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« on: October 15, 2007, 06:39 PM »
I posted a DSM to Gemx today asking why they insisted on ignoring their customers. This is the reponse that I received from Peter:
"Hi,
Thank you for your comments.
Please note that we do not ignore our customers by closing the forums. We appreciate all the constructive criticism, after all that's the only way to improve our products. However, all destructive criticisms are ignored. The following text we have sent to another customer who wanted additional information about the closure of the forums provide further explanation:
Unfortunately, we had to close down the GemX forums. The volume just got more than we can handle without sacrificing our main task (development) at hand. If GemX forum community didn't demand our attention in most cases we would have let it going but when we didn't
respond all posts asking/expecting a response people start developing concerns and asking where we are etc.. This not a complaint, just
stating the facts. Off course that's what we would be expecting of any lively forum, the volume. However, we didn't expect it'd develop this
quick. Our plan was when forums volume increased (about 2 years time) we would be in position to employ fully qualified (technically) person
to monitor and moderate.
Please note that we are a small company with a limited resources. Main team of GemX made of myself and Jon and we have "supporting cast" from family members and some users who kindly volunteered. However, we can not ask our "supporting cast" to do things as we do. They have their things to do first. They don't get paid by us. Unfortunately, we don't earn enough to employ qualified additional staff on the full time
basis at present.
We agree on the value of maintaining forums wholeheartedly, but it came to the point we had to make a decision either put more time operating in forums or close down and concentrate on development. If we have chosen to maintaining forums we would have to sacrifice development. I am sure you'd agree that it would be a self defeating option. However, this doesn't mean we would ignore our customers questions and inquiries. You can always contact us via email and DSM (registered users). Only situations customer inquiry may not be answered as follows:
1. Answer to the question is already in help files.
2. When we are in heavy development phase we may miss/overlook some inquiries unintentionally due to error on our side.
3. Email or DSM just didn't reach us due to various technical such as non delivery, spam filters etc reasons but chances of this happening is very slim.
4. I and Jon both got sick and temporarily can't work at all.
Until we are in position to re-instate the forums please send your inquiries and bug reports via email or DSM. At present, I can't give
any indication as to when we'd be able to re-instate GemX forums.
I know this doesn't help you but just to let you know that our choice on this matter prioritized on keep offering to our customers improved
and better products within our resources.
Best regards,
Peter.
GemX Software."
After receiving his response, I asked for his permission to post his response to this forum. He gave his permission with this response:
"Hi Ron,
Thanks for your kind understanding.
I can't see any problem with publishing our email response on Donation Coders forum.
We didn't post anything there as the problems originated from us. We decided to take it as it comes. It was our mistake in the first place starting the forums too early. Well, actually mine. Jon was against it due to our resources. He said, if I think I can manage the forums without diverting from development go ahead an do it. I am an optimist, I thought users can help each other without we spending much time on it, but reality turned out to be different.
I'll certainly listen Jon's views in the future bit more carefully.
Best regards,
peter."
Regards,
Ron Bernier
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