An open letter to FQ

[esllou]

To Terra/Bob/Whoever,

I've been with FutureQuest for twenty and a half years. The first 18 years were great, really great, but the last 2-3 have been arduous to say the least.

A customer actually said to me this week "I had guessed your business suffered during Covid because I've noticed a lot more issues with your website."

I want to know what the future holds. I mentioned the phrase 'managed decline' in the outage thread this week. Is that the plan? Others have mentioned that FQ's behaviour is coming across as actually cowardly. You know you don't have the resources/staff/money to see out the next five years, so you've decided to squeeze every last drop out of your customers while the hardware is driven into the ground. That is how it actually looks from our perspective. Is that the case?

I have a MQS here at FQ which will be up for renewal next summer and I'm trying to work out why I would ever consider renewing. Why should I stay? Is there any reason to believe the service/support standard will go up?

So can we get a straight answer to this one question?

Is FQ planning to close down. Are there concrete plans to do this?

[Wrightwood]

I also want to know what the future holds.

[Hotdog]

The previous user has posted a reasonable question. I have been a FutureQuest customer only a few years with plans to add more sites. I am wondering if remaining here is the best option. Outages are bad, sure, but lack of communication and having to prod FutureQuest for simple things like PHP upgrades is troublesome.

Gathering from what FutureQuest tells us when trouble strikes, it seems like they have a cluster of unattended servers. Some type of remote sensing alerts an offsite location to a problem then someone is sent to investigate. That person becomes involved in troubleshooting and fixing and there is no one left to send any notices to customers. When the problem is resolved the troubleshooter/fixer may, out of kindness, make a minimal posting (which is appreciated). Afterward things go back to the way they were until lightning strikes again.

This description may not be accurate but it is what we see from our side of an overgrown fence. I like FutureQuest. I liked my dog, too, but he died.

[Wrightwood]

Please respond FQ