Jibeji Posted December 23, 2016 Posted December 23, 2016 The product is quite good (when it works) but I am really angry about the Support which is useless. As a customer since 2011, I have raised 6 technical supports but only 1 was solved with their help. Here are the answers for the 5 others... November 2012 - Backup question Quote IP.Board 3.1.4 is now quite old and considered "end of life" which means we are unable to support it via the ticket system either. June 2013 - ACP crashes Quote Unfortunately as my colleagues mentioned we are unable to help with custom language packs via the ticket system I'm afraid January 2014 - Malicious code injection No answer except, found the solution by myself then: Quote If I may I ask, what was it that you did to fix this? We'd like as much information about this redirect issue as we can get, for the benefit of all. November 2016 - Login/logout issue Quote I'm afraid we are not able to provide any server side configuration assistance or troubleshooting, however the symptoms your site is displaying here are indicative of a configuration issue. November 2016 - SSO issue Quote Unfortunately, this issue is beyond the scope of our usual technical support.
opentype Posted December 23, 2016 Posted December 23, 2016 Quote Support is useless !!! No, it isn’t. I got 35 support tickets on file now and 95% are handled perfectly fine and end with a solution for the problem they were opened for. But if your are asking questions, which are “out of scope”, then they are out of scope. They don’t advertise to solve these kind of problems, so you can’t really blame them for not solving them.
AndyF Posted December 23, 2016 Posted December 23, 2016 I'm not involved in Support via the client area however from your quotes it "appears" the issues you raised relate to End Of Life products (past their support expiry) , third party items and server configuration questions. I apologise if I have misread your post. I would however recommend if you are ever unhappy with responses from a support technician to a support request or feel the issue is not being answered to your satisfaction please say this in the ticket and ask for it to be escalated.
Management Matt Posted December 23, 2016 Management Posted December 23, 2016 Hi Jibeji. I'm really sorry that you feel that support hasn't been as helpful as you'd have liked. We have a hard working team who pride themselves on doing the best for our customers. I won't claim that we're 100% perfect, but I feel that we work hard and generally customer satisfaction is very good judging by the customer ratings on support tickets. However, I must say that judging by the replies you've had on the issues you've raised, they do seem fair. 3.4 is now EOL, and we always ask for as much information when someone raises a security concern and as per our terms of service we do not assist with custom coding or we'd get nothing else done. If you disagree with what has been said, you are always welcome to reply again or even escalate it to a manager. We never expect you to disagree in silence or feel frustrated enough to post on our forums.
Jibeji Posted December 23, 2016 Author Posted December 23, 2016 Hello, Please look at the dates. When I had a major security issue on IPB 3.4, correct me if I'm wrong but it was not out of date at this time. I am now trying to migrate to 4.1.17 and am not able to do it because of issues that are "out of scope"...
Management Matt Posted December 23, 2016 Management Posted December 23, 2016 As mentioned above, we can't really assist with custom code that you or a contractor has written. I think almost everyone will agree that it is not for us to fix or support. Often we'll give pointers if we can though. If you're talking about your log in issue, then it does look like a SSO issue as I had the error "There was an error processing your login request at one of the sites in our network." which isn't an IPS4 error. I've just reviewed ticket 970750 and I stand by what my colleague Jim said in that debugging your custom SSO is beyond the scope of support. We provide an example of a custom login handler in our documentation but it is to be used as a base for your own work and not designed to be used as-is. Why not post in here and other modification authors can help you.
Management Matt Posted December 23, 2016 Management Posted December 23, 2016 Edit: I see you already have. Hopefully you'll get assistance soon.
Simon Woods Posted December 23, 2016 Posted December 23, 2016 Couldn't disagree more. Just looking at the quotes you've provided it appears that you expect IPS to run your entire site for you, including the parts their product has very little to do with. You should look more closely at what IPS defines as support before you declare it useless.
