This came from one of our readers. Feel free to comment as appropriately.
Hi, I, like many other vB4 license owners, want to get a refund. It would be great to make a post to give reasons why to get a refund as well as list of broken promises and so forth.
If they don’t give me a refund, I’ll talk to my bank to cancel the payment. Internet Brands deserves it and much more don’t you think so?
Well, what do you think our reasons are that can get us refunds?
Suggestion: Someone needs to learn resource management.
VB.com needs to focus 100% of its resources into making vBulletin run correctly, and efficiently. Stop with EXTERNAL add on like FB Connect. In my opinion when VB added FACEBOOk CONNECT they surrendered Forum superiority to FACEBOOK and that is a tool that relies on FACEBOOK.
vb.org needs to be the place for add ons for external content. vb.org has a wealth of excellent add ons provided by users. There needs to be a section for official VB add ons like Facebook Connect…….. Oh, and tell the person that comes up with the idea for charging for any of these add ons to forget that notion…. Someone will suggest it.
Learn one lesson. if you were NASA you could glamorize, glorify, and take liberties with the truth and facts because only a hand full would know the difference. You are not. You are IB/VB and there are WAY too many End Users that have enough skill and knowledge to step into your job today and do an equal to or better job than you do…… They see right through your BS.
Quit lying. You are not good at it. I would rather see a post from a TEAM member saying, we broke this and it is being fixed than…… Some 1/2 azzed explanation about why it is supposed to be that way. when you KNOW it is not.
Lastly and most importantly……… Your team needs to meet with management and decide if VB is going to be about profit or customer satisfaction, yes you can be about both … BUT there needs to be one or the other that is TOP PRIORITY. If you polled End Users right now you would find our opinion is that your top priority is money. And while that is the prime goal for most all commercial products, you are in a somewhat unique situation where you have taken over from a group that was focused on Customer Satisfaction…. Which makes a bumpy road when quality and satisfaction take a back seat to profit.
We are trying and want to be loyal VB customers. You are not giving us much to work with. There is a difference between effort and result. Telling us you are working “so hard” to fix things is canned, and we could care less. We paid for results, not slaving hard work with a broken end product.
I’ve been reading the recent comments and posts on vBulletin.com and I’ve heard several accusations of vBulletin Solutions Leadership taking vacations.
Recently hired manager Fabian and Don both have been on a break in recent weeks, according to several posts by customers.
My question: WHY THE HECK ARE THEY TAKING VACATIONS AT A TIME LIKE THIS?!!?
This is absolutely insane. The boat is burning. It’s sinking and the people at the helm feel they can take their sweet time getting things corrected and righted? All the while, customers are piling into life jackets and life boats, but still waiting for the wonderful leadership at Internet Brands to lower the boats to save their lives.
As a customer, I’m furious. They should not be taking a vacation right now. They need to right the wrongs now. They need to get everyone on the same page YESTERDAY instead of now. Reading what people like PirateReports have been posting have suggested they have absolutely no idea what’s going on and that they can’t decide which direction to go.
Here’s an idea. How about bringing customers who actually know what’s going on instead of pulling people who know absolutely nothing about the software or community?
Time’s ticking, and I think it’s time Internet Brands senior management start paying attention to what’s happening here. It’s not just our butts on the line, but theirs.
Oh yes, there’s a conference call in two days. Anyone want to ask questions? In particular to their wonderful security flaw that made the headlines of TheRegister, ZDNet, BBC and others? And especially where the heck they are going?
I want answers and I want them now. This is completely and utterly ridiculous. Absurd. A complete farce.
Never have I ever been so concern than I was two days ago. After watching this ridiculous security flaw unfold, and talking it over with Chronos, he made a strong point. HOW THE !@#$%& DO YOU SCREW UP A STABLE PLATFORM LIKE VBULLETIN 3.8?!?!!
We’ve had our fair share of vulnerabilities when vBulletin was under Jelsoft. They varied from Cross Site Request Forgeries, Cross Site Scripting Vulnerabilities and SQL Injections. NEVER EVER had I ever seen a vulnerability as bad as the one introduced by Internet Brands. A vulnerability that could potentially expose your SQL Username, SQL Password, SQL Server and SQL Port information? My God!
