Is There Any Limit of Getting Tech Support of Concrete5 Add-on from it's Developer?
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Hi, Just wanted to know that is there any limit to get tech support for my purchased add-on? I just wanted to know as I have asked the add-on developers a few questions in different times and wondered if I am asking him more than I should.
Thanks for the kindest reply.
Sometimes a message won't be emailed to the developer, so it could be forgotten. So just reply in the very same support ticket if you don't get an answer within a week for example.
As for asking for things of the Add-On developer... if the developer is confident of his product and thinks it adds value what you're asking, I'm sure he/she will think about adding it. Just give a developer time to develop it, since we probably all have day-jobs that may not be entirely entitled to these Add-Ons.
As for asking for things of the Add-On developer... if the developer is confident of his product and thinks it adds value what you're asking, I'm sure he/she will think about adding it. Just give a developer time to develop it, since we probably all have day-jobs that may not be entirely entitled to these Add-Ons.
Thanks!
I try to answer support inquiries for my items. However, I am not receiving email notifications when one is submitted, so sometimes it may be a while before I manually check and reply.
I don't keep track of when customers purchased any of my items, so I just do my best to answer support as often as I can.
I don't keep track of when customers purchased any of my items, so I just do my best to answer support as often as I can.
Good to know that.
Hello,
As I have experience with your support requests I probably can answer you.
There are limits to the support you can ask in time and in scope.
In my experience, you bought 1 license for my add-on Touch Gallery on January 19 2016. You then sent a request for support on October 31 2016. That's 10 months later.
The marketplace requires us to provide 1 month of free support. After that, it is up to us to decide if and how we support our add-ons. I usually provide up to 2 months free support. Sometimes 3. Providing free support after 10 months is certainly not something I feel is right.
What is more you request was about something that was not part of Touch Gallery. You were trying to achieve a certain design and wanted me to either provide you with instructions or add it as an option to my add-on.
I explained that you could simply use templates. I also explained that you were way past free support time frame.
You never answered.
You then contacted me again for a different request on May 03 2017 14 months after buying the add-on. You were saying the gallery didn't seem to be responsive. Although my add-on is responsive, it is not the way you wanted it to be. Again you asked me to make it an option in the add-on.
Despite the fact that you were not entitled to free support I decided to help anyway and design a template for you, for free, to achieve what you wanted.
It took several days of back and forth to get what you wanted.
And then you came back again asking for more help for something that had nothing to do with my add-on. You didn't know how to make a red border that was set by your site's design not show on my add-on. You are responsible for the site's design, it's up to you to deal with that. I decided to not respond at this point.
Finally, I thought with all the help I had provided, free of charge, after 14 months, you would at least give a review or something. You didn't.
So I don't know which developer you are referring to but if he/she had the same experience with you as I did, I would say the answer to your question is yes, you are asking more than you should and not giving anything in return for service that's going above what is normally accepted.
As I have experience with your support requests I probably can answer you.
There are limits to the support you can ask in time and in scope.
In my experience, you bought 1 license for my add-on Touch Gallery on January 19 2016. You then sent a request for support on October 31 2016. That's 10 months later.
The marketplace requires us to provide 1 month of free support. After that, it is up to us to decide if and how we support our add-ons. I usually provide up to 2 months free support. Sometimes 3. Providing free support after 10 months is certainly not something I feel is right.
What is more you request was about something that was not part of Touch Gallery. You were trying to achieve a certain design and wanted me to either provide you with instructions or add it as an option to my add-on.
I explained that you could simply use templates. I also explained that you were way past free support time frame.
You never answered.
You then contacted me again for a different request on May 03 2017 14 months after buying the add-on. You were saying the gallery didn't seem to be responsive. Although my add-on is responsive, it is not the way you wanted it to be. Again you asked me to make it an option in the add-on.
Despite the fact that you were not entitled to free support I decided to help anyway and design a template for you, for free, to achieve what you wanted.
It took several days of back and forth to get what you wanted.
And then you came back again asking for more help for something that had nothing to do with my add-on. You didn't know how to make a red border that was set by your site's design not show on my add-on. You are responsible for the site's design, it's up to you to deal with that. I decided to not respond at this point.
Finally, I thought with all the help I had provided, free of charge, after 14 months, you would at least give a review or something. You didn't.
So I don't know which developer you are referring to but if he/she had the same experience with you as I did, I would say the answer to your question is yes, you are asking more than you should and not giving anything in return for service that's going above what is normally accepted.
HI,
I appreciate your help and response you have provided. As I told you, I am not the owner of your add-on and I am contacting you on behalf of my Boss, so review is not in my hand. He will decide if he is satisfied with the ad-on as he wanted and then only he can provide the review.
