Neither the Auctions or Pictures will save!

In future, please try waiting longer than 20 minutes for the plugin’s author to reply to your support posts before posting a review.

So how long do you suggest anyone waits before posting a comment about a theme that doesn’t work?

Try about 2 weeks to allow for illnesses, vacations, work & other commitments. Remember that these free themes are being provided by people in their spare time.

2 Weeks???? Sorry Esmi, thats not a time line that I can wait for support? Are you kidding?

Developers that create free plugins that can’t support their users for up to two weeks for one reason or another have to understand that there are businesses out there that are potentially using their products?

Some businesses use them to support their own customers and as a result need much better support than that!

If I told my customers to wait for two weeks for support on my part time business then I wouldn’t last very long and neither would anyone else!

Are you kidding?

No.

there are businesses out there that are potentially using their products

Perhaps you would be better off buying a commercial product rather than than using a free one. Or paying for one-to-one premium support.

If I told my customers to wait for two weeks for support on my part time business

These developers are not releasing plugins as a commercial venture. They are being freely offered to the wider WordPress community.

And the WordPress community are primarily a business community.
I don’t need premier support thanks thats not what Im looking for.

A two week period to wait for support is too long ether if your paying for it or not, whether your playing games or in business. Period.

Take a survey and learn a little about your community and what they expect from developers in terms of support. Don’t take my word for it.

And the WordPress community are primarily a business community.

Says who? If you are running a business and want premium support, invest in premium products & services.

learn a little about your community

I’m flattered but the community isn’t mine. It belongs to all WordPress users. It’s a community of volunteers.

What is the fuss all about? Should I look at your error?

I’ve to be honest but many give bad reviews to seek attention. This is not ideal but each person has its own way of dealing things and you really cannot do anything about it.

What concerns me here is that if plugin has not worked for you, it might be the case that you have not configured it well or there would be some external config issues which might break it. You should atleast have patience to wait and see how things turn out. If both you and me (plugin author) thinks that this plugin is simply not a good fit for your site then you should rate accordingly.

Cheers,
Nitesh

There is no fuss.

Esmi thinks that people need to wait at least 2 weeks before they leave a review about a plugin that doesn’t work and I disagree.

The vast amount of people that download plugins that don’t work will get frustrated and will leave a review. Thats a fact. The reason is that if a plugin doesn’t work when its supposed to, then its not fit for purpose. End of story. Users don’t want to be waisting time downloading plugins that don’t work.

I own a software company so I know what customers expectations of a product are.

Esmi’s point is that if a developer is part time or the plugin is free then users should somehow be less disappointed and more forgiving?

The point of a developer releasing a plugin for public consumption be it a WordPress user/ customer or a part of a community, and it doest work, then its simply not been tested enough in my view, and it should either be taken off the market until its been fixed, or the plugin author is actively on the case supporting users and creating updates.

I have looked at the waiting list for support of this plugin and there are users that have waited 3 days for a response? Some have waited weeks and still not had a response?!?

I think that there should be an SLA (Service Level Agreement) for WordPress authors that develop and release plugins that says that you either support your plugin as users would expect or, in the case that Esmis is making, make it clear that if your a part time author that your response time is going to be at least two weeks before you can support anyone with an issue. That way anyone looking at a plugin knows before hand what kind of support they can expect to get before they download it.

Its about managing expectations between users and authors and at the moment WordPress could be doing this better for everyone.

The vast amount of people that download plugins that don’t work will get frustrated and will leave a review. Thats a fact. The reason is that if a plugin doesn’t work when its supposed to, then its not fit for purpose. End of story. Users don’t want to be waisting time downloading plugins that don’t work.

Nope. The vast majority of them actually seek help prior to leaving an attention seeking review. Nothing special about that, they’re just being polite. It happens. The majority of users and the reviews left by them are quite good.

Then there’s reviews like this one. Again it happens.

I think that there should be an SLA (Service Level Agreement) for WordPress authors that develop and release plugins that says that you either support your plugin as users would expect or, in the case that Esmis is making, make it clear that if your a part time author that your response time is going to be at least two weeks before you can support anyone with an issue. That way anyone looking at a plugin knows before hand what kind of support they can expect to get before they download it.

Wow. That’s amazingly inappropriate, exploitative and a completely ungrateful thing for you to say. Seriously?

You do realize that the author owes you nothing? You are a software user. You are not this author’s customer and you are not entitled to anything.

You may leave reviews here and they’re often helpful when people do that. When someone reads this review I’m confident that they’ll figure out what this one is about.

Its about managing expectations between users and authors and at the moment WordPress could be doing this better for everyone.

It’s not published but the “SLA” for the free software here has always been that you may request a complete refund on what you paid for when you downloaded the 100% free gift that the author made available to you here.

If you are looking for SLAs that include response times, guarantees, availability of support, etc. then you are looking in the wrong place.

This is a free volunteer community driven software repository and your expectations are off base.

Attention seeking review? Why on earth would anyone leaving a review be seeking attention???

Hey if you don’t like what some users expect of authors then maybe you need to publish guidelines about what some users CAN expect?

I think your view is valid as is Esmis, but the issue with it is that is doesn’t say that anywhere in WordPress?? There are no guidelines, there are no expectation levels set.

Plugins are not mentioned in WordPress support anywhere, so maybe you should add it so users know what they can expect or not as the case may be.

If its not about expectation then Its about communication!

@armandoc, I only have one thing to say. Since you are running a software company, just apply the case what has happened to you i.e. you did not got reply from me for 1 day and see/judge for yourself. Set same yardstick for your software too and if you are doing it then hats off to you.

And now lets end it.

Regards,
Nitesh

It would seem to me that business who only use freebies and then expect the world shouldn’t be in business. There’s a saying that states you only get what you pay for. I’m testing the free version to see if it does what I want. if it does I will purchase the pro even if the free version is adequate for what I need. Would love to know what armandoc’s software is so I can give it a wide berth. obviously tight fisted and if as a software company can’t work out the problem then it doesn’t give one confidence in his software. Keep up the good work Nitesh the rest of us appreciate your efforts.