Support: "it doesn't work in that situation. Here's a link to our documentation with two dozen bullet points about where and when that feature doesn't work".
It's as if you selected a cell in Excel, and the copy-paste buttons were missing, and you raised a support case with Microsoft and they said "copy-paste does not work if your spreadsheet was opened from a NAS share. It's documented here that it doesn't work: <link>".
That is documentation as a defense, instead of the company putting in the effort to make the thing work, they put in documentation that it doesn't work so they can blame the user who "won't read the documentation".
Software X has a feature.
Me: "hi support, feature is not available??"
Support: "it doesn't work in that situation. Here's a link to our documentation with two dozen bullet points about where and when that feature doesn't work".
It's as if you selected a cell in Excel, and the copy-paste buttons were missing, and you raised a support case with Microsoft and they said "copy-paste does not work if your spreadsheet was opened from a NAS share. It's documented here that it doesn't work: <link>".
That is documentation as a defense, instead of the company putting in the effort to make the thing work, they put in documentation that it doesn't work so they can blame the user who "won't read the documentation".
Actually, that's a good point. I often run into issues that would have been solved by more careful reading.
Paying people to record themselves using your software without reading the instructions might actually be very informative.
I imagine the ideal is a product that requires no manual. That's not always doable, but sometimes it is. Sometimes you can get very close!