Acronis - Tech company, or Public Relations company?

Browsing through some of the bug complaints on this forum I've noticed that Acronis has an absolutely fantastic public relations team. Seriously. They are world class. Responses to negative feedback is always positive and encouraging, access to the directors are possible and everything seems to suggest that they are warm and caring in their response. They almost implore us users to tell them of our travails with their software so they can make it all better. Its a masterclass in modern PR handling.

The PR is fantastic. Its just a shame that their product is so goddamned awful and getting worse.

They are the best PR company on the planet, and the worst tech company.  PR people take note: notice that there is now a thread naming users banned by Acronis on their forum. This is one of those slightly creepy aspects of modern PR that acts as an implied threat, without actually saying so directly. George Orwell would be proud. Brilliant!

True Image 2012 has definitely cleaned up its interface, and I'm living in hope that the bugs will soon be ironed out. Except that the bugs in True Image 2011 were never truly squashed, despite the warm, gushing responses from their PR team.

Don't get me wrong, if everything on TR2012 worked as planned it would be a fantastic product, and it still could be. But impressions of customer service (beyond the PR dept.) is very weak, and the phenomenal number of bugs on release suggest the product was rushed out to meet a deadline. If anything, TR2012 has more bugs in it than TR2011.

What fascinates me is how the PR dept. will respond to this post. Will they pour their warm syrup in my ear? Or will I be banished to the 'banned list,' also known colloquially as the 'heroes list.'

Stay tuned, folks ...