Hi all,

I am not sure if many of you are iDevAffiliate users, but I have been for a few months now and overall the product has worked well. Now the company has released (or at least claims to) their version 5 of the software. This to me is exactly what I needed, since I moved from Modernbill to WHMCS, iDevAffiliate 5 now has support for it. Great! So, I logged into my client account and I looked for the version 5 and could not find the download (only v4 downloads). So I shot a message to support and I got a response from Jim. His response was quite clear and he told me that the upgrade release had not been completed and would be available within a few weeks. I waited for about a month, checked back to see if it had been released, that was a no go. However, their was an update in the client side announcements saying to check back April 1st, I thought that was fine.

April first rolled around, still no upgrade so I decided to shoot a response to my ticket and see if there was any hold ups and when we could expect to see the release? I got a somewhat rude response saying pretty much "It's not ready yet." Well not really too informative and didn't answer my question. Simply I just wanted to know an estimate for a release to inform my affiliates (as I originally told them that the support for WHMCS would be early April). So, I sent a response showing my dislike for his response and re-stating my question. I got a quick response from Jim which just boggled my mind...

What would you like me to do? We expected it to be ready by the 1st and it isn't. Would you like a copy of the UPGRADE version that isn't ready? I'm sorry it isn't ready yet but we're not going to release it until it is. We missed our target release date. I would offer you my left arm for this gross and blatant mistake on our part but then that would just delay the release that much longer not being able to use both hands to write code with.

Hahaha, pretty funny right? Well, I wasn't all that amused at this point, as I went to go get my answer I was seeking by calling to speak with a superior. However as fate would have it I got Jim on the phone (Great!). I introduced myself to Jim and he knew exactly who I was and why I was calling and started to speak his mind. At one point he told me he was grabbing a calendar for me so he could randomly pick a date (April 25th by the way, hehe) and asked me "Are you happy now?" Well after that fun conversation who wouldn't right?

Finally I got a quick chance to speak and wanted to let him know the reason why I just wanted a rough estimate (I mean who would want an exact date when for the most part coders never meet their estimated dates, but anyway) yet, he continued to patronize me over the phone, cut me off and eventually raise his voice at me. At that point I told him "Thank you for the help" (As nicely as I could be at that point) and hang up.

Is it me, or is it wrong for a customer to be curious about a rough release date for a product they rely on? Maybe I was asking a little too much, but I don't know.

Just figured I would share my experiences with iDevAffiliate Support. Will I stay with their product, yes, but will I expect much from their support in the future, no.

Regards,
John

we have some issues with "jim" also.

Last year we bought a license for idevaffiliate from someone. We contacted jim first to make sure it was transferable. He said it was. So we paid the seller and about 2-3 months later were ready to use it and asked for this to be finally be completed.

It was at this time he informed me that the license had been transferred to many times and wasn't transferable anymore.

What a waste of $60

Look around the forum and I think you'll find this not all too surprising. Perhaps the problem is that many do continue to use the script despite deplorable service. Of course, just imagine what will happen somewhere down the line if something goes wrong and you need to rely on that "support."

Perhaps this also explains why licenses end up being transferred "too many times."

Is it me, or is it wrong for a customer to be curious about a rough release date for a product they rely on? Maybe I was asking a little too much, but I don't know.


v5's out - been using it for about a month now, but there's currently no upgrade path, we wanted v5 for the WHMCS integration as well

We decided to do a new implementation and will migrate the old data over if we havent just retyped it all, when the "proper" upgrade is released.

Still not sure the methodology is right, you dont want to be paying affiliates on *order* you want to do it after receipt of payment, and it needs work on the recurring side of things.

I'm picky, I also want different comission amounts (and %ages) by product and some other features, testing jrox at the same time, which is a slicker product by similarly hampered.