Jibeji Posted December 23, 2016 Author Posted December 23, 2016 10 hours ago, Matt said: I've just reviewed ticket 970750 and I stand by what my colleague Jim said in that debugging your custom SSO is beyond the scope of support. We provide an example of a custom login handler in our documentation but it is to be used as a base for your own work and not designed to be used as-is. It's not custom SSO ! It's a test based on the information you provide ! You guys proudly announce IPS Connect here : And you provide some documentation about it : But my question about IPS Connect is out of scope... For information, the other login/logout issue I had was also "out of Support scope" but was solved thanks to an user who found some bad records in the database! Everything at Invision is out of scope by default...
Management Lindy Posted December 24, 2016 Management Posted December 24, 2016 I'm sorry you're frustrated. Customizations to the software are not within the scope of support and unfortunately, that's where most of your concerns seem to stem from -- custom/broken language packs, refactoring your SSO, etc. As much as we would love to provide custom support via the client area, it's simply not feasible as our technicians are not developers and our developers must remain focused on actual product development and resolving core concerns for clients. It is in fact true that we provide IPS Connect as a mechanism for login integration and we've documented how to use it. While we will fix bugs and maintain the module, we cannot help write your code or troubleshoot what you may be doing wrong in an official capacity - again, it's simply not practical. For this, we offer a development assistance forum with very talented third party developers and our own developers visit as well, time-permitting.
Wayne B Posted December 24, 2016 Posted December 24, 2016 I have to disagree totally here with the IP - I can quote examples where I have also got frustrated at the speed of the responses or lack of but in all honesty the support has been good and comprehensive. @Matt recently speant a significant amount of time assisting to upgrade one of our older forums that would not upgrade due to a database issue - extensive troubleshooting took place and Matt got us upgraded within a week. Personally, I'm very grateful for the help and support I have had and I think any criticism needs to be balanced.
LiquidFractal Posted December 25, 2016 Posted December 25, 2016 I can only speak to my own experience with IPS Support. In short, I would say I am highly satisfied with 99% of all the answers and help I've been given. In my experience, they've been nothing short of friendly, professional, and helpful - even with the n00b questions (where I cringe after asking them thinking gee, had i researched the issue for 5 more minutes....). PS to the OP: all of the responses from IPS you quote seem perfectly rational to me. You will find many of the same restrictions on many, many other software packages in terms of support. Moral of the story: READ THE TOS (Terms of Service)
Jibeji Posted December 25, 2016 Author Posted December 25, 2016 I am sure there are many people happy, but I am not. On 24/12/2016 at 6:31 AM, Lindy said: It is in fact true that we provide IPS Connect as a mechanism for login integration and we've documented how to use it. While we will fix bugs and maintain the module, we cannot help write your code or troubleshoot what you may be doing wrong in an official capacity - again, it's simply not practical. For this, we offer a development assistance forum with very talented third party developers and our own developers visit as well, time-permitting. You, like all the staff, misquote what I asked. I didn't ask you to troubleshoot nor write my code, I was asking a question! Do your customers have to reverse engineer IPS Connect to use it? I am wondering how the very talented third party developers can help if you do not even deign to answer the questions.
Claire Field Posted December 25, 2016 Posted December 25, 2016 11 minutes ago, Jibeji said: I am sure there are many people happy, but I am not. You, like all the staff, misquote what I asked. I didn't ask you to troubleshoot nor write my code, I was asking a question! Do your customers have to reverse engineer IPS Connect to use it? I am wondering how the very talented third party developers can help if you do not even deign to answer the questions. What is your precise issue with IPS connect? What is the support given to IPS connect within their ToS?
opentype Posted December 25, 2016 Posted December 25, 2016 1 hour ago, Jibeji said: You, like all the staff, misquote what I asked. I didn't ask you to troubleshoot nor write my code, I was asking a question! It’s irrelevant if it was phrased as question or not. In that question you now showed, you present your own (SSO) code — and with that, it’s clearly already “out of scope” for the reasons already explained. It’s not even in a grey area. If you were expecting these type of questions to be answered via support tickets, you haven’t checked in advance what the support is about. That’s okay. No big deal. But at least after these limits were pointed out and explained to you, you need to accept them now.
