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First, I have been a Zemax user since 2007, and have purchased Zemax on-behalf of companies I worked for three times. The 1st purchase is for Foxconn, the 2nd purchase is for s startup company called Light Blue Optics, and the 3rd has been for my current company, starting from 2013 and continue to the present.   

 

Recently, Ansys Zemax required all users to migrate to the Ansys customer portal for issuing technical support questions, and I discovered that I don’t have the "open a case" option available. After confirming with Ansys Taiwan, I was informed that their policy has changed, and I am no longer permitted to directly contact Zemax technical support through the “open a case” button. Instead, all my technical questions must be submitted to the local agent in Taiwan, and the agent’s engineer must open a case on my behalf. Additionally, I cannot monitor the status of the case through my portal. 

At first, I though that was a same policy for all users purchasing Zemax through local distributors all over the world. However, after discussing with my colleague in the Czech Republic, who also purchases Zemax through an Ansys-designated local distributor, I found that he retains the right to directly “open a case” on the portal.

For years, users in Taiwan have been paying nearly double the maintenance fees compared to those in the U.S. After confirming with my Czech colleague, I learned he pays approximately $3,700 USD for maintenance, while I pay over $5,100 USD for the same service. Despite this, he has full access rights to open cases and directly contact Zemax support, while I do not have these access rights and cannot even monitor the cases opened by local agent engineer. I am forced to rely on the local agent’s engineer to submit cases on my behalf. Paying nearly 1.4 times more for maintenance than my Czech colleague and almost twice as much as my U.S. colleague, while receiving significantly fewer access rights, raises the question: If this is not discrimination, what is?

Is Ansys a company with racist practices? Does Ansys have policies that has discrimination policies against Asia users or users from a specific country??   Users pay much much more in Taiwan(or in Asia) while receiving much fewer rights??        

 

Ansys needs to address this racist or discriminatory policy.   

 

Regards  

BTW, for a long time, we users in Taiwan have been paying significantly higher maintenance fees compared to those in the U.S. and Europe, and we have calculated this discrepancy. However, Ansys has now suddenly changed its policy, discriminatively restricting the technical support access rights for Asian or Taiwanese users. This kind of discriminatory policy is intolerable.

Hi Shih-Heng,

Thank you for raising your concerns with us.

While I can empathize with your frustration over the change in support policy, I want to make it unequivocally clear that Ansys does not discriminate.

Ansys works closely with trusted Channel Partners to ensure our users have access to local resources for license renewal and support. Channel Partners are the first line of support for their users, as they are local and likely have an in-depth background knowledge of their users’ workflows. There are various reasons why your colleague may have access to direct support, and I am looking into it with our team in Europe.

Additionally, when it comes to pricing, geographical pricing is quite common among large businesses. I cannot comment on why one region is higher than another, as the best people to answer this would be our Sales team. I have already been in touch with the Ansys Sales team in Taiwan as well as the Channel Partner you work with. They will be in touch within a few days to address your concerns. 

All the best,

Allie

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