared to software industry norms, it is no longer feasible to provide free unlimited support. Click REASONS for more than you'd ever want to know about this issue.

  1. Do not expect 24 hour turnaround for FREE SUPPORT.
    Considering the size of our client base and current staff it is not currently realistic for us to make any promises in terms of how fast we can handle FREE SUPPORT requests. (Hopefully that will soon change as we see how the new policies affect our support workload.)

  2. If you require FAST TURNAROUND,
    indicate that you'd prefer PAID SUPPORT . PAID SUPPORT requests are are placed at top priority equal with supporting new clients in their first 30 days.

    We hope to be able to offer very fast turnarounds for PAID SUPPORT, far less than 24 hours and eventually real-time, 7 days per week.

After you Request FREE SUPPORT by any Method,
(E.g. Message from ULTRAFS.COM, Phone, etc)...

  1. PLEASE SET YOUR SPAM FILTERS TO ALLOW OUR EMAILS.
    In the past, having to resend over 50% of our outgoing emails severely degraded our ability to address Support Requests.

    All emails we send have...
    * the word 'ultra' somewhere in the "Subject"
    * either 'ultra' or 'uedev' somewhere in the "Reply-to" email field.

    Remember that your email can be filtered at three levels:
    * ISP such as Comcast.net
    * Email Provider such as AOL.com before delivery to your box.
    * Email application such as your Yahoo.com spam filters.    .

  2. Please don't check status of FREE SUPPORT requests for (3) business days.
    In the past, having to process repeat requests severely degraded our ability to address Support Requests.

    Our initial goal is to make this three day deadline in addressing requests and then improve upon it until we're able to handle most all within 24 hours. But we do not currently make any turnaround guarantees.

Support Requests that are EXCLUDED from
FREE SUPPORT and will only be Handled
via PAID SUPPORT.

In the past some of the support requests we've received and solved for clients are not considered the usual and customary responsibilities of an application software developer. Many of these have taken an unreasonable amount of time to be completed and have significantly disrupted our ability to support other clients.

Therefore, the following are excluded from all FREE SUPPORT (except for new users in their 30-day FREE SUPPORT periods at our discretion).

Any Request that Doesn't Contain a Valid Support Code (SC).

Your Support Code (SC) is available via ULTRA's HELP + ABOUT menu item. The SC contains information such as which version you're using that speeds up our ability to resolve issues. In the past, trying to resolve issues without this information has disrupted our ability to support clients.


Research into why a System
Generates Different Results in one
Version Compared to Another.

ULTRA has always been sold on an "as-is" basis and not guaranteed to be "error-free" per our license agreement.

Every piece of software on the planet contains bugs except maybe some military/NASA-spec code.

Having said that, very few of these types of requests have actually been software bugs in ULTRA. Once we get a system programmed we almost never change its code.

These situations are almost always due to one (or many) of:

  1. Different databases between the two versions.
  2. Different options set up for the systems.
  3. Slightly different processing methods of the floating point processors in two computers.
  4. Some type of bug fix or database repair in the newer version (rare).

In any case, we will not support old versions of ULTRA because any fix to an old version *is* the new version.

During our testing, we do extensive testing of new vs. old. While we can't test every possible case, after that testing phase, we can no longer research differences in versions. It is not reasonable for us to figure out every single possible result of every code change we make in new versions.

When we find bugs in ULTRA, we fix them, and test those fixes thoroughly. Therefore, in terms of an existing function or system, the newer version is ALWAYS more reliable than the older version.

On the other hand, if you believe there is a bug in our latest version and can describe why you've come to that conclusion WITHOUT a comparison to an old version, please feel free to report it via our BUG REPORT page. Our goal is to make ULTRA military-spec solid in terms of reliability.

Assistance for Clients who are Attempting
to Replicate ULTRA Systems in Other
Software such as an Excel Spreadsheet

We are interested in eliminating all bugs in our code. Any time we spend debugging your code impacts our ability to attain near perfection in ULTRA's code.

Any Problems with Installing on
a Second (or Multiple) Computer(s)

Any time a client purchases a new product or version of ULTRA, we will do whatever is necessary to get the program running and downloading data on ONE computer.

The fact that we generously allow ULTRA to be installed on multiple computers should not create extra support work for us and we'll no longer allow it. Resolving these multiple computer issues have severely degraded our ability to support clients and improve the ULTRA product.

We'll happily help you resolve problems with ULTRA on multiple computers but only via Paid Support.

Any Problems with ULTRA Caused by other Software.
(Including Windows and/or Software Upgrades)

In modern computing, Windows allows software applications to automatically install upgrades. Many of these upgrades affect other software applications (such as ULTRA), and their ability to operate .

The worst offenders are third party security applications such as Norton and McAfee. These products are designed to interfere with other software running on your computer. When they interrupt ULTRA's execution, even though ULTRA may generate an error message, it is not a bug in ULTRA. These security apps are mistakenly stopping ULTRA from performing its duties. This, (and Windows security) is the cause of 100% of data downloading problems that ULTRA users experience.

Software that automatically upgrades include:

  • Windows
  • Security software such as Norton and McAfee
  • Spyware and Viruses.

Basic computer engineering theory does not allow one piece of application software to have any affect upon another but Microsoft long abandoned that theory in their quest for power and profit. Therefore, any installation or change in the software listed above can affect ULTRA.

The symptom is usually that ULTRA was working fine one day and not working the next day. ULTRA may generate random error messages because security software often uses extreme measures to stop the execution of another application.

Because these auto-upgrades occur so often nowadays, it's impossible for us to be responsible for keeping ULTRA running on your computer.

All security software allows for "Exceptions" (like ultra32.exe) to be given "rights" (like to freely communicate with the Internet in both directions). But the methods for setting up these exceptions change so often there's no way we can keep up with them or resolve the effects upon ULTRA under FREE SUPPORT..

We'll be happy to help you resolve these issues but only via Paid Support.

Help with Computing Topics that
are Unrelated to the Operation
of the ULTRA program.

These include but are not limited to:

  • Copying files from one computer to another.
  • Modifying Windows Shortcuts.
  • Correcting corruption to ULTRA files cause by user computer errors such as accidentally deleting some of the ULTRA files.
  • General computer tutoring.

We'll be happy to help you resolve these issues but only via Paid Support.

Personal Instruction about the Advanced
Capabilities of ULTRA that are
Covered in ULTRA's Documentation.

If there are errors or ambiguous instruction in our documentation we'll be happy to repair those but they must be reported via our BUG REPORT page.

We'll be happy to offer you personal tutoring, but only via Paid Support.

Investment Advice of any kind

None of ULTRA's staff are registered or licensed investment advisors. While we are very active investors, our business is creating software tools to help investors make strategy decisions. ULTRA staff will not address any questions about what investment strategy clients should use beyond what is included in our product documentation and other documents that we write such as our newsletters.

We can consult and/or develop for you certain strategies that we may not offer to our entire clients base but only via our Paid Support.

ULTRA Financial Systems LLC
P.O. Box 3938, Breckenridge CO 80424
Phone: 970-453-4956
Fax: 970-453-2467

© 2010 ULTRA Financial Systems LLC.