Support status for 'customised' solutions

Following Neal Beadle's announcement that inserting a £(pound) sign in Powerstore (to replace the dollar sign) renders the solution ineligible for support, please could someone issue a definitive statement on support status for all solutions?

For instance, users have been frequently given advice by support staff when asking about adding extra fields to Contact Form Solution Pack (etc, etc). Are these solutions not now supported?

That's one tiny example!

Thanks.

We will continue to give advice on this forum as we have in the past. We just can't take responsibility for issues and elevate them to support incidents to work directly with engineers. This public forum policy has not changed. International support is not a feature in Powerstore currently, so adding it isn't directly supported.

We have always said that the purchase of the solution doesn't include customization. We take responsibility for installation, but once you hand edit the code to add features, you can't hold us responsible for fixing them (unless you are using an advertised feature of an extension to add that feature).

We'll give advice here as we have before for adding new features, or someone else from the community will, but if you have an issue following it, it really isn't our responsibility... we are still going to try to help.

The problem is that we sell some solutions to non-developers that try to take on developer tasks, then say we are responsible for making sure they are successful. Neil is just clarifying that we are not. Him creating a manual to help people do that particular task had blurred the line, but this is not really a change at all other than him taking down that one tutorial in order to prevent that false expectation.

This is and has been a support policy forever. This is a non-event in terms of changes to our response here in most cases. We will continue to give advice and you can continue to ask direct questions that will be answered on this forum.

In your example, we would still give the advice on adding the field just as we have before, but if you were unsuccessful for any reason we would not escalate it to a support incident for one of our engineers to look into with you over the phone, and you could not tell us that we had to fix it for you because we say it is supported.

Originally Said By: Ray Borduin

  International support is not a feature in Powerstore currently, so adding it isn't directly supported.  

Then you should make that clear in the marketing material. As it is, all that is said about it on the product FAQ page is, "all details for each individual product option (including price, image, cart description, short description, and long description) can be specified and customized for each individual product option you create."

All of this was in my post 'Regarding the locked (for some) thread about PowerStore Currency', in which I posed entirely valid questions regarding your duty to your International customers, and your inexplicable refusal to simply provide all the required replacement pages to accomodate the € or the £ currencies. The afterthought added to the supposed 'closed' thread by Neil Beadle stated bluntly that if those PowerStore product customers changed a $ symbol to a € or £, then they would no longer be supported. I merely want to point out that this is unacceptable.

I also took exception to the following statement:

Originally Said By: Neil Beadle

  We recognize that this is a problem for our international customers and it is on the list of feature requests that we are considering for a future release of PowerStore. This does not guarantee that this feature will be added in the next version but we do recognize that it is a requested feature which we are working hard to accommodate for.  

I would just like to reiterate for the lifetime of this post, that having a 'solution' that works off-the-shelf for international customers isn't a "feature", it is a requirement unless you specifically and openly market the product towards dollar economies only.

You market the product to Europe - the material arrive in our inboxes - and you are happy to take the cash when it arrives. If you bought a DVD unit that specified that all options can be configured - only to find out that it didn't support your region, and then to hear from the support line that any attempt to configure it for your region rendered you ineligible for support, you would be annoyed too. You would effectively have a dud on your hands.

Fine if you don't want foreigners as customers, - but then you shouldn't take the money and run and then treat us as second-class.

Also in my post was criticism of your policy of closing or disappearing threads that you simply don't like. Ironically, my post was removed.

Originally Said By: Ray Borduin

  The problem is that we sell some solutions to non-developers that try to take on developer tasks, then say we are responsible for making sure they are successful. Neil is just clarifying that we are not.  

Then Neil is, and you are wrong. You are indeed responsible for seeing that customers equally receive a product that works as a solution, and that works as advertised. People were forced into trying to make their own edits just in order to have a working, useable solution, because you are incapable of recognising and fulfilling your own obligations.

Your attitude in this matter dismays me. Please would you now provide replacement pages for (at least) € and £ currencies.

On the 14th May, you said that, "We will be creating other channels for product feedback, and communication to our management." and, "We will be creating a more appropriate area for this type of feedback in the upcoming months." Please could you update us as to how the arrangements for this are going?

There are a lot of features that don't exist in powerstore. We can't specifically call out each of them, that is why we have the demo site available so you can see which features do and don't exist. We will definitely try to make this more clear since recently more than one person has had that misconception. That was the point of Neil's post.

We will also update our product details page to be more clear about powerstore not currently including international currency support. Thank you for your feedback.

Thank you.