Open Criticizm - my overall Kayako experience

[vinny]

There's a difference between a major upgrade and fixing bugs. If MSFT or AAPL charged you $80 every 6 months for your OS - you'd flip your wig. Oh, and according to that logic they are more entitled to do so since they have hundreds of developers to pay, crates of Red Bull to buy and millions of lines of code Please do not justify paying more money for a product that has broken features upon delivery. That's a moot point. Lesson learned ...back to open source.

[craigbrass]

Most web based software (vBulletin, Invision Power Board, ModernBill, etc) do not work like Microsoft. They charge you a set fee every 6 months for updates and support. I prefer this way to be honest and many would agree.

[Digital Mayhem]

Ya but you gotta remember Microsoft you don't get support go to www.microsoft.com and go find support for email or chat support it cost you $30-$60 per incident depending on the software... So $80 every 6 months it better then $30-$60 per problem....

[craigbrass]

Totally agree Steve.

[caitlyntw]

Given the quality/stability of Kayako's recent stable releases over the last year, Kayako could have considered giving customers a free upgrade for sticking through their buggy releases.

More and more companies are taking the paid upgrade approach, but that usually happens when you have a working stable product and the upgrade contains new features.

In Kayako's case, my purchase didn't work as advertised (I purchased later summer of 2006), and they won't give me a refund, and now that I'm suckered in, I continue to pay for upgrades in hopes of getting my investment to work.

Has anyone heard of viral marketing? Good word of mouth might be as effective as Kayako increasing their search engine ranking.

[triplef]

i would say 2 branches of fixes.. the branch for BUGS and branch for features..

hes right.. since hte upgrade when i add new canned reply i get tons of error's


and i had this soft for 1 month..

opened a bug request for sip addon that CAN'T WORK #187 on 20/07/2007 and nothign was even posted or assigned.. i asked to exchange that license for instalert and was told you cant... so.. what happens when you BUY something and its not WORKING , well if the comapny refuses to deal with it you call visa.

also don't get me wrong here but there's 2 kind of answers.. and most of hte time what i see is too cool to be true.. like we will do this , this will never happen again etc.. but never goes from there.. seems theres a missing link between jamie and the rest of the crew... or hired to extinguish fires..


in any case , i will go trough all the functions of STABLE 11 ( notice stable and not beta or alpha) and will post all bugs i see....

it is true that when you buy microsoft, you get the BUG updates.. ( but pay for features , like msn feature pack etc)

in this case IF the product is broken it needs fixing in a period that is reasonable 1-2 weeks TOP .. if it takes 6 months to fix one then make the support for 1 year..

in this icase iv heard horror stories over 1 year ago.. then make it 2 years

whatever you decide , just know.. that BEFORE adding features you fix bugs.. and that is the way you build strong software..

when there just to many bugs well you slow down the dev part and assign more people
.. hence the windows 3.1 to 95 to 98 to nt to xp to vista.

PS: saying you went from 5 frauds to 1 fraud/week

i would imagine thats like 10% of the sales..

in either case.. that sums to 10 to 50 license per week.. 4k to 20k.

16k to 100k.. no im also assuming 50k avg.. .. hire more people


my 400$ ( coz its not my 0.02 cents)

[craigbrass]

With regards to the SIP Addon issue, it is weird that nothing has been done with it over half a month later (ie even confirmed it to pass to the developers). Hopefully Jamie will be able to shed some light on this when he comes online.

I do go back to what I said in a previous post, I feel Kayako needs a dedicated project manager. This person's duties would include :-
- Confirming Bugs and Passing to Developers
- Making Sure the Bugs Get Fixed
- Testing to Ensure the Bugs Have Been Fixed
- Writing Specifications for Future Versions Based On Feature Requests
- Ensuring the Future Version Meets the Specification
- Dealing with Bugs That Arise From Tickets

I know Jamie commented on he was doing this but his job is Operations Manager. He should be concentrating on dealing with day to day operations as well as the documentation he is working on.

I feel the above would sort a few things out. In my opinion anyway.

[Jamie Edwards]

Craig,

As I have explained in a previous post, a project manager is not going to speed up bug fixing or feature implementation. Our constraint is developer hours.

- Confirming Bugs and Passing to Developers
- Making Sure the Bugs Get Fixed

This is handled swiftly (and the testing of them) by myself and Ryan.

- Testing to Ensure the Bugs Have Been Fixed

Myself, Ryan and Mahesh (and sometimes Roger) do this very thoroughly.

- Writing Specifications for Future Versions Based On Feature Requests

This is my job that I am currently attending to, along with the developers. As I have described to you before, I am sorting them, relabelling them and doing basic consideration of them. Then, when the time comes I will set down with the developers and go through them in batches (targeting each one or deferring them).

- Dealing with Bugs That Arise From Tickets

This is Mahesh's job (with the aid of myself).

There is nothing you have listed that is not being attended to properly. I assure you, thinking that more management will speed up this kind of thing is a great misconception. Being from the UK, I refer you to the NHS problem - throwing more managers at a situation doesn't shorten the waiting lists etc. for doctors.