I know it's a long time since the purchase and also I mentioned time as well in the thread that I just want to know some answers, and also I mentioned that I am afraid if I am bothering you. That means, I don't want anything that will cross the limit or not possible for you. If asking questions cross the limit, then I should not ask you or anyone as well.
I have always mentioned this courtesy whenever asking a question. Say for example removing the underline. I mentioned, I am worried if I am asking you more than I deserve, I know I am responsible for the design but again asked may be you could help if you feel so if not then also okay.
You have decided to provide us a new template on the based of my post and that's very much appreciated. But the template you provided that was missing the core functionality that means it is not gallery anymore, so I asked you if some codes are missing there or not. Tell me if I was wrong to ask you that. I just wanted to know some queries not that you will always make changes whenever I want.
Regards,
Pritam
I appreciate your help and response you have provided. As I told you, I am not the owner of your add-on and I am contacting you on behalf of my Boss, so review is not in my hand. He will decide if he is satisfied with the ad-on as he wanted and then only he can provide the review.
I know it's a long time since the purchase and also I mentioned time as well in the thread that I just want to know some answers, and also I mentioned that I am afraid if I am bothering you. That means, I don't want anything that will cross the limit or not possible for you. If asking questions cross the limit, then I should not ask you or anyone as well.
I have always mentioned this courtesy whenever asking a question. Say for example removing the underline. I mentioned, I am worried if I am asking you more than I deserve, I know I am responsible for the design but again asked may be you could help if you feel so if not then also okay.
You have decided to provide us a new template on the based of my post and that's very much appreciated. But the template you provided that was missing the core functionality that means it is not gallery anymore, so I asked you if some codes are missing there or not. Tell me if I was wrong to ask you that. I just wanted to know some queries not that you will always make changes whenever I want.
Regards,
Pritam
I understand that your words were courteous. But your actions were not.
Given that my first answer to your request was a clear explanation of how long you were entitled to free help and that almost a year later you were not entitled to it.
Also given that, despite that explanation (to which you never answered) you came back months later asking for more help as if I never said anything about that.
Considering that, in opposition to my first statement I decided to help you anyway and provided you with a fully functional template that did exactly what you wanted.
Considering then that you obviously didn't know how to use it and decided to suggest my template was not working properly.
Considering that I discovered you had actually modified the add-on itself, making any guarantee whatsoever instantly void.
And last but not least, considering that you came back with again another request for help at which point I have to point out that none of your requests had anything to do with Touch Gallery not working properly and the help I provided you with was custom work and had nothing to do with bugs.
Considering all this, when I then see you starting a thread asking if you're entitled to more help without providing the proper details or explaining what actually happened, I consider you are only being courteous in words but not in action.
In action, you have communicated only when you were getting what you wanted, disappearing without a word when you were not getting it. You then decided to make this matter public in a way that doesn't reflect reality.
That is not courteous, not at all.
Given that my first answer to your request was a clear explanation of how long you were entitled to free help and that almost a year later you were not entitled to it.
Also given that, despite that explanation (to which you never answered) you came back months later asking for more help as if I never said anything about that.
Considering that, in opposition to my first statement I decided to help you anyway and provided you with a fully functional template that did exactly what you wanted.
Considering then that you obviously didn't know how to use it and decided to suggest my template was not working properly.
Considering that I discovered you had actually modified the add-on itself, making any guarantee whatsoever instantly void.
And last but not least, considering that you came back with again another request for help at which point I have to point out that none of your requests had anything to do with Touch Gallery not working properly and the help I provided you with was custom work and had nothing to do with bugs.
Considering all this, when I then see you starting a thread asking if you're entitled to more help without providing the proper details or explaining what actually happened, I consider you are only being courteous in words but not in action.
In action, you have communicated only when you were getting what you wanted, disappearing without a word when you were not getting it. You then decided to make this matter public in a way that doesn't reflect reality.
That is not courteous, not at all.
With all due respect, can you please point out a single word where I mentioned you or that add-on in my thread. As I am not aware of the support policy, I have posted on the forum in general to know. Don't I have that right to know? Did I mentioned you or your add-on for a single time on my post or you have just come and mentioned.
Thanks!
Thanks!
One way to look at it is this...
Consider how much profit the developer makes from the sale of one instance of an add-on. Let's be optimistic and assume it's a positive amount; say, $10. (Note that profit is much less than the price of the add-on because the development costs have to be taken into account.)
Allocate some proportion of that profit to be 'comsumed' by providing after-sale support for that instance. Let's generously assume 50%, which comes to $5.
Every customer is entitled to support, but most will hopefully not want it. If only 25% of customers want support, that means $20 worth of support could be allocated to those customers that do want support.