Current thinking is that unless oe of the prewritten scripts is stable and handles the majority of our plans by the end of the summer, then i'll write a detailled spec at some point of what we need, and get Matt @ WHMCS to develop it as a stand-alone extension to whmcs

they sound like jerks

last year i used this http://www.qualityunit.com/postaffiliatepro/ their support was ok

lol funny story, you do have the right as a customer and they should have announcements so you dont have to keep nagging them. I would guess they had probably had similar enquireries hence their snappy response.

Thanks for posting, iDevAffiliate is something i have had my eye on for a while, just hope i dont need any support :P

Sounds to me like Jim's answer to the OP was reasonable. Microsoft can miss dates by months, Yahoo can miss dates by months, and so in the greater scheme of things, it's not a big deal for a small software company to miss a date by a few weeks. He apologized and explained that he didn't want to release the software before it was ready. That's a reasonable approach, I think.

In my own experience, Jim's responded fast and provided a level of support that I think is way above the norm. I'm a happy customer.

Ha ha funny..

I agree with The Hosting Team however...

Microsoft took forever before they got their software out, and Jim was accurate about that.

The only thing was probably his "anger" management maybe :P

Please allow me to shed some light and provide a bit more details on this incident. The last thing I wish to do is engage an argument here and more than likely this will be the one and only post I make to this thread. However, I'd like to at least give my side of the story which simply put is that I felt like John was being rude in his ticket responses and baggering me for a release date of this upgrade, which incidentally is FREE. The fact is we released the upgrade version last night Apr 5 which is one day after this post.

To clarify the following timeline, our original release target was mid Mar then it became Apr 1 and it has now been released Apr 5. The 30 day gap in the ticket is most likely due to the fact that release date information can be found on our website in the customer account area. I can only assume John saw the latest release update and didn't need to re-open the ticket mid Mar to ask for a new release date.

Here is the full ticket footprint.

Feb 27: Ticket opened asking for the upgrade version of 5.0.

Feb 27: Response: Upgrades are on-hold until we release the 5.0 (upgrade) version, an email will be sent once it's available.

Apr 1: Can I please have an update on this, I still do not see idevaffiliate 5 and it is April 1st. What is going on here?

Apr 1: Response: It's not ready for release yet. We're still working on it.

Apr 4: Thank you for that very informative answer. I do appreciate it, but would you be so kind as to inform to when we could expect to see it available. You have been marketing the product as released for well over a month now, and yet you are not offering it? Reardless, can I please have a decent date as to when we can expect this. It's obviously not going to be ready April 1st and I suggest you change the date in the client area unless that was some type of April Fools joke. If so...it wasn't very funny.
---
In regards to "not offering it". iDevAffiliate 5 has been available for the past two months as a new installation. The upgrade version is what we've been working on and have now released.
---

Apr 5: iDevAffiliate 5 Upgrade Version released.
Apr 6: I see that John has already upgraded to iDevAffiliate 5.

John: In the future when requesting support, please leave off the ending phrases that aren't needed in tickets. I promise you will get a much better response from our staff. Most of us will view these as being rude even if they aren't meant to be. Remember we're all working with text here on the Internet and it's sometimes hard to understand what is actually meant by something someone says.

I hope to get past things knowing both our future tickets will contain nothing more than straight to the point, courteous responses.

Sincerely,
Jim Webster

Hi Jim,

First, there are lots of hosts who use iDevAffiliate, so I hope this won't be your last post on the webhostingtalk.com forums. :)

OK... onwards.

... I'd like to at least give my side of the story which simply put is that I felt like John was being rude in his ticket responses and baggering me for a release date of this upgrade, which incidentally is FREE.


and

In the future when requesting support, please leave off the ending phrases that aren't needed in tickets. I promise you will get a much better response from our staff. Most of us will view these as being rude even if they aren't meant to be.

