IPS, Full of Magicians?

[EBrown]

So I was recently thinking, IPS has done a lot of stuff, put up with a lot of crap (especially mine), and still come through amazingly. I just wanted to give the whole development, management, and support team an Ego boost.

My thoughts on IPS:
1. They are EXTREMELY FRIENDLY. The support staff has always answered my questions, except for one, regardless of what it was. They gave quick, useful, and intelligent responses, and most of all, they were not sarcastic or senile about it. Thank you support staff!
2. The development team is EXTREMELY FAST. They put out updates in very good intervals. They don't wait two months to fix a major bug, instead they fix it, and release once they have fixed several. The products work as, or better than, expected, and they don't discourage modification. Thank you development team!
3. They encourage COMMUNITY SUPPORT. Unlike many other places I have gone, they want the community to be active in helping other members as well. They allow the community to give assistance, and they will make those topics explicitly visible. Thank you management!
4. They don't LEAVE SOMETHING UNFINISHED. Many other development teams will abandon a project halfway through, and go through more team changes in a version release than the rest of the staff. They follow most, if not all, of the code guidelines set by W3, as well as other places. Thank you development team!

All in all, I think that IPS is one of the most, if not the most, supportive forum community out there. They are always supportive, and try to help you the best they can. Keep up the good work! :)

Thanks,
EBrown

[Collin S.]

Thanks for your positive feedback! :cool:

If you still have that one unanswered question, feel free to link to it and someone can take a look. :thumbsup:

(Yes, We are indeed Magic. :sorcerer: )

[xLemur]

You forgot something, mainly my favorite thing about the IPS Staff.

They don't copy and paste things to reply to your ticket.
Unlike most people, they don't :D

[Alex]

Thank you for the feedback :D

[Mike54]

Charles asked me once to be sure to contact him if I ever saw anything wrong with how IPS treats me as a customer. He's still waiting.

I recently had someone associated with another forum script call me an IPB fanboy, because I always speak so positively about IPS. I guess if being honest makes me a fanboy, I need to get used to the moniker. The people that make up IPS are worth every dime of the license costs. And the software that comes along with the package is nothing short of incredible.

We gripe when people give us poor service or poor products. So I always like to remind the people that go the extra mile how pleased I am to deal with them.

One aspect I really enjoy is how everyone associated with IPS has taken interest in seeing my sites succeed. How can you put a price on that kind of customer service? The sad part is something like that is intangible and prospective customers don't actually see that beforehand. So threads like this are good, because it lets those people see how pleased IPS customers are with the company.

Thanks to everyone at IPS!

[AndyF]

It's always nice to read positive feedback. Thank you for taking the time to post it. :)

[EBrown]

Thanks for your positive feedback! :cool:

If you still have that one unanswered question, feel free to link to it and someone can take a look. :thumbsup:

(Yes, We are indeed Magic. :sorcerer: )

Actually, I fixed it myself. :)

You forgot something, mainly my favorite thing about the IPS Staff.

They don't copy and paste things to reply to your ticket.

Unlike most people, they don't :D

That too. :D

Thank you for the feedback :D

Not a problem.

Charles asked me once to be sure to contact him if I ever saw anything wrong with how IPS treats me as a customer. He's still waiting.

I recently had someone associated with another forum script call me an IPB fanboy, because I always speak so positively about IPS. I guess if being honest makes me a fanboy, I need to get used to the moniker. The people that make up IPS are worth every dime of the license costs. And the software that comes along with the package is nothing short of incredible.

We gripe when people give us poor service or poor products. So I always like to remind the people that go the extra mile how pleased I am to deal with them.

One aspect I really enjoy is how everyone associated with IPS has taken interest in seeing my sites succeed. How can you put a price on that kind of customer service? The sad part is something like that is intangible and prospective customers don't actually see that beforehand. So threads like this are good, because it lets those people see how pleased IPS customers are with the company.

Thanks to everyone at IPS!

I agree. They actually CARE about their customers, they look at us like people, not a price tag. We are a person, with a face, not a dollar sign.

It's always nice to read positive feedback. Thank you for taking the time to post it. :)

I see so much negativity that I think a positive bit would do you all some good.

Thanks,
EBrown

[Nityananda]

Day 1 of IPB I had a serious issue with using the purchasing system to actually buy the products in the first place. Due to this I had missed out on the promotion of it ...... My experience with a previous product left me to feel annoyed about this and send a rather abrupt email to the staff of this place complaining of "How can you seriously expect to have a decent product when I cant even buy it" ..

What happened? I was asked for my telephone number (baring in mind I am in the UK, not the US) and within around half hour I had a call ....... From some customer service staff? Nope ... From Charles who had never heard of me before, never spoken to me before not even on here. All was sorted and I was up and running with a download of the software at the price I wanted when I was trying to purchase.

Changed my view about customer service that did. And now I am patient at all times as I know when I am waiting for something, there would be a good reason for such .................. It makes a massive massive difference to people it really does. I am now a loyal customer who thoroughly enjoys using the product on my community. It has its querks, sometimes I wish it had xyz I was used to on my old software, but nothing would make me move as I get exactly what I expect as a customer and its simple really.

A product I can use

Staff I can rely on

A member base I can enjoy

And most of all respect as another PERSON, not a customer.

[EBrown]

Day 1 of IPB I had a serious issue with using the purchasing system to actually buy the products in the first place. Due to this I had missed out on the promotion of it ...... My experience with a previous product left me to feel annoyed about this and send a rather abrupt email to the staff of this place complaining of "How can you seriously expect to have a decent product when I cant even buy it" ..

What happened? I was asked for my telephone number (baring in mind I am in the UK, not the US) and within around half hour I had a call ....... From some customer service staff? Nope ... From Charles who had never heard of me before, never spoken to me before not even on here. All was sorted and I was up and running with a download of the software at the price I wanted when I was trying to purchase.

