Poor support from sellerdeck

[philrothwell]

SellerDeck Platform Strategy

Hi All,

I am happy to repeat the presentation next week if enough people are interested.

[chris ashdown]

Phil

Please can we either have it between 09:00 to 16:30 or after 18:00

[Air-Tech]

Hi All,

I am happy to repeat the presentation next week if enough people are interested.

Yes please!

[philrothwell]

SellerDeck Platform Strategy

Hi All,

The SellerDeck Development Strategy presentation will take place on Thursday 13th October at 11 am.

You can register for the event at: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/reg...94447757748482

[samx]

Not been impressed with supprt so far.

Had major performance issues after moving to V16, support kept fobbing us off saying our server was misconfigured with a very inaccurate explanation of permissions. Obviously the support staf has no training or knowledge. ( We have our own server, not shared in any way which handles a lot of traffic when big shows are on, previous versions run very well )

2 weeks of arguing finally solved the issue myself. All the clues were there, made me wonder why support were so bad possibly to force you into their hosting.

Now working on the layouts and one of the support staff remoted into my PC and trashed the site, then couldn't undo what he'd done, told me to restore from back up - frightening.

I am certain they aren't trained and are reading from cue sheets with no genuine understaning of the software.

[PJ ENG]

Not been impressed with supprt so far.

Had major performance issues after moving to V16, support kept fobbing us off saying our server was misconfigured with a very inaccurate explanation of permissions. Obviously the support staf has no training or knowledge. ( We have our own server, not shared in any way which handles a lot of traffic when big shows are on, previous versions run very well )

2 weeks of arguing finally solved the issue myself. All the clues were there, made me wonder why support were so bad possibly to force you into their hosting.

Now working on the layouts and one of the support staff remoted into my PC and trashed the site, then couldn't undo what he'd done, told me to restore from back up - frightening.

I am certain they aren't trained and are reading from cue sheets with no genuine understaning of the software.

You must have the same person i had the last 3 times, he sounds like he has come from a call centre overseas ?

when i called up the other day i got him and just put the phone down and called sellerdeck to ask if they source the support from outside and the lady confirmed that they do use remote support.

I just think for what you pay it should be all in-house with a sellerdeck staff member and not subbed out to an IT guy.

[Phil H]

Reflections on shared frustrations with SellerDeck

I apologise for not participating sooner I only found this thread today.

I read through this thread in its entirety where senior and longstanding SellerDeck customers reflect on they issues with SellerDeck. Many of the views stated reflect mine. My concern is that as SellerDeck sail down the journey they are on that they are leaving their customers behind, if they don’t jump ship before hand.

Why is it even in my head to be considering moving from SellerDeck to another platform?
• SellerDeck themes are pants and look so outdated. I have been moaned at and critiqued for the last 3/4 years about the ‘look of our site’, which I actually paid SellerDeck £1500 to design and create being one of the first SellerDeck responsive site designs,
• I am beyond frustrated with software problems we get. In particular having to resend out digital download files manually.
• I find SellerDeck cover expensive – it’s the sort of price I would expect to buy software at, not to have to pay maintenance
• Feefo is over priced for what it does
• SellerDeck Desktop development does not keep pace with customers needs. Whilst the Extension idea is a good one it is about 4 years late in being available. SellerDeck need to engage with their customer base and find out what they want. SellerDeck should get customers to log and prioritise their requirements, then SellerDeck build them into the development plan and deliver on them. My suggestion is they use the existing development community who have supported SellerDeck for years and buy in functionality and design from the developers where SellerDeck does not have it. It would give you a rapid growth in core functionality, provide the developer community a revenue stream for the work and SellerDeck Desktop could again potentially fight back with its strengths over cloud. I think this would increase licence sales and service contracts and therefore revenue. SellerDeck could even have a theme marketplace for themes created by developers and take a margin on them for themes sold through the SellerDeck site.

Phil Rothwell I note you did a webinar, but I only came across it via this post. It seems to be promoted to people just reading this thread and not promoted to all SD customers ( I don’t recall seeing anything on this). It would be good to feel that customers had a mechanism to influence the direction of SellerDeck with SD listening to all your customers to find out what they have to say, prioritising a development plan from that. Perhaps repeating the process annually.

