THERE IS NOW NO AUSTRALIAN BASED SALES OR SUPPORT AVAILABLE FOR CHIEF ARCHITECT SOFTWARE PRODUCTS..

WHY IS THAT YOU ASK?.. READ ON..

Firstly, at Chief Australia we'd like to take this opportunity to say a BIG 'thank you' all of our Chief Architect customers that we have had the pleasure of supporting during the last thirteen years.

Chief Architect Inc's USA short sighted management has made the decision that in an effort to support all Chief Architect users 'more efficiently' (?) they will totally eliminate the middle men.. i.e. their remaining commercial Chief Architect dealers acoss the world, before the end of the year.. and have started the ball rolling by terminating the contracts of Gordon McDermott and his dedicated team at BayCAD in New Zealand.. and of course ourselves here at Chief Australia.

May we however suggest that you read between the lines, and instead of the words 'more efficently' substitute.. 'now we'll be able to have ALL of the income from sales and support internationally.. not just the major portion of it'.

Chief Australia (formerly Effective Business Solutions) has been the Australian face of Chief Architect software for more than thirteen years.. dedicated to ensuring that our Australian users got the support and the information that they needed when they needed it.. not when someone in a one horse town on the other side of the world thought that they should be able to have it. In an effort to add further value for our customers we also created lots and lots of local materials content which we include with the software free of charge, so that you could ensure that your presentation models had the local 'look and feel' of Australian homes that your own clients were familiar with. not just the very American content that dominates so many of the competing products.

When we first introduced Chief Architect's software products to Australia in 1996 there were approximately fifteen commercial dealers across the globe, all independant businesses owned and run by men and women with a passion for the the potential of the software, and dedicated to seeing that the building and design professionals in their own corner of the world knew about this great software.

But the total wipeout being experienced in the USA's new home building market appears to be forcing Chief Architect's management to look at maximising their own cashflow from every possible source in order to remain viable.. but even at the expense of their most loyal dealer base. Only an American company could stoop this low in an effort to save their own skins.

From a personal point of view.. we have spent thirteen years building up this business, and dedicated it almost exclusively to the sale and support of Chief Architect software. It has now just been totally destroyed by Chief Architect Inc with only 60 days notice.. notice initally delivered by email no less! So now we're all unemployed!

They could have come to us and said 'look.. this is the direction that we feel that we have to head in.. and unfortunately there will be no place in our future for dealers.. so we'll give you twelve months to restructure your business and withdraw from selling Chief'. We could have probably worked with a scenario like that and been able to rebuild our business around another product that would still allow us the financial security to offer Chief support to our existing users.. but no.. they wouldn't think of something like that.. it would be too moral!

Interestingly, there has been no contact with us at all from Greg Wells, the President of Chief Architect.. not a quick phone call offering a word of thanks, no golden handshake (God forbid).. or even so much a letter of appreciation for our years of hard work in establishing and building Chief Architect's user base here in Australia.. just a single sentence in an email that they sent out to our customers.

So on behalf of our loyal Australian users we'd just like to say..

Thanks for nothing Chief Architect!

The world at large seems to be moving relentlessly towards the faceless corporation where cost efficiency is king and a human face is nowhere to be found.. computerised phone answering, electonic software delivery.. and now it would seem, predominantly software support by email!

As I write the time is 8.00am here in Perth and 10.00am on Australia's East coast.. but it's 5.00pm at Chief Architect's head office in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, USA.. and everybody there has just closed up shop for the day and gone home! That's how much they appear to care about supporting Chief users outside the USA!

Scott Harris, VP of Sales & Marketing at Chief Archiect Inc has said in response to a large number of emails directed to him by many of our concerned customers that.. "As for support, you can call us in the evening or morning. Our time zone does overlap some – we're here from 6:00am to 5:00pm (that's 11:00pm to 10:00am Melbourne and Sydney time). If calling during those times is difficult, we do offer online training videos, chief talk, and our online support center that can you get you an answer quickly and thoroughly".

So Australian Chief Architect users now won't be able to reach anybody at Chief Architect Inc's customer support area after late morning in our business day at all!

Too bad if you strike a problem with a job, and you have to meet a deadline to present it to your client that same afternoon.. who are you going to call now

Chief Architect is not a rinky dink drawing software package that can be supported from another country like so many of the cheaper consumer software products.. this is professional design and drafting software; and when design and building professionals are investing almost $4,000 inc GST for a licence, they have the right to expect that it will be supported locally... period!

On the other hand you can forget about it for the evening and just go into the office early the following morning and then phone.. or you could go and log into the online support centre.. where you register a support request and describe your problem in writing. This is all well and good.. but  has it's limitations because you as a Chief Architect user may not have sufficent knowledge of computers or of the functionality of your Chief software to describe the problem effectively.. and then you have to hope that the support person in the USA who is responding to your email question understands what the heck you are talking about. They may know how to support the software but they don't know about how we build our homes in this country.

WE'RE SORRY TO HAVE TO SAY THIS TO A SO CALLED PROFESSIONAL SOFTWARE DEVELOPER LIKE CHIEF ARCHITECT INC. BUT IN THIS 21ST CENTURY GLOBAL WORLD THIS IS A CLASSIC EXAMPLE OF HOW NOT TO RUN AN INTERNATIONAL SOFTWARE BUSINESS.

IF YOU ARE BASED IN AUSTRALIA AND LOOKING TO PURCHASE PROFESSIONAL CAD SOFTWARE, AND HAVING LOCALLY BASED AND KNOWLEGABLE SUPPORT PEOPLE THAT WILL BE THERE WHEN YOU NEED THEM IS AN IMPORTANT PART OF YOUR SOFTWARE CHOICE.. THEN UNFORTUNATELY WE NOW SUGGEST THAT YOU'LL HAVE TO LOOK ELSEWHERE 'CAUSE..

ELVIS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING!