Support? Are you kidding!

[stunn3r]

Hello All WHMCS users,

 

Let me explain how the WHMCS provide Support here.

 

Last Month 10th Jan 2012 . We opened ticket regarding Multiple Payments Not working after upgrade . Ticket 50% of the ticket issues took 10 days to resolve .

 

We had major issue with Paypal payment mode not confirming the paid invoices as paid. We feared replying constantly will take our ticket even down the order . Guess what we received reply every 3 days once. That also asking for details . Next again we wait for 3-4days . We had to reply with frustration as its affecting our business heavily . Guess what is the reply? We are checking the issue now.

 

Even we provided our Paypal details as per the support member instructions.

 

Now the last reply is on 4th Feb 2012 . Since then there is no update regarding the issue . Nor any alternate solution for Paypal module to work .

 

Do expect us to pay for the license this month ? For what purpose did we pay till now . To get such a worst support ?

 

On top of that our ticket as been upgrade to LEVEL II Support. Where we are getting replies every 3-4 days.

 

Being the Software developers you are not able to debug the issue since 1 month. Even not able to interact with client on regular bases does that make professional support.

[openmind]

Well it must be something unique to your own install as we have PayPal working on v5 just fine.

[Matt]

I'm sorry to hear you have been disappointed with the level of support you have received. As you should be aware from our responses in that ticket, the issue isn't that we aren't providing support but rather that we haven't been able to diagnose the issue. We've tried a lot of things, none of which have worked so far, and we are at this stage out of ideas, but we are continuing to look at further options for you although I would still recommend you try migrating the installation to another server if you have that option available to rule out the server aspects discussed.

 

Matt

[CavalloComm]

I think they provide great support. Try opening a ticket with SmarterMail, or Plesk - see where that lands you. In fact, you can't even open a ticket with them unless you pay for it.

 

I have nothing but good things about the support and customizations I have recieved from WHMCS so far.

[stunn3r]

I'm sorry to hear you have been disappointed with the level of support you have received. As you should be aware from our responses in that ticket, the issue isn't that we aren't providing support but rather that we haven't been able to diagnose the issue. We've tried a lot of things, none of which have worked so far, and we are at this stage out of ideas, but we are continuing to look at further options for you although I would still recommend you try migrating the installation to another server if you have that option available to rule out the server aspects discussed.

 

Matt

 

 

Let me tell you matt .

 

If this was the server side issue . It would not have worked from the beginning. Why did the issue start with upgrade of the software. and you might have cross checked whole 31 days of details provided to you. That we haven't made any mistake while upgrading the software.

 

If you have such buggy upgrade which you even cannot debug it . Then why do you release next version which would cause big problem to the merchants.

 

Now we need immediate solution to this Or provide suitable alternate solution to this issue. We cant wait any longer for your damn slow support.

[Matt]

Hi,

 

If it was a buggy upgrade though then it wouldn't be working for all the other WHMCS users - and we've already tried the previous version of the files on your server to rule that out. So I don't think you can claim it's the fault of the update. We will respond to your support ticket with the detailed results of the tests we've run so we can decide together what you want to do.

 

Matt

[xotj123]

Hello,

 

I just love posts like this! It all comes down to expectations! I have been dealing with IT & Software for years. I have learned that a certain level of patience is required to be successful. Its just the nature of technology. And WHMCS support is offered for free!!! And I feel the cost of the product is way below what its total combined worth is.

 

My experience, FREE SUPPORT - Means NO SUPPORT! It's the total opposite for WHMCS though.

 

As for WHMCS. I followed them for 2 years before making a purchase. In addition I had no experience with php being a .NET Developer. Thats another reason for the 2 years of study of the app.

 

Once I made a purchase about 2 years ago, I had many questions. Being patient, I relied on documentation & forums for 90% of my issues and questions. The rest I submitted tickets for. Naturally some tickets took longer to resolve more than others. I have had many issues arise in the 2 years. I had a total CRASH and was able to recover completely quickly. I have since moved to virtualization.

 

My point being, sometimes its not the response, its our expectations need to be more realistic.

 

I hope everything works our for you with WHMCS. I have found, I can't live without it for my business. I am extremely happy with WHMCS.

 

Regards,

TJ Havens

[b0r3d]

Hello,

 

I just love posts like this! It all comes down to expectations! I have been dealing with IT & Software for years. I have learned that a certain level of patience is required to be successful. Its just the nature of technology. And WHMCS support is offered for free!!! And I feel the cost of the product is way below what its total combined worth is.

 

My experience, FREE SUPPORT - Means NO SUPPORT! It's the total opposite for WHMCS though.

 

As for WHMCS. I followed them for 2 years before making a purchase. In addition I had no experience with php being a .NET Developer. Thats another reason for the 2 years of study of the app.

