Zeus Productions

Philosophy and Policies

Q. What is Zeus's Business Philosophy?

At Zeus Productions, we consider ourselves to be in the customer service business, rather than just the software business. We strive to continually meet our customers' needs with our products and to exceed their expectations with our service and support.

We provide World-Class Technical Support on all our products, and provide information on a wide variety of topics in our TechNotes and FAQs to help you make the most of Director.

Like any business, Zeus Productions can only stay in operation if it generates a financial profit, but our goal is to meet your needs, not simply to push our products. We believe that satisfied customers will continue to buy and recommend our products, and our circle of customers and clients will continue to grow. We hope that you'll buy our products if appropriate, but we are glad to point you in whatever direction is most helpful.

Consult our Needs Analysis FAQ to determine which Zeus product, if any, is right for you. Please contact Zeus if you have any questions.

Thank you for visiting our web site. If you haven't already done so, please fill out our Guest Book, explore the site, and recommend us to friends.

Our policies are explained in more detail below.

Good luck in all your multimedia pursuits.

Bruce Epstein
Principal
Zeus Productions

Disclaimer: The following information regarding various policies of Zeus Productions is advisory only, and may not reflect the current policies. No warranty regarding the accuracy of the following information is implied, nor should it be inferred. This information regarding Zeus Productions' policies was current as of February 26, 2003, but is subject to change without notice.

Q. What are Zeus's licensing requirements?

Generally, you can use Zeus's software on an unlimited royalty-freebasis. We ask that you include Zeus's logo and copyright notice with your product. Refer to our Licensing Information page for detailed information.

Q. What if the product does not meet my needs, or what if there is no demo version of the product available to test? Can I return it?

Please consult our Needs Analysis FAQ, if any, is the right product for you. We won't sell you a product unless we fully expect it to meet your needs as you have described them.

If the version you have does not meet your needs, there is a good chance that obtaining the latest version of the software will address your situation, as we update our software frequently to meet a wider variety of possible uses.

You can try any of our products risk-free because we offer a full 30-day Money-Back Guarantee. However, we ask that you make a good-faith effort to resolve your issues via our World-Class Technical Support staff before returning the product.

Q. How are prices set? Do you offer special pricing educational institutions or a discounted version if we only need it for one project?

Zeus Productions does not currently offer any discounts for educational institutions or non-profit organizations, or make other special allowances for users making limited use of the software. In short, we treat every customer on an equal basis. There are several reasons for this:

As is the case with Director or any commercial software, you must buy the entire product even if you use it for only one project.
The marketing, distribution and support costs for any software product are significant. Moreover, these costs are fixed, whether you use the product once or extensively. Moreover, first-time users require the vast majority of technical support.
Our products are designed for a niche market, not the mass market, and as such their price and value should be compared to that of custom software development. Developing a custom Xtra often costs thousands of dollars, so we think they are priced very fairly.

We continue to provide support, upgrades and additional functionality for our customers, something that is impossible if a product is not profitable.

Zeus Productions will continue to provide cost-effective solutions to as broad a range of multimedia developers as possible. To that end, we attempt to provide as much free information as possible on our web site while remaining profitable so that we can continue to serve the multimedia community.

Q. What is Zeus Productions' upgrade policy?

We strive to deliver value to our customers, whether it is for a dollar you are spending today or tomorrow or spent last year. We want you to be our customer for the long term, and we hope to ensure that by delivering useful products at reasonable prices. Minor upgrades and bug fixes are free to registered users for 90 days from the date of purchase. Major upgrades are available at a discount.
We improve our software to work with the latest versions of Director, the Mac OS, and Windows. Such upgrades will be offered either free or at a discount to registered users who have encountered prior incompatibilities.

Q. What is Zeus's policy regarding bugs, both known and unknown? What about Feature Requests?

Zeus Productions makes every effort to ensure that its products are bug-free. Zeus Productions will never knowingly sell you a product that does not meet your expressed needs as we understand them. We will be as forthright in telling you if our products would not meet your needs, as we would be in advocating their purchase when they are wholly appropriate.

Although software may work flawlessly for its designed purposes, users tend to stretch the limits of the originally intended usage. There is no way to anticipate every possible circumstance nor test the product with every conceivable configuration. Future revisions of various external applications, with which Zeus software is used, can neither be anticipated nor avoided.

If you suspect that there is a problem with one of our products, please submit a bug report. (We call bugs "bugs", and not "anomalies", "inconsistencies", aberrations" or "reported inconsistencies" as some other companies might ). That said, not all "bug reports" indicate actual bugs. The user may simply require a feature which has not been implemented, or be using the product in an unsupported manner.

If we have verified a bug, we will make every effort to fix it and notify registered users as soon as possible. No specific time frame for bug fixes is implied, nor should be inferred, but we make every effort to assist our client's to the best of our abilities.

Feature requests will be taken under consideration. No specific time frame for additional features is implied, nor should be inferred, but we make every effort to add useful features that have been requested. If the feature is of general interest, there is a good chance we have already added it to our future feature list.

If the feature is not deemed to be of sufficient general interest to be added to the product at this time, Zeus Productions offers custom programming services to meet your specific needs.

Q. Are Zeus products easy to use?

Zeus's products are not difficult to use for someone who is familiar with Lingo scripting. Complete example Lingo code and thorough documentation is included to ease the process. If you are a novice Director programmer, we will often write the Lingo code for you. See our Download Page for a drag-and-drop behavior that opens documents (the most common thing customers use our Xtras for) with zOpen for Windows or zScript for Mac.

Invariably, multimedia projects are behind schedule. If you are in last-minute panic mode (and who isn't?), please be sure to discuss your particular requirements with a sales representative before ordering.

Our software is used in many scenarios and Zeus Productions can not guarantee its suitability for your particular use. Allow time to implement, test, and debug any issues related to using our products in conjunction with applications external to Director. Be sure to test on all versions of Macintosh and Windows that you intend to support.

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