It is a problem we are acutely aware of and are doing all we possibly can to find more resources.

[craigbrass]

Hmm, fair enough.

[nibb]

Well i have to agree on something. Dont ever botter to have the yearly license.

Its a waste of money. Just buy the owned own. Why?
Because the updates are 0. The updates are just bug fixes. Nothing new in 1 year. Even the lastest news on the website is from months ago.

And support, well Kayako support im really sorry but takes for ever.

So when my yearly license expires i will buy a owned one. Because i dont get updates or support anyway.

I also found several bugs which in 1 year where not solved. Besides that Kayako is the only solution that i have found so it cant be so bad.

[twhiting9275]

I'll contribute a bit here, having dealt with these individuals off an on for a few years:

What's with all this new warning agreement thing?

Just another form of censorship, kayako not wanting you to post that things are bad. That's Jamie's major job, keeping the bad stuff out of the public!
The problem is that Kayako's got a bad reputation. They don't want the public knowing about this bad reputation, so they hire bouncers to come in, police things up, and the idle passerby doesn't suspect a thing. Great business tactic, but NOT ethical at all. It doesn't solve anything, it just brushes it under the rug.Solving things would mean changing the way business is run completely, and, hey, it makes them money, so why change, right?

did any of you receive your "courtesy" call on the phone when you purchased their product? Oh I call that COMPLETE paranoia, wtf. Ridiculous.

Yes, and, I agree 100%, it is paranoia. The best part? This "courtesy call" was on a $39/month leased license. The individuals took the money on Thursday, and I didn't get activated until late Monday afternoon. Talk about complete and total BS. 3-4 days for a payment to be processed, in the 21st century is, well, it's freaking outrageous.

This is the major reason why this time around, I went with a reseller (thank you licensepal!) that was well known and trustworthy. There were a few issues, but those were resolved in a quick and timely fashion (unlike kayako's drag-knuckles slow support), and for those problems, the individual handling my account (owner?) gave me a 1 month credit. THAT is how proper business should run, NOT how this is done.

MY UPGRADE PERIOD HAS EXPIRED?!?!?! What the F___? Has ANYONE in these Forums ever purchased Web or Desktop software for close to $300 and had their upgrades expire in 6 MONTHS?!

Sadly, that is becoming more and more the "standard" for web products. Microsoft can't get away with that, because their products are vastly insecure, and it takes much more than 6 months for their stuff to become secure.

And support, well Kayako support im really sorry but takes for ever.

Historically,yes. I haven't had to deal with them this time around, they claim they've "changed" this, but they also claim that things have improved, which I've yet to see fruit of.

hire more people

People have been begging for that for years now. They have, they've hired people like Jamie. That doesn't SOLVE the problem, because, rather than hire a firefighter, they need to have hired more developers and support techs, but, hey, whatever.

I'll share my experiences here.
I started using kayako a number of years ago, probably back when I started using modernbill. At the time, they had major issues with firefox, which persisted for months on end. Yes, months. In fact, the developers/programmers continued to say "it's your problem, not ours". Of course, this caused me to just drop the product alltogether for a time.

A few months later, client contacts me and says "hey, kayako's broken on the machine". Well, of course it's not a server problem, it's a kayako problem. He had recently upgraded to some new version, and that caused issues. I told him this, and we went round and round and round for 2 months, until he messaged me one afternoon and said "Kayako fixed the problem in their code". Of course, Kayako was claiming it was a server problem (typical for developers), rather than a code problem.

Anyone who's been around this place a while knows the delays in programming. V3 was delayed for HOW LONG before it was initially released? Then, of course, there's MB and WHMCS integration. Unfortunately, it's just something that kayako does not do well, development and integration.

As far as bugs:
during my last runaround with this product, I can think of one bug that was found, and fixed by myself. It was a simple php/email parser problem. When I notified the developers (via helpdesk), I got the typical (this is now fixed) response.

Next release, guess what? Same bug, same EXACT bug, same workaround. Again, notified, again, the typical thing.

Third release, guess what? SAME THING! Again, support ticket updated, blah, blah. After this release, I didn't check it again, as I stopped using kayako altogether again.

Every time I post somewhere public about these experiences, I'm told "have you tried them lately, they've changed". Unfortunately, every time, I see the same old, same old.

Kayako has a problem. That problem is that they are the only major competition in the market. I'd love to say otherwise, but I can't. The problem as well is that they know this. When you get as big as kayako has, you forget about the little people, you know, your customers. This has been proven time and time again.

Kayako is good, but the people behind it, really, really need to change up how things are handled. I mean, features that take 6-12 months to produce? That's really pushing the limit here!

[Jamie Edwards]

Originally Posted by twhiting9275

I'll contribute a bit here, having dealt with these individuals off an on for a few years:

Just another form of censorship, kayako not wanting you to post that things are bad. That's Jamie's major job, keeping the bad stuff out of the public!

One of my many jobs is to manage the forum and assist our community moderators. These forums are not censored. If there were, we'd be doing a really, really lousy job of it. I do not believe censorship would even be in our interest; we stand to gain more from an outshow of how we quickly resolve a complaint or at least a response to a concern.

