by Shaun Nichols – 
Now the developer apologizes for customer support fiasco
A US ham radio software developer has admitted a support staffer disabled a customer’s copy of its application after he posted a negative review online.
The owners of HRD Software today told The Register they have since reinstated the user’s license, claiming the revenge move was made by an outside support staffer.
Here’s what happened: a bloke called Jim Giercyk in Greenville, South Carolina, US, downloaded and installed an update for his Ham Radio Deluxe application. Next, the program inexplicably stopped working, so Giercyk contacted HRD’s support team for help.
Then, according to a log of the conversation between Giercyk and the support agent, the country rock musician was told his copy had been disabled remotely in response to a negative online review he had posted in September.
HRD Software later said Giercyk’s license key had been blackballed, causing the software to close while starting up: the updated program would phone headquarters to check the key and discover the license had been revoked, forcing it to terminate.
“I called the support line and asked them to explain what they were doing, and they informed me that I was blacklisted and the file they directed me to download blocked the software on my computer from running,” Giercyk, aka N2SUB, told fellow hams in a forum post….READ FULL POST
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