So, as the title says, has Kayako ever tried ripping you off? If so, what happened, and what was the final outcome?

I'm currently going through a problem with them, and it's beginning to look mighty grim.

I've been trying to get a refund, but it's looking as if they want to keep my money at all costs. My support desk ticket to them has not received a reply since Oct 3 even though they marked it as "Emergency" priority.

One of their reps here at WHT said he would get it resolved, but I have not heard from him after supplying the information he requested. It was on thread:

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?threadid=444025

They have a policy regarding unverified orders:

http://support.kayako.net/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=55&nav=0,2

"All Orders are placed in an activation queue and are generally activated within a period of 1 Business Day.

High Value orders are manually verified by calling the phone number specified in your profile, In case we are unable to verify the order, it gets refunded within a period of 7 business days.

For any issues with Order Activation, Please contact our Sales department at sales[at]kayako.com"


Regardless of who/what/where/how/why/when the order in question was placed, it should be refunded by now since the order has been pending (unverified) since Sept 22.

Anyone else go through this with them??

last resort chargeback them...

You may try their forums and see if someone can help you there

I doubt they are trying to rip you off... they just have a horrible ordering system.

Last month, I tried to buy the eSupport suite from them. They billed my credit card, then my account sat for days "Pending" (though the money was not "Pending", they had it). They verify by phone, from India, all of their large dollar orders. After a few days, I did not receive a call from them, so I entered a support ticket, which they responded to 24 hours later. It had a boilerplate response of "Your account will be activated soon". I entered another ticket, to let them know how urgent my order was, and 24 hours later I got the same boilerplate. I finally got some traction by posting in their forums.

Finally the guy called my home number and left a message on the answering machine saying "Send your order information to our sales department email address, and we'll get you activated". I did this, and never received any response. At this point, I asked for a refund. It took several days, since it seems they respond to a ticket one time every 24 hours. Ironically I got the same response "Your refund will be issued soon".

I eventually did get a full refund from them. However, this experience cost me hundreds of dollars, since I had developers and designers paid by the hour sitting idle while we waited for this thing so we could integrate it into our site. At this point, I don't care how good their software is, I will never order from them again.

I expect delivery within a day if I'm ordering a downloadable product. Obviously they have some problems with fraud, but my experience with them was pretty ridiculous.

There verification system could use some work, but they aren't trying to rip anyone off.

Ariel74 the costs in designers is your own fault as you could have just told them I will contact you when I get it. I wouldn't put that on Kayako as you knew when you placed the order they would have to verify it.

As for giving up on Kayako over it that is your choice. It's the best choice that I have seen for a ticket/knowledge base system. I have yet to see better personally.

Also what you both fail to miss is that they are currently putting in 18 hour days getting 3.0 released. As far as I know they have no "Dedicated" Sales staff. There staff is all support/development which means they are a little busy at the moment.

I would personally have no problem ordering from a company that has a product I want and even waiting an extended period for verification. It simply comes down to the fact that I understand that things don't happen overnight, even with the internet and delays can happen.

Originally posted by l.stevens

Ariel74 the costs in designers is your own fault as you could have just told them I will contact you when I get it. I wouldn't put that on Kayako as you knew when you placed the order they would have to verify it.


No argument there.

My only point was, if you want to order from them, and it's a large dollar amount, expect to wait a week or more, and sit around waiting for them to call you from India. That might be OK for some, but not for me.

Edit: I also don't do business with companies that only respond to one support ticket per day. Again, that might not be a problem for some, but that's not acceptable for me.

Originally posted by Ariel74
I also don't do business with companies that only respond to one support ticket per day.

How did you get them to respond once a day? I've been waiting 6 days for my response....

Originally posted by ffl007
How did you get them to respond once a day? I've been waiting 6 days for my response....

I had to threaten a chargeback and post in their public forums in order to get any kind of traction with them.

