Bad support, misrepresentation about licensing

  • agupta122

    (@agupta122)


    6 years, 1 month ago

    Do not get this plugin or you’ll be sorry even if you pay unless you really want to pay them, when other gallery alternatives are much better. The FREE version of this gallery has a limit on photos of 20. You find that out when error message comes when you try to upload more, after you have wasted time. So I went to see how much their license would cost. On their page, it clearly states $29 license for 2 sites and in the bottom, it says it comes with 1 year of support for the “Duo” (2 site license). You would think the license means right to have plug-in for life but this is not the case. Once i bought it, i received an email saying i’ve been enrolled in annual subscription for $29/year. There was no indication of this subscription when purchasing. When I talked to support, in their own words, they said “If you stop the yearly payment, the only thing that will expire is your license, after a year…”. Yes, my license will expire, and that’s what I thought I paid the money to have for lifetime. Deceptive practices. They also refused to return money even though i didn’t use the plugin and ended up using “Photo Gallery” plugin that allows unlimited photos for free. I had to initiate credit card charge back and dispute process because these guys can’t do the right thing.

    • This topic was modified 6 years, 1 month ago by agupta122.
Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • Macho Themes

    (@machothemes)

    6 years, 1 month ago

    Hi Amit,

    I am sorry you feel that Modula isn’t worth the $29 you’ve paid for it (that we’ve gone ahead and refunded in the meantime) and that you’ve wasted your time with it.

    —————————————————
    Re. the 20 image limitation:
    —————————————————

    In hindsight, the 20 image limitation is visible only in 3 different places for Modula:

    1. On the plugin’s WordPress.org page, right below the presentation video. (See screenshot for more details: https://i.gyazo.com/153b5c2e02e3537cd32801a22c914c1e.png)
    2. Inside the plugin, right before you add the images inside the gallery. (See screenshot for more details: https://gyazo.com/19a6eeaf5f0d100d69411fd6482be41e)
    3. Inside the plugin, under “Upgrade to PRO” (dedicated sub-menu page under “Modula”), comparison table. See screenshot for more details: https://gyazo.com/6504644bd50f05c0f8f6e90d755f9777).

    I’m sorry it wasn’t more obvious, we’ve tried to keep our layout clean. Thanks you though for bringing this up.

    —————————————————
    RE. licensing “misrepresentation”
    —————————————————

    I’m not sure you’ve actually looked at our website and/or ToC. This is a screenshot as taken straight from ToC page: https://gyazo.com/d354861be68c2bf28f8ae7650bda075e which you can see here: https://wp-modula.com/terms-of-service/ (and are 100% visible in our site’s footer).

    This is not a measure of refusing to refund orders, which, we gladly do if there’s anything wrong with our software.

    Because we are working with digital products, we have no way to fight attempts of fraud and the only way to do is to offer a refund only when the plugin is not working as it should be and we have tried fixing it, but could not.
    This is also not something we have tried to hide, as you can see it on our terms and conditions page (screenshot for your convenience: https://gyazo.com/d354861be68c2bf28f8ae7650bda075e)

    —————————————————
    Re. pricing “misrepresentation”
    —————————————————

    This is a screenshot of our pricing page (this pricing table hasn’t changed in the past two years): https://gyazo.com/59b783307e4ff4216eeae8b74711ead1. More so, Mihaela, our support rep. has already explained (two times) that you are getting the product for life but as explained in our pricing table, you will only have access to updates & support for 1 year, in your case, for two different websites. (Screenshot, with more details: https://gyazo.com/413f25d8ed3fb16ddf3dfb2d53a49b15).

    Also, there’s two more distinct places where you could see that this is actually a subscription (that you can cancel right after you’ve made the first payment, basically, turning this into a one-time payment plugin FOR LIFETIME).

    1. First place: the payment pop-up: https://gyazo.com/a28f75c8fa87f0fea40e27c505fbcff1
    2. Second place: the email you get from FastSpring after you’ve successfully paid.

    —————————————————
    Re. not doing “the right thing”
    —————————————————

    You’ve mentioned that we’re not willing to “do the right thing”, yet you’re threatening us that if we don’t refund you, you’ll leave negative reviews about our product (which you’ve already done).

    I can understand the buyers remorse, but you didn’t even bother doing your due diligence research before jumping in and paying and knowing if Modula is what you need.

    More so, you’ve reached out to support with issues that Mihaela tried to help you with, but you refused to be helped.

    —————————————————
    Summary:
    —————————————————

    1. You got the PRO files for free (Which you can keep & use for free to the rest of your life)
    2. You left a bad review for us because you couldn’t be bothered to actually read: our pricing table, our plugin’s LITE vs PRO comparison table and/or ToC, you just went ahead and purchased.
    3. Not once did you bother to check your concerns with our support team, before actually buying.
    4. You’ve distorted the reality and turned it into a review.
    5. You’re holding us accountable for everything you weren’t able to do.
    6. We’ve offered support, our help, a refund, our hard-worked PRO plugin for free – everything done with a smile on our face FWIW.

    Congratulations, you’ve managed to bully us into giving you a couple hours of our support time and 2 years of development time for free while also giving us a bad review in the end.