Vulnerabilities were at least contained strictly to the application itself, but now it has completely spread beyond the application and allowing script kiddies direct access into people’s database server.
I find that extremely unsettling. To err is human, to screw up a stable version of vBulletin requires Internet Brands.
As many are now aware, a recent security flaw was discovered in vBulletin 3.8.6 which could potentially allow a hacker to gain crucial information such as the MySQL username and password. Although Internet Brands was quick to release a patch and fix this issue, the question still stands – How did this happen?
No doubt the die-hard IB fans will say it’s perfectly normal and expected that software have some bugs, as it’s part of the process, and I agree with this to a point, but to have a flaw as big as this is completely unacceptable. We’re not talking about a minor bug, we are talking about extremely critical administrator information being potentially exposed to anyone in a few simple steps to take advantage of this flaw. How does this make it past QA, and if they are missing flaws this extreme, what else lies beneath that we have yet to discover? With vBulletin 3 being as mature as it is, should we not have higher expectations, or is that asking too much?
Bravo, you have really outdone yourself this time Internet Brands.
What do the rest of you think? Is this something that’s acceptable or are we blowing this out of proportion?
Chronos and I are still alive and well. We’re still watching this disaster still unfold before our very eyes. But until there is something worth pointing out the “obvious”, we will be in the shadows, lurking, watching, judging.
Just wondering what the opinion is of some of you long time members on what you feel about vB4?
Personally I was really frustrated with the way everything wasn’t fully thought through when they added the social networking a couple of years ago. I stood up screaming at some of the obvious problems and sure enough most of the things I mentioned would be problems turned out to be problems (but at least 90% addressed from what I can tell).
To say this left me rather frustrated was an understatement. I’m looking at starting a new site, but am seeing the same frustrating pattern as in the past. What really boggled my mind is that vB put a gold label on a product that clearly wasn’t gold! From what I can tell from some of the discussions going on in various threads is that vB4 still isn’t really a “gold” product.
I haven’t installed or played/tested it yet .. So my question simply falls to some of you regular participants here who can give me an honest opinion .. Is vB 4.0.2 what you would consider Gold?
Meaning are there so many bugs, issues and things “they are working to improve” that each update is more of a major upgrade needing to revert 30+ templates among other things?
I see complaints of search not being very user friendly, as well as the asset manager being frustrating to new end users .. are these claims legit .. or are they just the usual complainers from those who complain about anything?
I did look around and ticker around here a couple of months ago when it went gold and was frustrated that as much as I like vB .. vB4 clearly did not merit the gold status it was given and was still Beta in my mind. I could spend a couple of days tinkering again .. but at this point I can’t be bothered wasting the time and would like a simple paragraph or two from some of you summarizing your experience with vB4.0.2 and whether you feel it’s a product worthy of Gold status and thus worthy of my time in developing a new site around it .. or do you feel it’s not really “gold” and that I might be better off waiting a little longer for the product to stabilize a bit more?
You either love it or hate it, right?
It seems that the same can be said for vbulletin 4 and its starting to bug me. On one side you’ve got dozens of threads proclaiming “upgrading to vb4 was the worst mistake i’ve ever made” and “why i ditched vb4” etc. On the other side, you’ve got a handful of people who are defending Ib/vbulletin to greater or lesser extents; some to almost religious proportions. I want to have my say, a more realistic view on vb4 without it getting burried in another ‘omg vb4 sucks’ type thread.
1. vBulletin 4 has bugs; probably more than any released vbulletin version in the past however this is probably due in part to far greater scruitiny of the code, the bug tracker is more active so more stuff is being reported. The other major cause is the fact that vbulletin 4 was rushed out, this was almost certainally done for ‘shareholder’ reasons and I feel it was a shame that this happened. If I were a shareholder, I’d be far more interested in keeping the reputation of the brand up instead of making a quick buck in the short term.
