What expectations you have when you have an ongoing subscription for some piece of Software?

Heya all,

I’m curious if I’m too demanding, or if I’m right.

I subscribed to a software based on its promoted features. After spending some considerable time with it, started noticing stuff that it should be doing but it’s not, sometimes just some poor judgment from whom developed this. (in terms of how a specific features works)

I contacted the client support and they start telling me about the software limitations because basically the previous developers sucked balls. but they are going to launch this great new version, so stay tuned.

Time goes by… months… several months. Once in a while I ask for an update, for a roadmap, but nothing is shared besides a printscreen of whatwill be the new UI… because they are hard at work but won’t commit to a timeline of any sorts.
Meanwhile I see this company launching new products, and improving some of their other products.

Then one day its renewable day, I contact them again, and they tell me again, how the future is bright… but won’t tell give me any hint of when that future will be. It might be in 2030… I don’t know, they won’t say.

What say you?

(and btw, I don’t give a fly’ing fk… about a new UI when the product code is described as being a mess by the company support team)

i’m not sure if this is intentional but I feel like you’re perfectly describing solusvm

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SolusVM shares their deadlines, they “just” keep missing it.

The company I’m referring to, refuses to even say something like “hey, you can renew for a new full year of updates because this time we’ll actually push an update”. Their reasoning is that they don’t want to feel pressured to then push an update within the timeframe they alone would be proposing.

Their reasoning for me to keep an active subscription is that clients are paying for access to download the software but also ensuring that the project is well alive, maintained and supported.

Thing is, client pay for a well alive, maintained and supported product, they don’t pay so it becomes one.
It’s the company responsability to make such a product to sell to clients.

I really don’t know since when clients became “supporters” and the company owners “someone to help”. I don’t look at my clients as supproters, they never signed up to back me up.

Edit: Worth saying that this is an established company, with several products, some more successful than others. It’s not like they are startup.
And they also priced their product at over 4 times what their direct competitors charge.

the company is focused on other things, the support is unhelpful, the product is lacking, and alternatives are 4x cheaper? you’ve covered everything except why the heck are you still with them?

I’m still with them because my options are;

  • Ditch it and use something else (missing my own deadlines in the process)
  • Be hopeful that they’ll prioritize this product in the near future, saving me from a grim future.

To be fair, we’re talking about $200 licenses, not $2000 ones. Thus why features trumped price.
But it does suck to see companies providing more for less. Specially for this kind of products renewing a license is not really an option.

As for the support quality, I believe they are doing their best when taking into account that they describe the product like this " is very bad and it makes maintenance tasks a nightmare". But It would have been helpful to have seen such description in the product page, instead of how awesome it is.

I’m fine with then taking time to address the product faults, what I’m not fine with, is them considering me a “supporter” instead of a client.

Invoicing system, no?

No, but I suspect I know why you thought that.
In that field, we recently ditched PHC, to a simpler, several times more affordable product.

PHC became leaches.
Our agent actually had the guts to tell us that they were victim of the Finances demands… fk me… they should kiss the minister feet every single morning for the decition of forcing every company to have “certified” program.

By the way, Sofware houses were not supposed to bill you for the SAFTPT updates, but they do.

One company in Fátima, told me that since SAFTPT was created, that they had to triple their tech team and still had to schedule install a month ahead.

By the way, have you ever peeked a SAFTPT file?
They get everythiong out of your system, suppliers details, clients details, invoices lines, and so on. A couple or so years back it was deemed to be illegal to take all to process all that information, the ministry said it was a mistake (yeah right) that they would delete all that information and update SAFTPT guidelines to stop collecting it, they did update the SAFTPT, the update was billed (as in the software houses billed each one of their clients for the upgrade of one file which is pretty much a XML schema), but they are still collecting all the information :wink:

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Yeah our regulations are just absurd. No sense at all. PHC sucks. Its way too expensive and complicated. Let me know what issue you are experiencing and with what software, I might know something about it or not :p.
We use Molonibas the invoicing system, its all online and it rocks.

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you talking about WHMCS and how they have decided to start charging people on the basis of client count and how they cut out owned licenses & other issues people have criticized them for since then?
don’t see how your latest description of the company fits to solusvm unless there collecting information without informing the public which would be illegal?

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No, I’m not talking about WHMCS.
And my latest message relates to what @Miguel was referring to.

@Miguel was referring to the invoice programs for the Portuguese market, these programs are by law required to allow the companies to send a XML file to the Finances Ministry, on a monthly basis. This law came preceded by a different law that obliged all companies in Portugal to become digital. In the sense that every company needs to adquire a Finance Ministry certified program to run their businesses invoices.
Publicly, Initially the Finance Ministry said that they would “only” collect the following data.

  • Invoice Number
  • Invoice Date
  • Invoice Tax total

Later on, it was discovered that these XML file was actually collecting

  • day/hour/minute/second of each transaction
  • Client name
  • Client Address
  • Client Fiscal Numebr
  • Client internal Number
  • Products sold
    – quantity
    – price per unit
    – discount
    – tax per line
  • Invoice total
  • Invoice total tax

//I’m probably forgetting stuff

When this was discovered, It was deemed illegal and the Ministry said that they did it in error and that all the “extra” data collected would be deleted, followed by an update to the required XML schema.
They did update the XML schema… BUT, they still collect the data. I’m not sure if there were amends to the law to make it legal. As this get into the personal privacy issue.

Basically the portuguese finance Ministry, knows what you buy/sell, from/to whom, in what second of what day you bough/sold a product/service, and at what price.

Ye @404error I guess we have a really complicated law in regards to billing, companies and whatever. In general, our laws are very complex.