Believe you me, that’s the last time I sleep with Mr. “Muddy Elbow Fetish” Greenstone.

I think your anger, while understandable, is misdirected. The guy you talked to was right, you didn’t buy the software from Pangeasoft, you bought it from Apple. This is a known issue with the Apple app store, not with Pangeasoft.

Consider this analogy: You buy a book at a bookstore, take it home and discover that it’s missing a few chapters. The book is pretty much worthless so what do you do? Write to the author and demand that he refund you the full purchase price himself? Of course not because you didn’t give the money directly to him in the first place, and he didn’t make the mistake, it was made somewhere farther down the line. So what you do is you take it back to the bookstore and demand a refund or a good copy from them.

Even if the author decided to be nice and refund the full price to you himself, it would be unfair to him since he only gets a percentage of the full price. The same situation exists with the app store, Apple takes a cut and pays the developer a percentage of the selling price. And the same situation exists regarding who made the mistake since this is an Apple issue.

Ask Apple for a refund, that’s the way it works.

Jana, not even one for the (dirt) road?

WR, I understand what you’re saying, but I’m not concerned about the refund. I was frustrated that, even after trying all the recommended steps that might help fix the issue, it still didn’t work. I wanted to see what would happen when I wrote directly to the company that made the app. This is especially significant when you read what Apple says on their page, the page that Pangeasoft themselves directed me to. Apple’s last suggestion is to submit a report which, as they say, submits the report “to the application developer”.

If Mr. Greenstone had responded in a more empathetic way, I wouldn’t have minded. But no, he leads off with, “We just make it, we don’t sell it.”

My complaint is not with not getting the refund from Pangeasoft, or even from Apple. My complaint is with how Mr. Greenstone, the President and CEO, handled an irate consumer.

It’s a shame, too, since both our names end in ’stone’. haha

Rest assured, Pangeasoft will not be buying anything from me in the future (soft being an appropriate ending, btw)

I see what you’re saying. I guess in my analogy if you’d written to the author and he was rude to you, you’d justifiably never want to buy one of his books again. So point taken.

It is frustrating to get caught in a feedback loop like that. I, for one, hope Apple irons out these problems soon. They have a great product and the app store is pretty darn cool if they could just get it to work right.

Sounds like he should have been nicer to you for sure, but I also think the developers are caught in the middle between irate customers and Apple’s odd business model and buggy software. Not to excuse it, but maybe to explain it. Could be he’s frustrated too? That’s my theory anyway and I’m sticking to it. :)

I think your theory that he’s frustrated is reasonable. I bet he probably is. But he’s the one in business, and he’s the one who got my money (albeit just a few bucks, but probably enough for a good 60 minutes of Jana’s time). As a customer, I expect to be treated with a little more respect is all. I likely would have sympathized with him if he’d just explained his frustration with Apple to me in the first place.

So anyway, that’s why I wrote the blog post.

Thanks for chiming in so I could explain in more detail in case anyone else is confused by the original post.

Agreed, and no argument. The customer is always right.

But consider what you asked in your first communication to him according to your own recount of events. You asked for your money back, so he responded to that request by (rudely) directing you back to Apple. If you really wanted to say you were frustrated by the fact that the game didn’t run, that you didn’t care about the refund and that you wanted to hear his explanation of why the fixes didn’t work, why didn’t you ask that? Then maybe he would have explained his frustration with Apple, if that is the case.

FWIW, I think you’re in the right and he was wrong to act rudely and defensively, but I just wonder why you are surprised that he acted like a cornered animal when it seems like you intended to poke him with a stick to see how he reacted.

