In 1996, there were 200 million calls for technical support. The industry left these callers on hold for about 3 billion minutes. The software industry has been one of the worst for leaving callers on hold. A small study by Service Management International indicated that software companies leave callers on hold longer than any other industry studied, worse than government agencies, computer hardware companies, airlines, banks, utility companies, and others. The odds are pretty good that when you run into a serious bug, the publisher knew about it at the time that you bought the product.
Software publishing is a business, a large, important industry in the United States.
Like other businesses, software publishers make trade-offs between your satisfaction and their costs. Unfortunately, software is also mysterious to the non-expert. Some people are getting badly ripped off, and it's not doing the industry or the customers any good. The articles at this web site are not legal advice. I took care to ensure that they were well researched at the time that I wrote them, but the law changes quickly.