2. Stylevars. Probably one of the biggest causes of complaints. I agree that the system is totally useless, however one of my admins described it thus: ‘Its not ****, its just extreamly verbose.’ I agree with this fully; As a coder, I’ve dug into the style vars system the concept is great, the implemntation is well… lacking. I could go into how and why but thats a tl;dr in and of itself.
3. vB4 itself. A lot of people are ‘holding off on upgrades till its better’ I’ve seen complaints that traffic has dropped on sites that have upgraded already. I upgraded my boards a couple of weeks ago and have seen no sigificant changes in traffic, positive or negative. The only complaints i’ve had from my members is the fact that most of the skins have not yet been converted to vb4. As far as the forum goes, there were a couple of minor issues, nothing site killing mostly style related.
Myself, I’m pleased with vbulletin 4 the upgrade has given a breath of life into a few areas of the forums and I’m hoping that activity will pick up more significantly in the coming weeks after I’ve launched the CMS. The new framework looks promising from a development point of view; I’ve already put together the begginings of my own webcomic content type and written some widgets. For the longer term i’ve sketched out plans for a store mod. The framework needs work, but its almost certainally going to be good to work with once the kinks are worked out.
I think what i’m trying to say here is that there are too many people saying vb4 is a disaster and not enough people giving a realistic view – it works for me, its not spectacular but it does its job.
I’m sad to go, in a way, as I loved the old regime and was happy with the 3x series and really looking forward to the 4x series.
I moved my site across to IPS last July after the “leak” fiasco. They gave me a free conversion to their platform and my user base and myself as admin, quickly adapted without much trouble and sulking.
Since then I have started another two forums both running on IPS software. So things are looking positive, which is nice.
I could only voice my discontent, at the direction that IB was taking us, with my feet and my wallet. I did this and went elsewhere for my forum solutions. I still don’t understand the business mind that IB has and why it should seem to actively want to reduce its existing customer base. I don’t really care now as I feel they are as worthless as my “owned” vB license is.
I’d like to thank some of you fellows and some of the staff for helping me with issues when I needed you.
You – the users are what really helped to make vB what it is, it’s a shame that those in charge just can’t see that.
Good luck to everyone and thanks again.
Cheers
Ted (texterted)
So annoyed right now. I seldom rant like this but I have NEVER had as bad customer service as I have from vbulletin.
We ponied up the $285 to get the support as well as the CMS. Vbulletin came highly recommended and although I prefer open source software, we spent the money on vbulletin.
After 2 separate installs, I can’t get the visual editor to work. All I get is a bunch of placeholder text.
I emailed vbulletin support from the member’s area – after confirming my license, and all I got back was a message saying I had to get an authentication code.
I replied with the code I thought they wanted, didn’t hear anything.
Wrote back a week later. No response.
Waited another week, wrote again. Nothing.
I’ve contacted vbulletin SEVEN times to get the answer to a SIMPLE QUESTION that most likely could be answered in a few minutes, but they’re more concerned with making customers who have PAID for their software jump through their hoops to make sure that it’s not pirated.
Would I contact the company directly and draw attention to myself if I hadn’t paid?
I’ve spent a MONTH with content management system that looks awful, and makes our 9-warehouse operation look like a joke.
I’ve put in a call to the head of support at vbulletin, and no doubt I’m not going to hear back.
I don’t care if it’s your email filtering system. I don’t care if it’s your ticket support system. I don’t care if it’s the authentication code. I sent SEVEN EMAILS. Over a MONTH. On the only other reply I got, the answer was that I needed to go to your page to get an authentication code. Your page was down. And I emailed and mentioned that, so I couldn’t get that code. And I still didn’t get a reply.
You’re running a business. I PAID for a service, namely support. PROVIDE IT. I don’t care how big your company is or how you do things. Taking money for a service and not providing it is still called fraud.
I don’t care how popular your software is or how many people download it. When you offer a product – and ESPECIALLY when somebody pays more for support – you’re obligated to provide it.
Do I really have to do a credit card chargeback to get your attention? Because it’s pretty obvious that you’re not providing the service you promised.