We frequently get requests from customers for phone support, to either answer questions or help with technical issues via the telephone.  You may have noticed that our phone number isn't listed publicly on our site.  This isn't because we don't care enough to help customers by phone, or because we are a nameless, faceless company hiding behind an impersonal internet site. 

NextUp.com is a small company dedicated to a few core beliefs:

• Make great software that helps improve the lives of our customers

• Keep our software affordable.  Given that many users of our software have some type of impairment that our software helps them overcome, it is vitally important that our software be affordable to everyone

• Be a friend to every customer and provide the best possible support we can.  Answer emails faster and better than any other company on the net.

These are our core values and our priorities.  At times we have experimented with providing phone support.  We found a few problems with doing this:

• It takes about 10 times as long to help a customer over the phone as it does via email

• Because of the longer time required, we aren't able to help other customers by email nearly as quickly as we and they would like

• To provide phone support, we would have to hire several more people, which will in the end require us to nearly double the prices on our software

• Often in debugging a problem we need users to email us screen shots or debug files - information that cannot be conveyed over the phone.

While offering phone support would likely make a small percentage of our users happier, it would in the end hurt our ability to either answer everyone else quickly, or would require us to significantly raise the price of our software, which goes against our 2nd core belief that the software needs to be very affordable.

So, in the end we've made the decision to not offer phone support at all.  Instead, and we think you'll agree once you've tried us, we've decided to offer the best email support on the planet.  Every email is answered within 24 hours.  Much more often it is answered within minutes or an hour.  Typically, your email will be answered by Ken White, Rick Ellis, or Jim Bretti.  All 3 of us are founding owners of NextUp.com and you can trust that our most important goal is to assist you in getting the most out of our software and making sure you are a happy customer.

We do recognize that some users do not wish to put their credit card over the internet to purchase.  We do allow phone orders.  Our normal phone order process is you start filling in the order page on our site, and when you reach the payment method field, you can choose Phone, and the system will generate an order number and toll free phone number for you to call to give the credit card info.  We use this process of doing part of the order online to cut down on mistakes operators often make in recording email and address information.  If you have problems filling out the forms online, email us and we'll be glad to do that portion for you.

I hope I've done a decent job of explaining our policy.  If you have any questions, or even want to argue that this policy is a mistake, I'd love to hear from you.  My direct email is kdwhite@nextup.com

Ken White
CEO - NextUP.com