 

Once I made a purchase about 2 years ago, I had many questions. Being patient, I relied on documentation & forums for 90% of my issues and questions. The rest I submitted tickets for. Naturally some tickets took longer to resolve more than others. I have had many issues arise in the 2 years. I had a total CRASH and was able to recover completely quickly. I have since moved to virtualization.

 

My point being, sometimes its not the response, its our expectations need to be more realistic.

 

I hope everything works our for you with WHMCS. I have found, I can't live without it for my business. I am extremely happy with WHMCS.

 

Regards,

TJ Havens

 

You do know it's NOT free support right? Support is included on monthly subscriptions. Otherwise it's 1 year included on bought licenses and $x.xx a year. So no, support isn't free. It's included in our monthly subscriptions. Lastly WHMCS cost isn't well below it's true value. They are at market value. You cannot compare WHMCS to someone like Ubersmith. Ubersmith for anyone who has used it, is worth it's coin if you can afford it. WHMCS is spot on with the market value.

 

The market determines the value, not WHMCS unfortunately. They are very competitive and because of that combined with a good team they are successful, but don't for a moment think support is free, because it's not.

 

And @ Cavello. WHMCS != Plesk. Please don't compare them to Plesk. If we tried comparing one bad thing to another it goes nowhere. WHMCS support IS indeed great but slow to respond. Billing software is high demand software for business. Plesk won't cost a business money, cpanel wont either.... my billing software goes down it does.

 

I think Matt's a good guy, still involved and pretty honest... i just hope they speed up support responses. Billing software and 24 hour responses just don't go hand in hand.

Edited March 23, 2012 by b0r3d

[laszlof]

 

And @ Cavello. WHMCS != Plesk. Please don't compare them to Plesk. If we tried comparing one bad thing to another it goes nowhere. WHMCS support IS indeed great but slow to respond. Billing software is high demand software for business. Plesk won't cost a business money, cpanel wont either.... my billing software goes down it does.

 

Plesk has billing software, so that isnt entirely accurate. Formerly it was known as modernbill. And yes, their support is terrible, and super expensive. (per ticket pricing model)

[openmind]

Plesk does have a billing software package but that is where the comparison ends. Modernbill was a shocking piece of software and got considerably worse once Parallels got their hands on it. Funny how everything they touch turns to gunk really...

[b0r3d]

Plesk has billing software, so that isnt entirely accurate. Formerly it was known as modernbill. And yes, their support is terrible, and super expensive. (per ticket pricing model)

 

When i say plesk i mean the control panel. I don't consider what plesk sells now for billing software much of anything. I agree with the last comment, anything plesk touches goes to the crapper.

 

I offer cPanel and have for over a decade. I tried offering plesk as well and find their crap as bloated and over priced as it gets. Point was, you cannot compare a good product WHMCs with a bad product Plesk.

[wsd]

I bought WHMCS on 09/2010

 

I would then just say that I do not use WHMCS yet to manage my online server it is still running on the old system.

 

But I hope that there will soon be switching to WHMCS, I tested with 4 server now and is about to set up everything so it's going to work as I had it to work.

 

I have contacted WHMCS support many times and they have always helped me solve the problems I've had, and it has 98% been within a reasonable time, but I can well understand that there are some who feel that sometimes goes too long time, this does not mean so much to me because I are not on online with WHMCS yet, the day I come online and need support, I also wish that problems will be solved fast, but since I have worked with IT for over 23 years, I know also that it does not always go easy, because there are so many things that can tease you, my motto is: the day you find a easy IT project you must let me know this because so I want to participate.

 

I can not see the idea of comparing the support of others for you will always find someone who has a lower support or improves support, and to compare with some having a much doing level does not mean that support will be better from WHMCS.

 

Considering what is paid to WHMCS, I think now enough we must appreciate the support we have from them.

 

And the day I go online there will never be faded updates or other fixes before it's tried and tested on a dev. site

Edited March 23, 2012 by wsd

[tripler]

4 years and I think I have contacted them once or twice? Reasonable time and I completely overlooked something which lead to the support request being a total DUH tip.

 

Cant imagine all the crap requests they get from people who really should not be using whmcs.

[b0r3d]

4 years and I think I have contacted them once or twice? Reasonable time and I completely overlooked something which lead to the support request being a total DUH tip.

 

Cant imagine all the crap requests they get from people who really should not be using whmcs.

 

Business is business, money no matter who it comes from is what a business looks for. Even stupid people who don't know the meaning of WHMCS or what it stands for can pay for it. Should they tie up support resources isn't up to us as customers, that's up to WHMCS to support the demand.