I can understand why you feel that the forums are moderated - I have removed a couple of your posts from the new WHMCS thread that didn't contribute anything to the thread, and simply asked questions that had long been answered.

The reason why I moved these from the thread and into the help desk is because I do not want the thread to be cluttered like the old one was; it makes it a pain for anyone coming to simply track our progress on it. Regardless, you continued to post after our requests not to and we continued to snip your posts from the thread.

Yes, and, I agree 100%, it is paranoia. The best part? This "courtesy call" was on a $39/month leased license. The individuals took the money on Thursday, and I didn't get activated until late Monday afternoon. Talk about complete and total BS. 3-4 days for a payment to be processed, in the 21st century is, well, it's freaking outrageous.

I am sorry you had such a long wait; this is not a normal occurrence. Usually, if people order late on a Friday their activation may have to wait until Monday (however, we are now increasingly having staff activate orders on Saturday too). You only need to go through this activation once (unless you change credit card).

I wouldn't call it paranoia, either - we are simply protecting ourselves from a huge, major problem on the internet which is fraud. I will not go into detail, I have already answered this question in this same thread.

People have been begging for that for years now. They have, they've hired people like Jamie. That doesn't SOLVE the problem, because, rather than hire a firefighter, they need to have hired more developers and support techs, but, hey, whatever.

We are hiring more people, and even building a new office to accommodate. Please consider that when we hire someone, they need training and proper mentoring. Unfortunately, this takes away even more developer time - so we are forced to make this process gradual. We have plenty of support technicians. Over the last 10 months we had hired two new PHP developers - both have been forced to leave us (for reasons I cannot go into publicly). This is a shame, as good PHP developers are hard to come by in India.

[twhiting9275]

I can understand why you feel that the forums are moderated - I have removed a couple of your posts from the new WHMCS thread that didn't contribute anything to the thread, and simply asked questions that had long been answered.

Really?
Pleaes point to the place where you publically answered the question of "why are you stalling this" (ie: why is it taking 6+ months to do this). You can't, because it doesn't exist.

Did these posts contribute to the threads? You bet. Did you want to answer the questions? Of course not. So, you removed them. That's called censorship, Jamie.

I am sorry you had such a long wait; this is not a normal occurrence. Usually, if people order late on a Friday their activation may have to wait until Monday (however, we are now increasingly having staff activate orders on Saturday too). You only need to go through this activation once (unless you change credit card).

Still no excuse
I charge credit cards myself, on a daily basis, and I certainly don't make my cients wait days, NOR do I deal with massive amounts of fraud. In fact, in 5 years, I've had one issue with a chargeback, and that was the client themselves launching a fraudulent chargeback!

How do I pull this off, you ask? Really, really simple. Invest money in things such as Varilogix, or Maxmind. Hell, Varilogix will handle the calls easily enough, and it'll be done instantly, not days later. Maxmind, you can configure to accept or reject orders depending on fraud score, etc.

The point is that manual verification is gone the way of the horse and buggy, seriously. Making your clients wait for you to verify things is, well, it's borderline fraud, as you're CHARGING them, but not delivering a service.

Over the last 10 months we had hired two new PHP developers

Only two? Wow, such progress we've made. Come on now, you get that much of a growth in business, yet that short of a development team?

This is a shame, as good PHP developers are hard to come by in India.

Is the world based in India?
Is the internet based in India?
Is commerce based in India?
The answer to all 3 of these is no, really.

Yes, I understand that the company is (primarily) based out of India, but we've got a huge world here. Limiting developers to "just India" is going to put a severe cap on things. No wonder no progress gets made, or when it does, it's slower than mollasses (hey, even mollasses makes visible progress daily!)

[Jamie Edwards]

Originally Posted by twhiting9275

Really?
Pleaes point to the place where you publically answered the question of "why are you stalling this" (ie: why is it taking 6+ months to do this). You can't, because it doesn't exist.

Taken from the new thread:

Originally Posted by Jamie Edwards

I understand there has been some frustration as to how long this has taken so far. Your patience is appreciated; it will take some time to complete as our developers learn WHMCS and complete the integration, and maintain the core product as well as adding this functionality.

Taken from the old thread:

[Jamie Edwards]

Originally Posted by twhiting9275

Is the world based in India?
Is the internet based in India?
Is commerce based in India?
The answer to all 3 of these is no, really.

Yes, I understand that the company is (primarily) based out of India, but we've got a huge world here. Limiting developers to "just India" is going to put a severe cap on things. No wonder no progress gets made, or when it does, it's slower than mollasses (hey, even mollasses makes visible progress daily!)

No, but our company is based in India - and we prefer to keep our developers code together on a daily basis; as in face-to-face; things are much more efficient that way. We are considering expanding development to our USA office once it is completed. If you expect this to happen in a matter of weeks, then your experience of managing projects and business on such a scale must be limited.

It looks like you are looking for me to wave a magic wand and fulfil all of your requests and our goals instantly. That isn't going to happen, I am afraid.