Hello. Email contact and response has always been problematic historically for me. It would be better to call Sarah to ask Steve, or to call Steve.

If its any help, Steve is very good on the phone and will take time to answer your questions and does not rush you.  I'm relatively new to the hobby and I never felt intimidated talking with him.

He will not rush you on the phone. He will take as much time as you need to answer your questions. A speaker cutoff switch should be no problem.

concur with all previous statements, brh it's worth it and I totally understand where you are coming from.  It's what makes the DECWARE experience  original and truly cool.

JD

First of all, thank you for posting this!  You'll see why in a minute.

Despite some peoples continual problems getting through to us by e-mail, I can assure you this is not the common denominator here.  A much larger effort is made to answer all e-mails than one would know from reading this forum.

If you don't get a reply in 3 or 4 days then most likely it was nabbed by one of our spam filters.  We get so many e-mails (having been online since 1996) that our spam defenses have to start at the server level and then finish on each computer.

Here is our spam filter:



That's the spam I pay big money each month not to see.  Then for each mail box we have our own spam filter.  Mine currently contains 872.  I check it any time someone says I didn't respond to an e-mail and on occasion I find that was the cause.  Most of the time however, I think it gets blocked at the server level, and I don't have time to scan 5700 e-mails every week to see who's in there.

My routine is simple.  I check my e-mail every time I sit down in front of my computer. I read everything as it comes in.  This happens on average 12 times a day and 4 or 5 times on weekends.

If the e-mail is short, and I can answer it without research, I just answer it when I read it.  Otherwise I flag it so I can come back to it.  I try desperately to answer all flagged e-mails within 3 days.

Here is my inbox.  There is presently some 5000 e-mails in there.   In addition I have 41 folders containing subject specific e-mail going back for the last 5 years.  There are probably tens of thousands of e-mails there.





Here is my sent folder full of e-mails that I have sent as replies to e-mail I have gotten:



Answering an e-mail is not like checking multiple choice answers on a test.  More like essay questions.  No, exactly like essay questions.  

The over 7000 e-mails I have personally answered do not include the rest of my entire staff.  Sarah and DeVon can boast twice these numbers.

Besides everything we have to do, I think this shows real effort.  I could hire people to waste your time answering e-mails with things like:  Let me check with Steve and get back to you...  but it would truly be a waste of time.

BOTTOM LINE:  If you don't get a reply and don't want to call (I myself am like that when it comes to calling other companies) then just re-send it once or twice.  If that doesn't do it, try sending with a different e-mail address.  If that doesn't work, then you have my apologies and I can recommend the fine people in this forum as being able to answer a large amount of questions.  I check this forum as time allows, sometimes daily, sometimes weekly.

Thanks!

Steve

I had no idea how complicated the communications are for such a small company. I myself have never had a problem.

Decware IS discussed elsewhere than on this forum.

Decware is a small business that is careful not to outgrow it's shoes and not be able to walk. Although they have sold internationally, they are an American company predominantly, not an international corporation yet.

It's unfortunate that you've had these communication problems. Over the years I've discovered that phone calls are the best way to reach them, and indeed Steve is much more accessible by phone than many other company owners. I can see that can be a problem with many miles and distances in between, but condemning Decware to the sort of status you seem to does not seem fair to me. Sorry they lost your potential business; best of luck!