We have been with SD since 2003/4 and it just feels you have lost your way. I think the biggest issue is you do not understand properly what your core customers actually want. I get the odd call/survey on support but quite often the questions are not well constructed and you end up not being able to answer them as the issue I have is different than the question being asked implies. Or I only seem to get a visit (Linda) or a call (Josh/Linda) when you want to sell me something.

Its frustrating for us and you need to be aware that the pool of customers thinking of leaving SellerDeck is bigger than those reflecting their concerns on the thread. Its time to engage, listen, communicate and act a lot more, hopefully before we commit to an exit process.

Best wishes,




Phil Howell

[MrsBee]

Spot on, Phil H.

[sappho]

You won't often see me on the Sellerdeck forums I am usually far too busy. On the launch of SD 2016 I emailed Sellerdeck asking why we have to pay for the privilege of the bugs being fixed I am still waiting for a response so I thought I would be brave and look on the forum.

After having Sellerdeck sites since 2004 my loyalty is somewhat dwindling. The market is very different to where it was when we bought our first out of the box version of Actinic (V4 from memory) Times have changed immensely, but the software is still stuck in the depths of pre iPhones and 3G coverage. Phil Howel is very accurate in his comments, surely Sellerdeck should be asking their customers what they want? We do with our customers it has really made our business grow. As I mentioned before my biggest grudge is paying for the bugs to be fixed, if I have paid for something (which I have done as I have upgraded through the years) they I am loathed to pay to have the faults fixed. Software isn't a second hand car.

My love for Sellerdeck has gone, something needs to be done rapidly or the developers are going to have a very lucrative field day transferring 100's of sites in to new platforms (free platforms) such as Shopify and .

[Phil H]

Communication update

Following my posts and that of others Phil Rothwell has emailed me to say he will be in touch with a suggestion/idea he has and Josh Barling called and we spoke for 40 odd minutes about the issues we have all reflected on in this thread. Josh said he had some ideas he was going to email Phil R on for discussion.

Hopefully something positive and greater communication will come out of this. I await their feedback and ideas.

Best wishes,

Phil

[mje]

You won't often see me on the Sellerdeck forums I am usually far too busy. On the launch of SD 2016 I emailed Sellerdeck asking why we have to pay for the privilege of the bugs being fixed I am still waiting for a response so I thought I would be brave and look on the forum.

After having Sellerdeck sites since 2004 my loyalty is somewhat dwindling. The market is very different to where it was when we bought our first out of the box version of Actinic (V4 from memory) Times have changed immensely, but the software is still stuck in the depths of pre iPhones and 3G coverage. Phil Howel is very accurate in his comments, surely Sellerdeck should be asking their customers what they want? We do with our customers it has really made our business grow. As I mentioned before my biggest grudge is paying for the bugs to be fixed, if I have paid for something (which I have done as I have upgraded through the years) they I am loathed to pay to have the faults fixed. Software isn't a second hand car.

My love for Sellerdeck has gone, something needs to be done rapidly or the developers are going to have a very lucrative field day transferring 100's of sites in to new platforms (free platforms) such as Shopify and .

A month ago I had a lengthy email exchange with Sellerdeck - Likewise I cannot understand why the company will not even consider offering an option of just buying an upgrade and not "cover" ..Responsible retailers don't force you to buy something you don't want or need, but Sellerdeck do, and their "take it or leave it" attitude is pushing people away it seems.. The doubling of price, removal of product options and so on all are well documented and strike many folk as steps in the wrong direction - the days of Actinic / Sellerdeck being the "turn to" option for e commerce are long gone.

Would somebody reading this thread looking for an e-commerce site consider Sellerdeck the way to go ?

I respect Sellerdeck can run their business how they choose, but simply do not "get" their blinkered approach to product options. I am not going to change platforms, but nor am I going to buy something I don't require.

However the last post by Phil H and the current"10% off cover" are a glimmer of hope that maybe Selllerdeck are considering that their customers have a point?

[Buzby]

A few years back we were told that the aim was 1 release per year for the software, so that cover customers were getting an upgrade yearly as part of the cover.

