Issues with support

[The.Reaper]

Hey,

Recently i have been having alot of issues with the IPB software, updates have broken my forums every update for the past 5 updates and obviously when these things go wrong i look to turn to the company that produces the software the company i pay a subscription for support.

I used to get responses within an hour of posting my ticket and the response would feel like they really wanted to help me, i can't say this is the case now, tickets i have been submitting recently have a very rushed non helpful feel to them, they have been short sentences not even relevant to my question and always trying to direct me in the wrong direction to get things fixed, there seems to be no hands on help anymore and as someone not very computer savvy this comes as a massive disappointment to me.

The strange thing about this is i see people every now and then praising the support for helping them do things i have been refused help with in the past, i am not sure if my account has some black mark on it or if i am just unlucky with my pick of support representatives but i am not happy with the level of support i receive and i feel if i don't voice this opinion then nothing will change.

Thanks.

[Sethhh.]

I'm in the same situation as you. It is so annoying to wait 7-8 days or more for an answer.. 

Bad happens..

[Admonstrator]

I understand your problem and I'm unhappy with the level of quality too. 
But in fact I'm unhappy with the quality of the product not support. Every update creates more issues and it seems like there is no automatic testing or a code review process. I'm happy with support - response time is about 1-2 days and if I respond within an hour support is responding really fast too. That is okay for me.

I would recommend that you create yourself a environment for testing so updates will not break your community and you can check back with support before you going to upgrade your productive environment. It's the best way to be happy with upcoming updates.

[Lindy]

7 hours ago, Fredss said:

Hey,

Recently i have been having alot of issues with the IPB software, updates have broken my forums every update for the past 5 updates and obviously when these things go wrong i look to turn to the company that produces the software the company i pay a subscription for support.

I used to get responses within an hour of posting my ticket and the response would feel like they really wanted to help me, i can't say this is the case now, tickets i have been submitting recently have a very rushed non helpful feel to them, they have been short sentences not even relevant to my question and always trying to direct me in the wrong direction to get things fixed, there seems to be no hands on help anymore and as someone not very computer savvy this comes as a massive disappointment to me.

The strange thing about this is i see people every now and then praising the support for helping them do things i have been refused help with in the past, i am not sure if my account has some black mark on it or if i am just unlucky with my pick of support representatives but i am not happy with the level of support i receive and i feel if i don't voice this opinion then nothing will change.

Thanks.

I appreciate you taking the time to reach out and share your feedback. I've taken the liberty of reviewing your recent ticket history and your last upgrade failed due to MySQL server timeouts. You had issues with the most recent upgrade because your server runs in a way that does not allow uploaded files to be executed without manually changing permissions. It's certainly frustrating as a client to be caught in the middle between software and hosting. That is why we ultimately began offering our own service many years ago and it's something you may wish to consider. Unfortunately, we simply don't have the resources to debug, support and account for self-hosted environments that aren't explicitly related to our software. 

While I wish you wouldn't use profanity in your tickets, you don't have any black marks on your account, I assure you. We're just simply not in a position where we can be technical support for our product and your hosting provider. When you self-host, there's an inherent requirement to either be 1) Proficient with basic hosting functions such as changing file permissions/chmod and/or 2) Having a great host that will assist you every step of the way. If you're not technically savvy and don't wish to peruse our Community in the Cloud service and your host won't provide that extra level of service -- you will struggle, unfortunately. Again, I'm sorry for your frustration. 

It seems your issues are resolved, but please let us know if you need further assistance. Thank you.

 

5 hours ago, Sethhh. said:

I'm in the same situation as you. It is so annoying to wait 7-8 days or more for an answer.. 

Bad happens..

I'm very sorry for the delay. We perform IPB 3 to IPS4 upgrades as a courtesy to IPB clients as it can indeed be daunting making that initial plunge. Unfortunately, as this is a courtesy service, it is not treated with priority relative to clients with production issues. As such, as noted on the upgrade request page, upgrades can take ~10 days. Based on your position in the upgrade queue, it shouldn't be too much longer. Thanks for your patience!

 

4 hours ago, Admonstrator said:

I understand your problem and I'm unhappy with the level of quality too. 
But in fact I'm unhappy with the quality of the product not support. Every update creates more issues and it seems like there is no automatic testing or a code review process. I'm happy with support - response time is about 1-2 days and if I respond within an hour support is responding really fast too. That is okay for me.

I would recommend that you create yourself a environment for testing so updates will not break your community and you can check back with support before you going to upgrade your productive environment. It's the best way to be happy with upcoming updates.

You've definitely had an unfortunate series of issues that have required escalation to advanced support and development. I'm sorry for the inconvenience and appreciate you giving us the opportunity to work through them for you.

 

Regarding upgrades in general, we are expanding our testing team and including clients that have had difficult upgrades willing to upgrade production sites while our support and development teams work with them to do so. All of our releases are extensively tested, but we cannot account for all various configurations and uses so this should help.