warning about TEMPLATIC themes

Hi rbhavesh,

I can appreciate the challenges in developing a company and business model – especially during rough economic times. My experiences with your company during the initial stages of my evaluation of themes has been disappointing. Your staff does not answer pre-sales questions. There is no forum to elicit information, and the stability and reliability of your themes is questionable.

While many customers may find unstable themes “for all intents and purposes” good enough (maybe they are just parking a site), I cannot afford to have my site down for hours or four days depending upon whether or not your staff feels like answering a query or problem that I may have.

I like doing companies that have a business model that includes recurring revenue streams. This gives me hope that they can stabilize a support staff that can build rock solid themes and support for those themes. I am not convinced that you are there yet but I hope you take the appropriate steps to get there.

Rich

Thanks for the comments again Rich,

I would not want to repeat this again and again but yes, we are bringing back the forums this week. Two more support persons are joining us shortly and other updates.

We’d rather chose to prove it by action than false promising here. Having said that, if you can give me ticket number in our helpdesk where you have not received timely support, it will help me evaluate the situation and take action accordingly

Hi rbhavesh,

There were several questions to Ticket #8304, but I can see what has happened. The email from the helpdesk does not allow for email responses. This is not the industry standard. The message at the top requests that all responses go through the helpdesk, which is what I thought I was doing – however, apparently I should have gone back to your site and make another request through pre-sales help.

This process is very awkward since there is loss of continuity of the thread. Either a forum or a helpdesk since that allows for continuity, via email, of pre-sales questions would be very helpful. Also, I find open forums (such as the one we are on) the most reliable source of information. I have visited other forums that are closed to pre-sales visitors and this leaves me asking questions. I think this was alluded to by someone else on this thread.

Thanks for taking the time and lending and ear.

Rich

Hi Rich,

I understand your concerns with the email response. Apparently, the helpdesk we have been using does not support email piping just yet. At the top of each email it clearly says “Please DO NOT respond this email. Use helpdesk to reply this ticket” but guess the users somehow ignore them.

Open forum is a welcome move but we have the members only forum because thats the benefit the paid members get. However, open forum for pre-sales questions is a real good idea. I will try to add this section in our upcoming forum.

Hope to see you take active part in our upcoming support forums

I bought one of their themes recently because I was impressed by it, but their support forums, which are now open, are more or less deserted. This does not bode well because their official support policy is to not help with theme modifications, no matter how simple. In retrospect, I believe I made a mistake because without the community or developer support, I have to rely on just my own WP skills which aren’t very advanced.

In their support policy they say they will not support:

1. solving problems for plugins not packaged with our framework and themes
2. plugins integration
3. general WordPress support (please use the WordPress forums for that)
4. adding new features or extending the features currently available
5. changing colors and/or images
6. any type of modification or customization

In other words, you are completely on your own. They are basically saying, “We won’t help you if the most popular plug-ins do not work with our themes; it’s not our fault.” Contrast that to the other theme companies like StudioPress, or a very small one like Simplethemes. The only one I see as reasonable is #3. The guy at Simplethemes, who is literally a one-man shop, responds almost instantly to forum posts and often creates the code modifications himself when people ask for help. If Templatic could get one or two of their developers to do that a couple of times a week, it would put a pulse in their form and bring confidence to customers that maybe these themes are supportable.

Hi Everyone,

I just purchased a theme from Templatic.com but I’m unable to install it. Does anyone know how to fix the below error? I’m really needing to use the product soon. Thanks in advance.

—– Error Message ——-
Are you sure you want to do this?

Please try again.
Forbidden

You don’t have permission to access /wp-admin/update.php on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

HI there,

The error is pointing out at one of the core wordpress file and seems to be some file permission issue. We’d love to help you on any issues you are having at templatic helpdesk or our support forum.

I guess there’s not much need in me adding another complaint to this pile. This seems to have been going on for three months and probably longer.

Hi Terry,

Unfortunately, that feedback will not really help me understand what issue you are having. Do let me know and I will my best to help you with any issue you are having.

Is there any ticket number in our helpdesk you did not get satisfactory answer? Or can you give me link to our support forum where it was not answered?

Well, I can only confirm that the support at Templatic is horrible and it must been on of the slowest around. The time it takes for Templatic to respond on Support tickets are between one and three weeks! And not the 24 hours that Templatic states on their website.

My advice is simple – stay away from Templatic untill they restructure their support which at the moment is a mere joke.

DS

I agree. This is just another one of those companies that thinks it can pull the wool over people by getting on forums and acting “earnest” about support. I have decided to stay away.

It must be bad,

We have asked Templatic for re-assurance on these bad posts, before buying a ‘club membership’, in a ticket on the 10th Nov 2010, 7:05 PM

Still no reply. Even for a pre-sales enquiry!

That’s 6 days (4 once the weekend is removed) and nothing.

I presume those with themes from templatic.com will be left out in the cold.

Would other developers be able to offer fixes, if they have closed down, or are close to doing so?

(these messages are invaluable in maintaining confidence with WordPress providers)

@dalesue , @richf @webdesignemb

Hey Guys, I am sincerely trying to be helpful here but if you do not provide me any reference to the ticket number or link to support forum thread, how will I be able to locate the issues you guys are having and check the reason with our support staff -why the issue was not solved?

Each morning, the first things we do is check all the unanswered tickets and respond to them. