Eudora Pro 4 By Qualcomm
Can Be Hazardous To Your Mailing List's Health!!

Open the Presenters address book.  Highlight the entry "MrSmith".  This shows Mr. Smith's e-mail as being  "MrSmith@aol.com".  Select "To:" and you SHOULD get a new message addressed to "MrSmith@aol.com", however, if there is a "MrSmith" in the Vendors address book with the e-mail "MrSmith@juno.com", it is THAT address which will appear on theoutgoing mail, NOT the one you selected (even if the Vendors address book is closed).  While this flaw is noticeable in individual mailings, it does not present itself in mass mailings until the damage is done.  This bug is further exacerbated by the fact that there is no way to alphabetize or reorder multiple address books.
We discovered this big cockroach of a bug when an individual requested that we change her address from her work to her home email address.  We moved her work address to our remove list, and added her home address to the Attendees list, but she kept getting our mailings at her work address.  Fortunately, she is a kind and patient woman, and did not complain to our provider that we were sending unwanted mail to her job.
When we finally found out what was wrong, we were devastated.  Getting these address books set up in Eudora Pro represented three solid weeks of effort with all of us tackling the project.  All our address books are now hopelessly mangled.  We have removed tons of addresses we THOUGHT had failed, only to find them valid after all.  We have to go back to square one to repair our lists.
When this situation became apparent, I went to the Eudora Pro homepage.  I thoroughly searched the site for some reference to this bug.  There was none.  There was an "update" (bug fix #1) which I downloaded and installed.  It didn't fix the problem, but it did cause the tool bar in our mailer to disappear.  At least how to restore the tool bar was explained on the Eudora site.   Finding nothing relating to this serious problem anywhere on Eudora's web site, I tried to contact Eudora Pro Tech Support.  90 days FREE technical support is included in the purchase of Eudora Pro. I e-mailed a detailed explanation of the problem to the tech support address.  I received an automated response which was the information that I had just read on the website.  I responded to that e-mail with another detailed explanation of the bug.  After waiting 2 days for a response and getting none, I decided to try calling Eudora to get our "FREE" tech support.  Tech support does not have a toll free number, it is a toll call, so the term "free" is relative.  On my first call, I was transferred to "registration", put on hold for 20 minutes, then finally registered.  This was particularly annoying do to the fact that I had already filed out and sent the annoying pop up registration that comes embedded deep in the bowels of the program just to make it go away.  After providing my name, address, phone number, hair color, shoe size, etc. to a person who only gave me her first name, I was finally transferred to the tech support division, where they promptly hung up on me without even answering the phone.  Needless to say, I was not a happy woman.  I decided not to call back right away because profanity over the telephone is a misdemeanor in the state of Virginia.
The next day, after 20 minutes of automated phone system antics, having to register AGAIN (they had no record of my life history they had chronicled the day before), all while I paid the toll charges of course, I was FINALLY connected to a person in tech support named "Steve".
I recounted our problem to Steve and he was not at all surprised by the difficulties we were having with Eudora Pro 4.  He explained that I was not the first person to complain about this bug, and that there was not anything much to be done about it until engineers released a "fix" (anybody else notice how computer users language is starting to sound more and more like a conversation between drug addicts?).  He suggested that we move all but the address book we were using into a different directory until we needed them, effectively limiting Eudora to a single address book.  Since this was the temporary fix I had already figured out for myself, the time and money I spent contacting tech support was totally wasted.  I asked Steve why Eudora did not warn customers about this serious problem on their website.  I asked Steve how Eudora could let people go on using multiple address books  (a major selling point of the program) when Eudora knew that doing so could result in disaster.  Steve had no answers, and suggested that I talk with someone in their corporate offices since he only fixed problems where the customer was being stupid, not the program (he did say this in a more polite fashion like "you should address this problem with our engineering department, they deal with issues where the program is actually at fault instead of the user).
I called the number Steve gave me and left another voice mail message that probable gleefully erased itself after I hung up.   If it didn't, it might as well have for all the good it did me, no one called back.
By this point I was thoroughly disgusted.  I decided to investigate Eudora, and the company that owns them, Qualcomm.  I wanted to know who was responsible for perpetrating this kind of scam on thousands of unsuspecting users.  I began by visiting their corporate website.
The first thing I noticed was that all 15 corporate officers profiled were men; white men.  Not a woman or a person of color among them.  Is the fact that Qualcomm's directors are all white males relevant to the fact that Qualcomm continues to distribute a harmful program and refuses to warn the public about it?  Maybe, maybe not ... all I know for certain is that I was not surprised to see the faces of 15 smiling good 'ol boys staring back at me when I went to see who was giving folks the shaft.
I gleaned a ton of e-mail addresses off their website and mass mailed our complaint to everyone who looked like they might care.  Shortly thereafter a woman (of course) was assigned to look into our problem.  Anita Hix with Eudora Product Line Management called and took extensive notes regarding our case.  She promised to get back to me.  A week later I received a very interesting e-mail from Ms. Hix.  In it she explains very politely that we are thoroughly screwed. She suggested that a "beta" version of 4.1 MIGHT be released soon, and that it MIGHT solve the problem.
She also denied that Eudora was aware of the problem until I informed them of it.  Evidently, I am supposed to believe that "Steve" in tech support was lying when he explained that he was familiar with the bug.  If you read the e-mail from Ms. Hix , it is clear that "Steve" got reamed a new one for telling a customer the truth.  I eventually received several other suggestions from tech support regarding how to use our address books until a "fix" was made available, all of which are an unworkable, time consuming, pain in the ass.
Each time we wish to use another address book, we must close the program, open explorer, and shuffle the address book files in and out of another directory.  Since you can cook a box of mac and cheese in the time its takes for Eudora to open anyway, this is not a great option.  The other wonderful idea was to search through all our address books (all 14,000 entries total) and somehow make sure that no two names were the same.  Then we only need open and manually check every address book for duplicates each time we want to make a new entry.  This is about a 15 minute process.
As of today (8/10/98, over a month after our initial complaint) there is still no mention of this terrible defect in Eudora Pro 4 on their website.  The current beta version of 4.1 doesn't fix the fault either. Qualcomm continues to knowingly distribute an extremely flawed product and they are relying on their "as is" licensing statement to protect them.  This is a situation that is becoming epidemic among software manufactures, and one that needs to be changed. What started out as a protection against people making copies of programs, then returning them to the store for a refund, has turned into a license for companies like Qualcomm to sell useless junk to unsuspecting consumers.
Qualcomm's "we have the right to sell crap that doesn't work, and we are not liable for any damage it does" attitude is deplorable.  This is especially true because their broad warranty disclaimers are not advertised, but in fact hidden from the consumer untilafter the purchase is made. We have included what they laughingly refer to as a "warranty" below.  We have also taken the liberty of translating the legalese used by Eudora in an effort to conceal the fact that they offer no warranty at all!

WARRANTY :    " The Software and its documentation (including this manual), and QUALCOMM's software         maintenance and extended maintenance, if applicable, are provided "AS IS" and without warranty of any kind "

TRANSLATION:    "As is"..... as in buying a used car from the backyard of a guy named Bubba.

WARRANTY:    "QUALCOMM AND ITS LICENSORS (HEREINAFTER COLLECTIVELY REFERRED TO AS "QUALCOMM") EXPRESSLY DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND AGAINST INFRINGEMENT"

TRANSLATION:     Just because we advertise certain program features, and make millions selling our program based on those features, it doesn't mean any of them actually work.

WARRANTY:    "QUALCOMM DOES NOT WARRANT THAT THE FUNCTIONS CONTAINED IN THE SOFTWARE WILL MEET YOUR REQUIREMENTS, OR THAT THE OPERATION OF THE SOFTWARE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR-FREE, OR THAT DEFECTS IN THE SOFTWARE WILL BE CORRECTED."

TRANSLATION:     It is likely that our product may not work the way we advertised it would, and we don't have to fix it if it doesn't.

WARRANTY:   " FURTHERMORE, QUALCOMM DOES NOT WARRANT OR MAKE ANY REPRESENTATIONS REGARDING THE USE OR THE RESULTS OF THE USE OF THE SOFTWARE OR ITS DOCUMENTATION IN TERMS OF THEIR CORRECTNESS, ACCURACY, RELIABILITY, OR OTHERWISE, "

TRANSLATION:    Anything we wrote on the box, or in our advertising literature, designed to get you to buy our product, may be an out and out lie.

WARRANTY:   " NO ORAL OR WRITTEN INFORMATION OR ADVICE GIVEN BY QUALCOMM OR A QUALCOMM AUTHORIZED REPRESENTATIVE SHALL CREATE A WARRANTY OR IN ANY WAY INCREASE THE SCOPE OF THIS WARRANTY."

TRANSLATION:     Anything one of our employees or representatives tells you may be an out and out lie.

WARRANTY:    SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OF IMPLIED WARRANTIES, SO THE ABOVE EXCLUSION MAY NOT APPLY. 

TRANSLATION:     You may live in a state where our actions are criminal, not just unethical.

WARRANTY:    "UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE, SHALL QUALCOMM, ITS LICENSORS OR THEIR DIRECTORS, OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES OR AGENTS BE LIABLE FOR ANY INCIDENTAL SPECIAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING DAMAGES FOR LOSS OF BUSINESS, LOSS OF PROFITS, BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, LOSS OF BUSINESS INFORMATION AND THE LIKE)  ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE SOFTWARE OR ITS DOCUMENTATION"

TRANSLATION:     Nanananananaaaaa... you can't sue us when our program eats your data, and your time.

WARRANTY:    EVEN IF QUALCOMM OR A QUALCOMM AUTHORIZED REPRESENTATIVE  HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES .

TRANSLATION:     Even if if knew our program was going to eat your data (and they at least do by now) you can't sue us.

WARRANTY:    SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW THE LIMITATION OR EXCLUSION OF LIABILITY FOR INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES SO THE ABOVE LIMITATION OR EXCLUSION MAY NOT APPLY. 

TRANSLATION:    There are some states where we can't get away with this.

WARRANTY:    In no event shall QUALCOMM's total liability to you for all damages, losses, and causes of action (whether in contract, tort, including negligence, or otherwise)  exceed the amount paid for the Software and its documentation.

TRANSLATION:    If you live in a state where you can sue us, all we have to give you is your money back