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Collectorz.com... again!

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J-Mac:
I don't care if they know, but do they have to validate my license each time I search?
-Josh (January 03, 2009, 05:05 AM)
--- End quote ---

I think that a lot more developers do this than most people realize.

I don’t really care.

Jim

J-Mac:
I just received an email notification from the Collectorz.com forum for an old thread in the Book Collector forum. While there I stopped in to look at the Movie Collector forum and noticed that all threads relating to the general user unhappiness about Version 6 are gone. Deleted it seems. I clicked on the link to show all my own posts and the ones from January are simply not there, so they did not just move them to an archived forum there.

Kinda surprised, but I guess not that surprised.

Jim

Carol Haynes:
It just shows how stupid they are and how prepared they are top bury their heads in the sand rather than listen to customer feedback. It also shows the level of contempt with which they treat their customers.

The net effect is that manyh users will simply stop recommending their software and will never buy another title.

Personally I think the whole thing is a way to alienate people who have lifetime licenses! Bad idea as they have formed the bedrock of their sales team.

J-Mac:
It just shows how stupid they are and how prepared they are top bury their heads in the sand rather than listen to customer feedback. It also shows the level of contempt with which they treat their customers.

The net effect is that manyh users will simply stop recommending their software and will never buy another title.

Personally I think the whole thing is a way to alienate people who have lifetime licenses! Bad idea as they have formed the bedrock of their sales team.
-Carol Haynes (February 12, 2009, 03:45 AM)
--- End quote ---

I think that is probably happening right now, the negative recommendations. It's a shame, really. Their products are truly well done, but the developer, Alwin, is very foolish IMO for responding arrogantly to all the negative comments made in his forum. Don't get me wrong: many of the comments were really nasty - we all have seen just how malicious some forum folks can be when they are unhappy. The general anonymity of the Web seems to often breed a belligerence in attitude and a recklessness in language used by people who are probably not nearly so rude in person. Nature of the Internet, I guess, though that's no excuse for such behavior.

But Alwin cannot simply ignore the comments and continue with business. I think he must be quite a hot head personally, though I've never met him nor actually spoken with him. A wiser developer who made the same business decisions after analyzing his company's economic needs would post strictly factual answers as to his reasoning for changing the program structure once, and then make his answers pinned threads. Then he should not respond to any further nastiness from users except to warn those who go beyond the rules of civility in his opinion, and ban those who persisted. He should still reply to serious comments and questions; just not the really rude comments that seem to be attempts to bait him. Things would blow over soon enough. He might lose some customers but if he were picking up many more new users - as he continually claimed his business projections indicated - the pain would be short-lived and relatively minor. He took a completely different path, though, and posted very sarcastic, arrogant, and even rude, offensive replies. Then finally deleted them all but only after a couple months of chaos in his forums.

Arguing with his customers and calling them names might have made him feel good somehow at the time, but I have to believe that his extreme arrogance hurt him more than his new version of Movie Collector!

At one point he and I had an exchange of PMs - he PM'd me about some of my posts about the early Book Collector build issues. He praised some of my posts where I alerted them to bugs but he also asked if I could try not to sound negative in others. I disagreed but I mention that the Movie Collector forum was where the negative posts could be found. I mentioned his unusually caustic tone there. He replied like he didn't realize he was being caustic at all. So maybe he truly doesn't see it. Who knows?! 
 8)

Thanks!

Jim

Darwin:
Yup - I follow the Collectorz forums for those apps for which I have lifetime licenses. You're right on the money, Jim. Collectorz seems incapable of NOT pissing off its longtime customers, which has had people on their own forum, and certainly here, speculating that it may all be by design... The general attitude is not confined to Alwin, though. I had a protracted exchange with another Collectorz big-wig over the swtich in licensing model and while I got what I wanted personally, none of my advice was taken (ran along the lines of yours above - post and make sticky a general explanation of the decision and how it affects current users and acknowledge that it was VERY badly handled). I digress, my real point is that even when conceding that my argument was sound and offering a solution that was acceptable to me, he couldn't resist getting digs in at me. Some fairly large egos there, I think.

Personally, I'm not pleased that the two Collectorz apps that I REALLY love (mp3 Collector and Photo Collector) are withering on the vine. mp3 Collector is slated to be merged with Music Collector, but I'll wager that even with lifetime licenses for both products there will be an upgrade fee to pay. That wouldn't necessarily be the end of the world for me, but I know that that would lock the end-user in to paid upgrades for the new application from that point on...

I get that this is business, that they need to evolve to keep revenues coming in, and I have no problem with any of it, I just don't understand why otherwise sensibe, articulate (in a second or third language no less!), and highly capable people would bungle things so badly, all the while seeming oblvious to... Well, the fact that their actions are offensive and alienating for a start and to the fact that it would be so easy and painless to do things "right". They could have their cake and eat it too...

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