    If you’ve reached the end of this post, thank you for taking the time to read this.

    Please let me know if there’s anything else I can help you with – I’m happy to help.

    Respectfully,
    Cristian.

    • This reply was modified 6 years, 1 month ago by Macho Themes.
    • This reply was modified 6 years, 1 month ago by Macho Themes. Reason: minor edits
    • This reply was modified 6 years, 1 month ago by Macho Themes.
    • This reply was modified 6 years, 1 month ago by Macho Themes.
    • This reply was modified 6 years, 1 month ago by Macho Themes.
    Thread Starter agupta122

    (@agupta122)

    6 years, 1 month ago

    Nonsense. You’re entire tone of talking is nonsense and you are the one distorting reality. Your own pricing table states “$29” for Duo. Where does it say next to $29 “Per Year”? It doesn’t. And I mean the word “license” (not updates/support etc). Your own emails to me clearly stated, I will have “license for 1 year”. That’s NOT what I bought and that was NOT stated in your pricing table. You want to hide things in terms of service and say you did your job, shame on you, expecting that people will sit and read TOC’s everywhere on the web! The fact that you point to TOC as where you put it, clearly shows your intent to hide this fact from the pricing table and not make it clear. To have your free version limited to 20 photo limit is not an issue for me. That’s your choice, its your product. I said, the reason i purchased license is because of 20 license limit. Even when other photo galleries are free to add as many pictures as you want. Your support sent me 2 emails refusing to refund. A proper customer service would have heard my issue that I thought I was buying a one-time license for $29 but you sent an email subscribing me to annual subscription to have a “license” (I have copies of your emails if you like me to post them here).
    You should have simply said, fine, if you’re not happy, here is a refund. Instead you refused and argued. That’s what earned you a review here. Next time you know, what customer support is all about. Help out your customers as much as you can, and you will earn rave reviews. If they are misunderstanding something, clear that.
    If your website isn’t clear, make it clear. That’s what makes a great company and product. You needed to own up to it. You finally did, so i’m glad you realized so thanks. Too bad it took so much back and forth and posting of bad review. See, if you did this refund the first time, all the hassle would have been avoided. Don’t be greedy just for $29. I want my $29 to go towards a simple photo gallery that I can use on my site for a long-time to come without worrying about not having a “license” after a year. Lesson learned for you I hope. Lesson learned for me too…I should read TOCs from plug-in makers 🙂

    Thread Starter agupta122

    (@agupta122)

    6 years, 1 month ago

    Since I have done software biz for 20 years, let me give you a suggestion for future:
    – Clearly state in this area https://i.gyazo.com/153b5c2e02e3537cd32801a22c914c1e.png that what you are purchasing is a lifetime license (no different than any other software i purchase and keep for long time).
    – State that updates and support are free for 12 months, after that, in order to get updates/support, there is a fee of $xxx/year
    – Some software companies also state that they will no longer support the version purchased after certain number of years, if the user has not upgraded since their first purchase.

    If you rather do a ‘subscription’ / Saas license model, then you state that the license itself is $29/year. In which case, PRO version expires after 1 year. In this case, I would expect my PRO version to become LITE version after 1 year. Your emails to me kept telling me that i will have a license for 1 year but i can keep PRO for beyond that. That is confusing. License for 1 year means, you won’t give me PRO after 1 year. This is why I decided to avoid all this licensing confusion and ask refund before even using the product. $29/year license is a perpetual license- not something I wanted to pay for. Lifetime license for $29 is something I wanted and would have paid for, but you have to tell me that license is valid for lifetime (not 1 year – per your emails).

    Macho Themes

    (@machothemes)

    6 years, 1 month ago

    @agupta122 – I think our phrasing about what a license is is confusing. The license, is actually a “key”, similar to a software key (think of a Windows 10 license key), that we use to limit the number of websites we give support for. There’s no actual limitation imposed on the software itself after the license key expires. So, to put it simply, after the license key expires, the software won’t go from PRO to LITE, it will still remain PRO.

    As Mihaela has explained to you, you can keep using the software for your entire lifetime, the only thing that you won’t be able to access after 1 year is updates and/or support. The software will keep on working absolutely fine. That’s why we have the ToC in place, to protect ourselves from situations where we get chargebacks after the purchase was done just to obtain the PRO files. It’s pretty much industry standard.

    Nonetheless, thank you for the valuable lesson you’ve taught us. We can’t argue with the fact that we’re not perfect, our products aren’t perfect nor our approaches. We’re here to learn and improve based on what we can learn.

    Every type of review is welcomed, even it’s a negative one.

    Thank you for taking the time to review our product, I sincerely appreciate the effort & time you’ve put into this.

    Thanks,
    Cristian.

    • This reply was modified 6 years, 1 month ago by Macho Themes.
    Macho Themes

    (@machothemes)

    6 years, 1 month ago

    @agupta122 – yep, it looks like all this confusion has actually stemmed from the fact that we weren’t more clear on what exactly a “license” means 🙂

    I realised this as well today and I’ll look into addressing it in our pricing table. Thanks for the tips 🙂

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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