IPB track record.

[Mark]

[quote name='skysober' date='26 June 2009 - 04:51 PM' timestamp='1246031501' post='1815000']
My thought on trouble tickets... Why not just do as most dedicated servers offer or even as most commercial software support does. Instead of paying for something you hopefully will not need (and IPB software should work out of the box, so it isn't like one needs support daily,) Just have a set amount for a trouble ticket. Yup. If you are not paying for 'yearly' support, then have a set rate for each ticket.

And since it seems that past customers will continue to be locked out of the forums that give past assistance by IPB and customers helping customers with their purchased versions, maybe then offer a fee for past customers to access that area, which would solve about 99% of their need to even place a trouble ticket.

Ways need to be found to bring back old customers as well. In this depressive economic period where so many companies and businesses are going under, costs are being scaled back everywhere. It's always simple business logic to have many customers at a low price, then a few at a high price. Loose those few at the high price and it's all over... loose a few low price customers and it doesn't impact the company as much.

For myself, being out of work for almost 7 months now (Southern California is officially at 11.2% unemployment, but in reality closer to 22%,) if the dedicated servers had not gone down to half in price, I would have shut down all of my servers. Donations into one site for example last year was about $350 a month. This year it's been an average of less than $50... Ways to save, and ways to retain customers, must be looked at closely, and means to get even a small profit is better than no profit at all - which is what happens if it is out of reach...


Personally I hate it when companies do that.

Not to mention, what if someone pays for a ticket and it turns out to be a problem with their host? They'll want their money back..
Too much hassle in my opinion.

[Smokey-Rev]

I'm waiting to update to 3.0.0 because I have a custom modification i want to take with me when I go to 3.0.0. :) Plus the skins I have as well. I'd say it's safe to update to 3.0.1 or even 3.0.2 but i think I'll stay on 2.3.6 just a bit longer. :)