[othellotech]

You cannot compare WHMCS to someone like Ubersmith. Ubersmith for anyone who has used it, is worth it's coin if you can afford it

Having just acquired a company using UbersmithDC, I can honestly say it's an unintutive half-finished piece of junk, so we spent the time and wrote tools to migrate from Uber to WHMCS

 

 

To the OP - if you're not getting the callbacks, first point of call should be your paypal account manager in conjunction with your sysadmin staff, as PP can simulate the callback, and your sysamdin can tcpdump the traffic at the same time

 

One of my in-house team of experts fixed an issue with callbacks failing a few days ago on someone's WHMCS - which after hours of debugging turned out to be an end-user typo in a .htaccess file !

[laszlof]

Having just acquired a company using UbersmithDC, I can honestly say it's an unintutive half-finished piece of junk, so we spent the time and wrote tools to migrate from Uber to WHMCS

 

I feel your pain brother! I did this probably about 2 years ago for a company I use to work for. same situation. Acquired another smaller host using ubersmith. Was a total pain in the rear to migrate the clients over seamlessly, and ubersmith support was NOT helpful at all.

[VicToMeyeZR]

Let me tell you matt .

 

If this was the server side issue . It would not have worked from the beginning. Why did the issue start with upgrade of the software. and you might have cross checked whole 31 days of details provided to you. That we haven't made any mistake while upgrading the software.

 

If you have such buggy upgrade which you even cannot debug it . Then why do you release next version which would cause big problem to the merchants.

 

Now we need immediate solution to this Or provide suitable alternate solution to this issue. We cant wait any longer for your damn slow support.

 

That claim is wrong it to many ways. You can't always assume because you did an upgrade that's the problem. Fact.. 1000's of sites upgraded and still use paypal just fine. The issue is obviously with your call back, and there are many things that can block those. I would tend to lean towards your OS. Since WHMCS staff (even Matt) can't find the problem, i highly DOUBT its WHMCS. IF that is the case, they are doing you a favor even looking into it. I am sure Matt could very easily say, we can prove its not WHMCS since the web server isn't even getting the call back and leave you to your own demise.. You might do well to higher a specialist to help you.

[durangod]

I personally have no issue with their support reply time or assisting me in the things i need to do, i am very happy at this time with their support. My issue has always been that in some cases when it seems i need it the most, either the documentation is not correct, it does not go into deep enough detail, or it is just not well written so i have no idea what they are trying to tell me to do lol.

 

And i understand in my case it is not all WHMCS fault, i came into this business from being a coder and starting my own hosting company thinking that the reseller market had been around long enough that any 1st tier or highly recommended billing applications available would be well developed to the point it would pretty much be a plug and play type of operation.

 

This was of course where my frustration comes from (my expectations) and still does. The fact that such a well known and recommended software such as WHMCS is in reality still so infantile in its features and overall build is just so surprising to me. Makes me wonder what kind of headache the users of other softwares must be dealing with.

 

Dont get me wrong i love WHMCS and i know it offers so many features, and it is definately number one in my book. It has come a long way but it still has a long way to go and i think that is where my frustration comes from is that i just did not realize that these expensive softwares were not where i thought they would be in todays world knowing how long hosting reseller accounts have been around.

 

Ok thats my take, maybe you had a very special and unique issue, and i am sorry that it has made you pull your hair out but please understand that at least in what i have seen and in my cases, the service and service replies have been pretty good. I do hope you get her situation fixed and you have a much better experience, because after all, our time should be spent building our business not try to get the software to work as it should.

 

Peace

Dave

Edited March 31, 2012 by durangod

[WHMCS John]

My issue has always been that in some cases when it seems i need it the most, either the documentation is not correct, it does not go into deep enough detail, or it is just not well written so i have no idea what they are trying to tell me to do lol.

If our documentation is lacking in any way please feel free to contact me with the specifics and it'll be gladly received.

[disgruntled]

For me contacting support was my last resort, at which time i was tired, frustrated and probably quite rude too,

 

None the less Matt and his support team helped me to figure out what the problem was and in the end it turned out to be something i had missed out, this was after an upgrade too.

 

The fact still remains given the way i spoke they would have been well within their rights to tell me to go **** but they didnt and by the end of the consult i was more calm even though i was still tired and frustrated they enabled me to resolve the issue myself.

 

My system was hacked, and using the dreaded ticket system hack, the attack i looked at was after i had upgraded to the latest secured update. The point i missed out was the fact my system was comprimised long before the recent attempt and i had no clue i just deleted the ticket and dismissed it as junk.

 

This meant ofcourse my system already had the exploits and the fact a further attempt was made just misled me into the conclusion it was this recent attempt that was at cause. which clearly it wasnt.

 

I cant thank the whmcs team enough for their patience with me while seeing me safely through my problem in a professional manner.

 

Thumbs up from me for WHMCS Support