Changed my view about customer service that did. And now I am patient at all times as I know when I am waiting for something, there would be a good reason for such .................. It makes a massive massive difference to people it really does. I am now a loyal customer who thoroughly enjoys using the product on my community. It has its querks, sometimes I wish it had xyz I was used to on my old software, but nothing would make me move as I get exactly what I expect as a customer and its simple really.

A product I can use

Staff I can rely on

A member base I can enjoy

And most of all respect as another PERSON, not a customer.

See, I had an experience with IP.Chat once. I had upgraded to IP.B 3.1.2 (I always upgrade at night, since most of my users are asleep,) and I submitted a support ticket because IP.Chat wouldn't work, that morning, probably around 8:00 AM, I got a response, and it was taken care of. Though I no longer use it, this has definitely improved my opinion of the staff, they don't say "Well have you tried" for things like that, they get to the root of the prioblem and fix it.

Thanks,
EBrown

[Aurélio "Baboo"]

Magician? Only for kids!! They don't LEAVE SOMETHING UNFINISHED?? You must be kidding!!!

We´re trying to update our 2.35 board to 3.12 since July 5th (72 DAYS AGO), but due to the probably worst piece of code wrote by IPB (MSSQL upgrade script from 2.x to 3.x), we are unable to do that. Our board is huge (3 million messages and 500,000 registered users) and we have Business License, but even so the Support team was AWFUL.

During the first *41 DAYS*, Giuseppe, Logan, Mark, Matt and Brandon tried to help us without succcess. Then Jason Lombardozzi was assigned to assist us in our huge ticket, and he took almost ONE MONTH to finally solve the problems.

TODAY (Friday Sept 17th) we finally moved from 2.35 to 3.12, but we had a problem with all modules (Downloads, Gallery, Blog..). I posted the problem at 4:22pm and until now we had NO ANSWER from IPS - and obviously will not have any response until next Monday. Now we will have to figure out the problem because we need to publish our board asap.

Simple questions:

1. Why IPS client doesn´t have a REAL CUSTOMER COMMITMENT when they need most??
2. After *72 DAYS* waiting for this day, why IPS doesn´t get us a decent attention??
3. Isn´t Tech Support Hours listed as "Monday - Friday: 9am - 6pm EST" on http://www.invisionpower.com/company/contact.php??

I don´t care about magicians in IPS, because magicians are for kids. I want something for grown ups: where is the Support Team on friday afternoon??

[Lindy]

Baboo - we'll be the first to admit we're not a perfect organization. I think you'll find the overwhelming majority of our customers are very pleased with the professional, efficient support we provide. Unfortunately, there's always a unique case in the bunch. Your situation is most definitely unique. It is unfortunate that your upgrade issues have taken so long and I do deeply apologize for those delays. While there were some MSSQL driver issues that needed to be corrected on a code level, much of this can also be attributed to an unusual server configuration coupled with the fact that resources to support MSSQL are more limited within IPS as it is used by only a very small fraction of our customer base these days. We've done our very best and dedicated our best technicians and developers to your case - I am sorry that you're dissatisfied with the result, but we will continue to do what we can to assist.

In regards to response times. Again, I'm disappointed that you're dissatisfied with the level of service you've been provided. It appears Jason L has replied to you several times today. I can surely appreciate you would have liked another response, but unfortunately, you submitted your last inquiry towards the end of the business day. In a normal situation, this wouldn't be an issue as we do staff around the clock for general support - but again, your issue is unique and specialized, requiring higher level attention.

We'll do everything we can to get this resolved for you in a timely fashion. I appreciate your patience. Please feel free to contact me directly via e-mail or PM if you wish to discuss this further. :)

[Aurélio "Baboo"]

Lindy, I just expect a real IPS commitment regarding our case. If my issue requires a higher level of attention, that´s exactly what you should provide in the day we´re finally installing 3.12 in our production server. Jason Lombardozzi has provided an excelent support for our ticket, but the day we needed most his skills, unfortunately we couldn´t reach him during working hour.

Now it´s Monday afternoon and the status is absolutely the same from 3 days ago. Don´t blame me not being happy with IPS support.

I understand IPB is a LAMP company and we use Windows and MSSQL, but we should not be penalized because of this. Our discussion board is listed in global Microsoft Case Study website because of the excelent performance we´ve achieved (22,000 concurrent users in one server) using Windows Server 2008/IIS7 with PHP (http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?CaseStudyID=4000003003) and after almost 10 years online, our board is the only discussion board listed in Brazilian Microsoft website for helping users: http://windows.microsoft.com/pt-BR/windows/help/community. We work hard to provide an excelent service for our users.

If you have limited support in IPS to handle Windows/MSSQL scenario, just hire a consultant and he will do the job for you - after all, the MSSQL script must be created once, and the problem would be over in a week. 74 days to correct a MSSQL script and crush a few bug is simply unacceptable. I think the goal of IPS in our "unique case" should be helping us to migrate from 2.x to 3.x asap and close the ticket. The priority in our case should be higher just because probably we have the oldest ticket open.

Don´t get me wrong: IPB is an awesome product and we always tell anyone who ask us. It has some problems (as any product), but it works fine and has some impressive features. And in my opinion IPS was great before the ticket we opened on July 5th. We´re now looking forward to have all bugs solved and close the ticket.

[Robulosity2]

I enjoy how you expect IPS to not give their employee's a day off...

For specialized setups, pre-production upgrade are a requirement for any site.. Specalized support is always going to take longer

And being there are bugs in SQL Server that have existed for years, 74 days to resolve a query issue isn't insanely unreasonable when you haven't deployed the product yet