Finally, assume that the developer's pay rate is $40/hour. (This is a very low rate in some countries, but very high in others.) $20 worth of support therefore equates to about half an hour. This includes the time taken to read the request and communicate the response.
Half an hour (minus communication time) doesn't get you a lot of custom coding. It might get you a couple of answers to questions about how to use the add-on.
You can change the assumptions I've made and redo the arithmetic, but I think you'll find that it's improbable that you'll be entitled to many hours of support per sale.
An exception would be if you've found a significant bug in the add-on within the warranty period (1 month). In this case, I think the developer should fix it even if that means running at a loss, or authorise a refund.
Consider how much profit the developer makes from the sale of one instance of an add-on. Let's be optimistic and assume it's a positive amount; say, $10. (Note that profit is much less than the price of the add-on because the development costs have to be taken into account.)
Allocate some proportion of that profit to be 'comsumed' by providing after-sale support for that instance. Let's generously assume 50%, which comes to $5.
Every customer is entitled to support, but most will hopefully not want it. If only 25% of customers want support, that means $20 worth of support could be allocated to those customers that do want support.
Finally, assume that the developer's pay rate is $40/hour. (This is a very low rate in some countries, but very high in others.) $20 worth of support therefore equates to about half an hour. This includes the time taken to read the request and communicate the response.
Half an hour (minus communication time) doesn't get you a lot of custom coding. It might get you a couple of answers to questions about how to use the add-on.
You can change the assumptions I've made and redo the arithmetic, but I think you'll find that it's improbable that you'll be entitled to many hours of support per sale.
An exception would be if you've found a significant bug in the add-on within the warranty period (1 month). In this case, I think the developer should fix it even if that means running at a loss, or authorise a refund.
Gondwana I totally agree with you and despite the fact that numbers are against it I still always provide the best support and not only for bug fixes. I help buyers to create templates and achieve what they want. I lose money every time but I don't care because I know I'm building goodwill.
Almost all the reviews I get for my add-ons praise the quality of support.
So I'm really not happy in this kind of situation where despite a clear explanation and help provided above and beyond I get to see questions like the one that started this post.
It's... disappointing
Almost all the reviews I get for my add-ons praise the quality of support.
So I'm really not happy in this kind of situation where despite a clear explanation and help provided above and beyond I get to see questions like the one that started this post.
It's... disappointing
@mnakalay, I utterly understand; my situation is the same. I guess the TL;DR is that much support is done as a favour, rather than as an obligation to satisfy an entitlement.
I suspect that most c5 add-ons are not profitable in the sense that sales revenue wouldn't cover reasonable development costs. As such, the bucket of gold left to provide support is zero, which would justify a strict adherence to the marketplace's minimum support requirement.
The other factor that motivates me is that I want other people to like my babies. :)
I suspect that most c5 add-ons are not profitable in the sense that sales revenue wouldn't cover reasonable development costs. As such, the bucket of gold left to provide support is zero, which would justify a strict adherence to the marketplace's minimum support requirement.
The other factor that motivates me is that I want other people to like my babies. :)
In general, I believe add-on support should be used for reporting bugs, questions on add-on use not covered in documentation, and feature requests. I don't view these areas as something that should be limited to the 30 day support period. Questions that fall outside of these areas are optional and up to the developer to decide on whether to answer or not.
When it comes to add-on bugs, most developers want to be made aware of a bug so they can quickly fix it. This means one less potential support request in the future. That said, in many situations users may not understand what a legitimate bug is. Often users request support for an issue unrelated to the add-on, an expectation of a feature that is not currently offered, a misunderstanding of how concrete5 or the add-on works, or a request for instructions on how to customize an add-on.
When it comes to add-on bugs, most developers want to be made aware of a bug so they can quickly fix it. This means one less potential support request in the future. That said, in many situations users may not understand what a legitimate bug is. Often users request support for an issue unrelated to the add-on, an expectation of a feature that is not currently offered, a misunderstanding of how concrete5 or the add-on works, or a request for instructions on how to customize an add-on.
Hi @MrKDilkington,
All I wanted to know that if there is any guideline from concrete5 based on their policy. This was just general query and not attacking/blaming some one specifically. And I believe I have the right to know and I have not mentioned of any other issue. I too don't want to ask someone which will annoy him and which I should not ask. That's the reason behind this thread and I have got good information from from your reply.
Thanks!
All I wanted to know that if there is any guideline from concrete5 based on their policy. This was just general query and not attacking/blaming some one specifically. And I believe I have the right to know and I have not mentioned of any other issue. I too don't want to ask someone which will annoy him and which I should not ask. That's the reason behind this thread and I have got good information from from your reply.
Thanks!
If you don't get support you could try to get a refund (if you are still within the 30 days) or try to get help here in the forums.