Internet Brands – the new owners of Jelsoft and the vBulletin Board software product itself, where planning yesterday on updating their official vBulletin.com sales discussion forums with the new “vBulletin 4 Suite” being offered for sale that’s still in the early Beta Testingstage as of right right now. It now looks however, that things have not gone quite according to plan. Yet another clear sign thatInternet Brands just can’t seem to get anything right were vBulletin.com is concerned.
Wayne Luke, a respected staff member and Internet Brands employee working at vBulletin.com. Tried to cover-up their “Epic Failure” late last night by posting on another forum board that all was well and working perfect behind the scene, and that only a few minor issues remained which needed fixing that were not vBulletin 4 related. “We should all see the vBulletin.com forums back online soon he said“. That was 10-12 hours ago, and still no forums working at: vBulletin.com.
vBulletin customers thinking about (maybe) buying the new vBulletin 4 Suite, had been asking to see a Working Demo of it ever since Internet Brands put-up their new vBulletin 4 Sales Frontpage. Something they didn’t appear that eager to do, instead wanting people to buy it blindly. That was until a leaked “vBulletin 4 Suite Alpha 5″ private testing version was put live on the Internet by some unknown disillusioned vBulletin Alpha Tester for all to see and make full use off!
Leaked vBulletin 4 Suite demo forces Internet Brands hand
Internet Brands later claimed that they now know the person on their vBulletin 4 Alpha Testing team who leaked the demo live online, although they’ve not released any information who that person was. As a result of that leaked vBulletin 4 Suite demo though (which was only an early Alpha 5 testing version). It does seem it’s forced Internet Brands to try and counter-act any damage that early version might have caused in their sales, by releasing a much more up-to-date Beta version of the same vBulletin 4 Suite package.
Some people around Internet even claimed that this new vBulletin leak might just be another publicity stunt being pulled by Internet Brands to try and help promote the sale of their new vBulletin 4 package, and that they where planning on releasing a more up-to-date working Beta version of the same vBulletin 4 Suite regardless officially. In other words, they just wanted a bit of faked publicity posted on some “Larger News” sites first to highlight the starting of the sale.
Epic Failure just isn’t the word
If there is any truth in this, one thing’s for sure. Internet Brands latest “Public Relations” stunt has just come full circle and shot them straight in the foot. Instead now, they’ll get all the negative publicity they didn’t want. 24 hours later after they first said we’d all be seeing this brand new shiny vBulletin 4 Suite installed on their official vBulletin.com forums. Guess what? We’re all still waiting!
This highlights another problem that vBulletin customers may think hard about now. If Internet Brands are having such huge issues in updating their own “vBulletin 3.8 to vBulletin 4″, what does this mean for their customers who will have to do the same thing soon also?
It’s just not good enough really is it
Sorry Internet Brands, but this failure to be able to update your own official vBulletin forums in a timely and professional manner, nor to post any updates on your Frontpage explaining what the problem is in more detail for customers to understand. And then to have your staff posting cover-up stories on other sites to try and smooth things over with “very questionable” reasons = Epic Fail!