I've gotten a few support emails lately about different things where people mention that they want to buy in the email. I've talked with other authors about this, and generally most of them aren't swayed in anyway by it. Neither am I.
It basically boils down to that if you're emailing, then you're going to get an answer. Whether or not somebody plans to buy doesn't really matter that much to me (or other authors that I've talked with) because at the end of the day, everyone is still a potential customer.
Hazarding a guess at why people mention that they plan to buy, I'd have to say that they've received zero or bad support in the past, and are hoping to get a better support response than they've received before (yes - I've been there too). At a large company, the support staff are paid per hour, while for the micro ISV, we get paid for results. There's a bit of a difference there. We're much more interested in making sure that our customers and potential customer get a good product, receive good service, and are satisfied.
Yeah, I can imagine that somebody working in the support division of some larger company will go on about how they really do care, etc. etc. etc. I'm sure that they do. But it just isn't the same when the food on your plate is at stake (steak? :).
One thing that really makes providing support much easier for a micro ISV or small software company is that we can flip from reading an email to looking at code or talking to the developer who actually wrote the code. That makes an answer much easier than inputting something into a bug tracker and hoping that it gets taken care of sooner rather than later.
But for anyone that needs to email me for help or post in the forums, you don't need to mention whether or not you plan to buy. I'm still going to make sure that you get taken care of the way I like to get taken care of when I email for support. i.e. Question answered or problem solved.
As a bit of a side note, I've tried to buy some products online in the past but been unable to because of the payment system they used. I emailed for support to buy and never received a response. Now that's pretty bad support when you can't even throw money at them.
Cheers,
Ryan Smyth