I’m sorry, I don’t really know why I’m arguing, I’ve certainly been angered by poor customer service myself. I guess I just take issue with your characterization that you were “cheated” by Pangeasoft or that it is their responsibility to report an apple app store bug in their product description. That’s all. Sorry. I’m sure you’re right. :)

No need to apologize. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, even when they’re wrong. ;)

But seriously, …

I felt “cheated” because I purchased an application that didn’t work. I don’t care if it’s Apple’s or Pangeasoft’s problem. Pangeasoft knows about the problem, but they don’t tell you about it until you go looking for why the software you just bought doesn’t work. I think they should, and if they elect not to, and it gets to the point that someone actually writes directly to them and complains, they should be ready to help, no matter how upset the customer appears to be.

I don’t think I said I wanted to hear his explanation of why the fixes didn’t work. Honestly, I don’t really care, but I can empathize if he’d attempted to explain. What I did say is that if he had responded and explained the situation, I likely would have been more sympathetic.

Hmmm, was I surprised? Yea, I guess I was surprised. But more than that, I was disappointed. I actually don’t think the customer is always right. And maybe I wasn’t right. That’s a matter of opinion. But I do think the customer, especially a customer who has not, by any measure, received an adequate experience with a product, deserves some leeway, some respect, some help, and ultimately some satisfaction. Not because of the $5.99, but because of the future money he or she might spend on my products or that his or her friends might. Business is business, and I want as many satisfied customers as I can get. Mr. Greenstone apparently doesn’t, which is certainly his prerogative. But I can still blog about it. ;)

Absolutely you can blog about it! I’m glad you did!

But for me, it points out the problem with Apple which I feel you, again, mis-characterize by saying:

“Pangeasoft knows about the problem, but they don’t tell you about it until you go looking for why the software you just bought doesn’t work. ”

In that case I submit that every single developer that is selling software in the app store is as dishonest as you seem to think Pangeasoft is. Should they all include a disclaimer that their software may not run because of an apple bug? I think that is unreasonable, and I am very certain that Apple would not even allow it.

That is my whole point in a nutshell, that there are two issues here, the way you were treated by the developer and whether or not the developer is to blame for the software not running and therefore should forewarn customers of the possibility. You were rudely treated and are perfectly right to blog about it to the world. But I just feel the need to point out the other issue that I think you are unfairly blaming on the developer, when that side of it is 100% controlled by Apple.

Blog on brother!

I wouldn’t go so far as to say they’re dishonest. But certainly not as up-front as they could be (if Apple would let them, of course).

I actually do think that all the apps that have this problem (and maybe it’s all of them) should have a disclaimer in their descriptions. I don’t think that’s unreasonable at all. Tell me there’s a problem before I buy it. Maybe even give me some hard numbers, “5% of the people who download this app have reported problems getting it to run. To read more about it, visit us at http://blahblahblah/“. So we’ll have to agree to disagree about that. ;)

You have a point that Apple may not allow it, and I did consider that. But Mr. Greenstone’s responses to me did not indicate that they attempted to add that and Apple edited it out of their description.

In any event, my opinion is that it doesn’t matter who is to blame for the problem. As the end-user, I shouldn’t have to care. I followed their suggestions to try to fix the problem. I followed them all the way to the end where they say to go to Apple, and then I followed Apple’s suggestions all the way to the end where they say to report the problem “to the application developer”. I did that, then I emailed the developer’s support email and their response was to go back to Apple. It’s the hot potato scenario. And when the response from the developer wasn’t satisfactory, bordering on rudeness (imo), well, that was that. Time to blog about it. Only thing left, really.

Ok, fair enough. You seem like a reasonable, fair-minded guy and I have enjoyed discussing the issue with you. I just wanted to make sure my point was coming across and I can see that it was but that you disagree and so of course that is totally cool. Thanks for a frank and civil debate!

Personally, I hope the app store will improve. I would love to see a try-before-you-buy system, I think it would alleviate many of the problems people are having. And I will also yield the point that the developers need to adapt their own practices to this new business model as well. I guess we are their guinea pigs :)

Holy shit. Needless to say, I did NOT read what the pocketrocket and snow were talking about.

You two need a stiff drink and a romp with Mr. Greenstone. Ke-rist.