Are you saying the OP is a liar? Did you not actually respond to him with the quotes he posted and attributed to you? I just want to make sure about that. Because if you did respond as the OP has quoted you, then basically you appear to be saying your rude response is his own fault for pissing you off? :confused:

As a sw developer myself, I can understand the pressure of having customers continually asking for "when is the next release going to be finished". However, there is no excuse for rude replies, regardless of the justification you feel is appropriate. Rude responses are indicative of the business you are running.

Since Microsoft was brought up to justify missed deadlines (a good example!)... it's only fair to point out that Microsoft would very likely dismiss any customer service agent who responded as the OP says you did.

..... which incidentally is FREE.


I'm not sure why you mentioned this. If you didn't want to give your updates for FREE then you should not have sold a product that includes FREE updates. The OP is simply getting what he paid for, and which you promised.

I can't see why you mentioned this in your response, unless you want us to be impressed that you are providing FREE updates to customers who paid for FREE updates when they purchased their license from you.

I did notice you no longer include free updates on new sales, so that's good I suppose, since you now appear to be regretting having all those "pre-free-update-policy-change" licenses out there.

....which, incidently, is kind of funny since you don't honor the "free updates" part when an existing "pre-free-update-policy-change" is transferred to a new owner. :mad:

Anyway, welcome to webhostingtalk. There's a lot of your unhappy customers kicking around the forums here, but I'm sure if you stick around and participate it will go a long way to regaining our trust.

:agree:

Well said Mr Zippy. I completely agree.

Please allow me to shed some light and provide a bit more details on this incident. The last thing I wish to do is engage an argument here and more than likely this will be the one and only post I make to this thread. However, I'd like to at least give my side of the story which simply put is that I felt like John was being rude in his ticket responses and baggering me for a release date of this upgrade, which incidentally is FREE. The fact is we released the upgrade version last night Apr 5 which is one day after this post.

To clarify the following timeline, our original release target was mid Mar then it became Apr 1 and it has now been released Apr 5. The 30 day gap in the ticket is most likely due to the fact that release date information can be found on our website in the customer account area. I can only assume John saw the latest release update and didn't need to re-open the ticket mid Mar to ask for a new release date.

Here is the full ticket footprint.

Feb 27: Ticket opened asking for the upgrade version of 5.0.

Feb 27: Response: Upgrades are on-hold until we release the 5.0 (upgrade) version, an email will be sent once it's available.

Apr 1: Can I please have an update on this, I still do not see idevaffiliate 5 and it is April 1st. What is going on here?

Apr 1: Response: It's not ready for release yet. We're still working on it.

Apr 4: Thank you for that very informative answer. I do appreciate it, but would you be so kind as to inform to when we could expect to see it available. You have been marketing the product as released for well over a month now, and yet you are not offering it? Reardless, can I please have a decent date as to when we can expect this. It's obviously not going to be ready April 1st and I suggest you change the date in the client area unless that was some type of April Fools joke. If so...it wasn't very funny.
---
In regards to "not offering it". iDevAffiliate 5 has been available for the past two months as a new installation. The upgrade version is what we've been working on and have now released.
---

Apr 5: iDevAffiliate 5 Upgrade Version released.
Apr 6: I see that John has already upgraded to iDevAffiliate 5.

John: In the future when requesting support, please leave off the ending phrases that aren't needed in tickets. I promise you will get a much better response from our staff. Most of us will view these as being rude even if they aren't meant to be. Remember we're all working with text here on the Internet and it's sometimes hard to understand what is actually meant by something someone says.

I hope to get past things knowing both our future tickets will contain nothing more than straight to the point, courteous responses.

Sincerely,
Jim Webster

Jim,

I couldn't agree more that sometimes the meaning behind our messages are sometimes lost on the web in text that cannot be felt, however...

That does not excuse you from your rude comments during our phone conversation when I was nothing but calm and kind during that conversation. I even let you vent for a while. Not sure how it gets lost in translation there, but I hope that I will not have this issue again. I will be sure to stay away from phone support unless needed.

Thank you,
John