Jibeji Posted December 25, 2016 Author Posted December 25, 2016 It's not irrelevant, misquoting is dishonnest. Don't worry, I have clearly understood I must accept not to use a product I have bought!!
opentype Posted December 25, 2016 Posted December 25, 2016 33 minutes ago, Jibeji said: It's not irrelevant, misquoting is dishonnest. Don't worry, I have clearly understood I must accept not to use a product I have bought!! If you care about honesty, how about having a calm and factual discussion about what bothers you? What you are doing here is just an angry rant. There isn’t much honesty in your exaggerated (“Support is useless !!!”) and pointless (“I must accept not to use a product I have bought”) comments, is there? You have been presented with good reasons why support is the way it is. Now it’s your turn to consider these reasons, calm down, and go the proper routes to get help for your questions. Making angry comments won’t help you. (It might actually get you less help.) Oh, and regarding that misquoting … You presented your custom SSO code and asked support questions about it, since it didn’t work as expected. Lindy replied: “we cannot help write your code or troubleshoot what you may be doing wrong”. Where exactly should the misquoting be? Answering this support question means “helping your write your code”. What else should it mean? I really can’t see the misquoting/dishonesty.
Jibeji Posted December 25, 2016 Author Posted December 25, 2016 Misquoting because I didn't ask the Support to write my code, contrarily at it was presented here by the staff. How to ask a technical question without presenting a bit of code? You are right, that topic is not constructive, but I have ever tried to fix the issues by myself without anoying the Support with futile questions and each time I've contacted them, it did not help, even when the issues were purely product related. I'm sure you will understand that makes me angry. And yes, I must admit that knowing I can't get help on a product I own makes also me angry.
opentype Posted December 25, 2016 Posted December 25, 2016 4 minutes ago, Jibeji said: Misquoting because I didn't ask the Support to write my code, contrarily at it was presented here by the staff. It doesn’t get true just because you repeat it. Show it to be true or accept that it wasn’t true to begin with. Matt said “assist with custom coding” twice. Lindy said “we cannot help write your code or troubleshoot what you may be doing wrong”. Bot clearly meant helping you to write your code by answering your questions. No one said anywhere that you asked them to write code for you. Either you misunderstand that or it is in fact you who misrepresents what the staff members have said.
Jibeji Posted December 25, 2016 Author Posted December 25, 2016 That's how I had understood " we cannot help write your code " You are right. English is not my mother language, I apologize to Lindy.
Tracy Perry Posted December 28, 2016 Posted December 28, 2016 Most folks that know me know that I can be a VERY vocal critic (right @Lindy ) but all the support tickets I've had to submit have been responded to in an entirely satisfactorily manner. Some aspects of support that people expect are beyond the level of core script support.
Management Lindy Posted December 30, 2016 Management Posted December 30, 2016 14 hours ago, Tracy Perry said: Most folks that know me know that I can be a VERY vocal critic (right @Lindy ) When you get a moment, could you share your thoughts on Sphinx support? Seriously though. Thanks for your kind words, Tracy.
Claire Field Posted January 2, 2017 Posted January 2, 2017 @Jibeji directly quoting from the topic you linked me to, what does this mean: Quote refactoring my SSO system based on IPS users Also, can anyone tell me what is the support given to IPS connect within their ToS?
Management Lindy Posted January 2, 2017 Management Posted January 2, 2017 1 hour ago, Claire Field said: Also, can anyone tell me what is the support given to IPS connect within their ToS? IPS Connect is a development resource for SSO. We support it in as far as providing the framework and resolving bugs is concerned, however, making it work for your application is not something that's supported via the client system.
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