For once, a helpful response

Anyone who has used one of these computer things is aware that suppliers of software, not mentioning any names, are generally arrogant, incompetent, avaricious, and contemptuous of their customers; to excoriate* them publicly is always a pleasure as well as a duty. Encountering a modicum of courtesy and efficiency in dealings with one of them is therefore an experience worth recording:
A program which I had been using happily for eighteen months suddenly stopped working, possibly due to the excessive zeal of Data Execution Prevention or some other arcane Windows function. Since I am advanced in years I knew I did not have enough time left to get some help from Microsoft**, so without much hope I emailed the manufacturers of the program.

Within twenty-four hours the problem had been solved by three exchanges of emails, the final one from them being a thankyou to me for thanking them.

So take a bow the manufacturers of Pivot Pro®. (I would have said fair do’s for them, but I have realised that this phrase raises a question which I must take up with the publishers of the Oxford English Dictionary, and I shall report on this in a later post.)

[*The sole purpose of this uninteresting post, of course, was to enable me to fulfil a long-standing ambition to use the word excoriate.]

[**Note: The name Microsoft and lots and lots of other words (though not excoriate) belong entirely to the Microsoft Corporation and are registered, copyrighted, etc., in the US and lots of other places. Misusers will be prosecuted with the utmost rigour of the law and may God have mercy on your soul. This note is ©Microsoft Corporation®.]