Poor support from sellerdeck

[chris ashdown]

Problem was the site was screwed up and unable to either make a snapshot, Publish to web or make a backup

As the site was totally screwed up i sent the error report from the crash error off on both Friday 9th and Monday expecting to receive confirmation that somebody was looking at the problem but never heard anything back,

Contacted support and after a quick couple of suggestions that did not work was told to send in a snapshot, which i did by zipping up all files,

Nothing heard back, no log in to find or observer the problem, lost basically Fri-Tuesday afternoon many hundreds if not thousands of Pounds as main part of site showing was missing vast amounts of products

This poor service has happened in the past with snapshots sent to sellerdeck and no action being taken on them just seemingly put in the to hard to handle basket,

If support gets a call and then asks for a snapshot then they should work on it straight away regardless of other phone calls or pass to someone who can work on it
We pay mega bucks for support and should not be let down like this

[philrothwell]

SellerDeck Issue

Hi Chris,

I am very sorry about this, I will take a look at what has happened here and get back to you directly.

[Air-Tech]

I'm not going to comment on support - I don't even want to go there..... but if it's of any use;

We experienced an issue similar to what you are describing which was due to some sort of corruption being caused during importing into V16.0.1 - We were setting up Sage link & our products were exported for tidying up prior to import into Sage & then the cleaned up CSV product file was imported back into Sellerdeck.

All seemed to go well until the next site upload, when Sellerdeck crashed & continued to do so on every attempt. I spoke to support who requested a snapshot, but snapshotting caused exactly the same issue. CSV import was the culprit & despite requesting clarification I'm led to believe that the only form of import that won't cause this issue is an SD Link import

From memory it was sorted out by sending a copy of the DB to support for some work to get done on it - bug SD-1254 slated for fix in V16 3rd release.

[chris ashdown]

Phil contacted me and now understands what seems to have gone wrong and is looking at making some changes to procedures and I cannot ask more than that so well done Phil

[EdHarrison]

Good to hear things are looking more hopeful for you Chris, I have concerns on support although they are very helpful I get the feeling that things are lacking. The software falls behind the competition and this forum is pretty much abandoned nowadays.

[Buzby]

Totally agree with you Ed Harrison.

Sellerdeck phoned me last week and I asked if everyone was jumping ship as the forum is dead these days.

I am in a dilemma, I want to add another user at £350 +vat and £12 +vat a month on top of my over priced support. Or do I also look for an alternative. I just feel that our sites are now so lacking on expected features that even a new site feels out dated at launch.

[PJ ENG]

Just to add to Ed and Buz.

I have been with sellerdeck from the start and have always had and paid for the support.

The forum is dead, and i get the feeling that many have jumped ship to other platforms.

I have invested a lot of time and money into my site and i am too very worried what the future holds with SD. They seem to be so so far behind the competition in terms of how slick it all works both from the front and the back end.

I am glad you get sorted in the end though Chris, SD support has been hit and miss for me but if you do get the right person they usually sort it.

[NormanRouxel]

This Community / Members List:

Members who joined between 1st January 2011 and 16th September 2011: 3045

Members who joined between 1st January 2012 and 16th September 2012: 1623

Members who joined between 1st January 2013 and 16th September 2013: 124

Members who joined between 1st January 2014 and 16th September 2014: 62

Members who joined between 1st January 2015 and 16th September 2015: 62

Members who joined between 1st January 2016 and 16th September 2016: 29

The link is at the top of every page here. Try it yourself. Just sort by Join Date and locate any 2 dates to see what the member count was at the start and end.

Note that this doesn't necessarily relate to actual new users as there are definitely spammer sign-ups but it's a pretty drastic drop.

[Mike Hughes]

There could be a number of reasons for the drop in forum members sign up, all relating to the reason people sign up in the first place.

I suspect it's fair to assume that most forum members sign up to ask a question about something when they haven't been able to find the answer elsewhere.

So it could just mean:

- Sellerdeck is a more mature product now with fewer issues and workarounds needed.

- We've already answered pretty much everything there is to know about sellerdeck.

- Sellerdeck documentation is better and more comprehensive.

- Sellerdeck support is stronger and better able to answer support questions.

I somehow think there's a stronger case for some of these examples than for others.

[EdHarrison]

Mike - I am guessing unlike me you are a natural optimist

[guccij]

I think things started to go downhill when the Actinic name was sold. That, and the focus of the top brass shifting from this desktop product to what they apparently thought was the more lucrative world of app development.

However, like Mike, I remain an optimist and look forward to next week's user conference and the unveiling of the new product.

[Mike Hughes]

As Monty Python say; "Always look on the bright side of life..."

[EdHarrison]

I feel a loyalty towards SD (Actinic) as I started my business on V8, I have used them solely for the software / payments / hosting / SSL / support and even now I am talking to them about their Ignite SEO............But although for the first 3 or 4 years my ranking was good - and my income, that has all changed now so come on SD look after all these loyal customers and catch up!

[chris ashdown]

I am very impressed by V2016 and think it does the job quite well, think I started with either V3 or V4

I would blame the big drop in the removal of the single Sellerdeck version at about £300 which is a price most new e-commerce start-ups can afford but few will pay £1000

One thing I have found is that developers will always come up with new features, but in most cases they look different but do little for sales, and my customers seem to be happy with the simple designs

Totally off subject I wonder what happened to that crazy Chinese girl with the car sales and unbelievable site design

[NormanRouxel]

I suspect it's fair to assume that most forum members sign up to ask a question

Nope. A clear majority of these sign-ups are at 0 questions.

About two thirds of the 2016 sign-ups have never asked a question and a similar ratio applies for earlier years (even though they've had a much longer time available to ask something).

Three thousand down to 30 in 5 years is a catastrophic 99% drop. An extinction level event for almost anything.

Unfortunately, I too see it in my add-on sales. The most popular (like my Tabbed Descriptions and any of the Multiple Image ones - which add something that SD cannot yet do) are now a thin trickle compared with yester-years. It's all upgrades or add-ons for long-term existing users who want to try something new. There's only about one real new SD 2016 user per month seen here.