As the next version of Sellerdeck isn't on the horizon, I feel I have over paid on Cover as haven't really had anything for my money.

I am considering cancelling my cover as support alone is not worth the price, and with no new software in beta why keep paying?

Also I am not sure how committed to Sellerdeck I am at the moment and will start looking at all options after Christmas. The final straw is that we really need a 2nd user, something which I feel should be standard within the software, but at £350 + vat, and also an increase in my cover contract I do not really feel it is worth.

I have been using Sellerdeck since V5, but now feel that Sellerdeck sites are equivalent to the tired back street shops away from the main High Street in need of a lick of paint.

[brucet]

Thanks for continuing to feed back to us, it is helpful and we do listen.

Just to clarify WRT support staff, although a couple of them are based overseas, they are employed solely on our behalf, work 100% for us from beginning to end, and receive the same kind of induction and training as UK staff. We do our best to maintain a high standard across the board, and we’re always happy to be made aware if we fall short. At the same time, 3rd party services that we have no control over, and may not be entirely familiar with, do tend to be the hardest for us to support well.

In regard to bugs and wish list requests, we do actively track reports and requests in both areas, and do our best to prioritise accordingly. Our wish list currently stands at around 2000 items, around 1700 of which were requested by only one user. Many of those are quite important to the business concerned, however we can only fulfil a few of them, and only the most requested can be fulfilled economically. Some are almost impossible to fulfil without an online database.

These kind of constraints have fed into the product strategy Phil outlined, which is the most efficient way to respond to customers’ current needs. SellerDeck Cloud will fulfil requirements that are difficult or impossible for the Desktop product: eg more sophisticated online functionality, remote access, multiple sites driven from a single product database. SellerDeck Desktop will continue to play to its strengths – such as ultra-fast static HTML, ownership of your source data, local preview of design changes etc. And the extensions environment makes it quicker, easier and safer for us, or third parties, to bolt on features that might not make it into the core code.

The next major release is currently in the advanced stages of planning. It will include some significant improvements that can't be handled as extensions, and we will post more information soon. But new features in future will be added as extensions wherever possible, simply because it' s safer and more efficient. Some or all of these are likely to be included in the Cover package going forward.

Unfortunately, it’s a fact of life that no single software company will ever have the capacity to please everybody. That is why the availability of extensions for our Desktop and Cloud offerings is so important. We are always glad of feedback from customers, and constantly trying to adapt ourselves to best fulfil our customers’ needs. We know we don’t always get it right, but we’ve been in the ecommerce business longer than almost anyone. We’re fully confident that we have the expertise to help companies succeed online, and to meet the needs of our customers for many years to come.

[chickenhouseman]

Bruce - is the wish list only comprised of wishes submitted via the forum or are you actively researching what customers want?

As major updates seem to be happening bi anuually v12, v14, v16 there seems little point in support at it's current prices.

Personally, I've never used support to have the latest version as the latest major release always seems to be buggy until it's update is released. Your other support customers are the ones finding the faults and paying extra for the privilege.

[brucet]

Hi Simon

The wish list receives input from a variety of sources, including this community, requests to support, account management calls, the annual conference, and proactive research. We also track market trends and competitor developments.

Everything we do is driven either by customer demand, or by shifts in the market that we need to respond to. An example of the latter is the adoption of TLS v1.2 security in v16.0.2.

WRT annual updates, last year we released SellerDeck 2016 and a couple of free extensions. By the end of this year we expect to have added another four extensions, which in development and functionality terms equates to a substantial release. For next year we are planning another major version, with additions that can't easily be implemented as extensions.

We're aware that the shift towards extensions changes the Cover proposition, and we're considering how we might adjust Cover to compensate for that.

If you've encountered bugs in a new release, I can only apologise. Every release is tested extensively over the course of several weeks by our QA team. This includes individual reviewing and testing of each code change, and a full end to end test of the software before release. However, due to its complexity, it's not possible to test every possible configuration in which the software can be deployed. We can also only test a representative sample of mobile devices and desktop and network environments.

When bugs are reported, we do try to fix them as soon as possible, giving priority to the most severe and the ones reported by multiple users.

I hope this helps.