Hi,
Since we daily receive numerous fraudulent orders, we verify all high value orders by personally calling the clients. Please note, verification calls are made on business days i.e. Monday to Friday. If your order is not yet activated, possible reasons might be that we have failed to verify your order or have received no response on the number you provided us while placing the order for the software. In these circumstances, orders are queued for periodic refunds.

ffl007 can you please forward me your order information as well as the TicketID; which has not been attended, to hiren.mehta AT kayako.com to trace the issue?

Let me know if there is anything else.

Regards,

Hiren Mehta

Originally posted by Ariel74
I had to threaten a chargeback and post in their public forums in order to get any kind of traction with them.

Ok, thanks for the advice, Ariel. I did that this morning, and the wheels seem to be turning again! :)


Hiren,

You responded to my ticket today stating:

"Hi,
Your order has been added in the refund queue and shall be soon refunded in full.

Regards,

Hiren Mehta"

So I guess you already have me covered. If you still want order info, let me know.

I had a bit of trouble with this company as well, however, everything was finally resolved. It ended up with me getting a refund, after sending tickets back and forth for about 2 weeks. Kayako issued my refund, and did the right thing, however, the whole communication process was horrible.

I'm not suggesting the software is not of quality, however, their support needs some work. I'm not going to bore everyone with the details here though. All I can say is that if you are persistent and have the time to wait to get the product, it's probably well worth it.

One comment though: Mac users beware. eSupport suite does not have a web based live-chat interface and Kayako's applications are Windows-only. If your support personnel run OS X or any other OS (apart from Windows of course), they won't be able to use live chat.

Originally posted by mikeym
I had a bit of trouble with this company as well, however, everything was finally resolved. It ended up with me getting a refund, after sending tickets back and forth for about 2 weeks. Kayako issued my refund, and did the right thing, however, the whole communication process was horrible.

I'm not suggesting the software is not of quality, however, their support needs some work. I'm not going to bore everyone with the details here though. All I can say is that if you are persistent and have the time to wait to get the product, it's probably well worth it.

One comment though: Mac users beware. eSupport suite does not have a web based live-chat interface and Kayako's applications are Windows-only. If your support personnel run OS X or any other OS (apart from Windows of course), they won't be able to use live chat.

They make a great product and I hope they get their other issues resolved.

I just wanted to comment on the issue with MAC OS X. Our staff uses OS X and have recently had to stop using liveresponse due to poor support for OS X.

Hmmm...it's been 2 days since the last communication. There still is no sign of a refund. Just how big is your refund queue??????????

You've had my $300 since Sept 22. You should start paying me interest soon.......

Originally posted by Ariel74
I doubt they are trying to rip you off... they just have a horrible ordering system.

Last month, I tried to buy the eSupport suite from them. They billed my credit card, then my account sat for days "Pending" (though the money was not "Pending", they had it). They verify by phone, from India, all of their large dollar orders. After a few days, I did not receive a call from them, so I entered a support ticket, which they responded to 24 hours later. It had a boilerplate response of "Your account will be activated soon". I entered another ticket, to let them know how urgent my order was, and 24 hours later I got the same boilerplate. I finally got some traction by posting in their forums.

Finally the guy called my home number and left a message on the answering machine saying "Send your order information to our sales department email address, and we'll get you activated". I did this, and never received any response. At this point, I asked for a refund. It took several days, since it seems they respond to a ticket one time every 24 hours. Ironically I got the same response "Your refund will be issued soon".

I eventually did get a full refund from them. However, this experience cost me hundreds of dollars, since I had developers and designers paid by the hour sitting idle while we waited for this thing so we could integrate it into our site. At this point, I don't care how good their software is, I will never order from them again.

I expect delivery within a day if I'm ordering a downloadable product. Obviously they have some problems with fraud, but my experience with them was pretty ridiculous.

Why would you be paying designers to sit and do nothing?

Integrating the help desk was the last task... and I was assuming that like 99.999% of all other downloadable products that you order, Kayako would deliver within 24 hours of my purchase.

That was my fault - live and learn - but my experience with Kayako is still valid; everything I posted about it was truthful. And, judging from the thread starters experience, I am not the only one who has had problems.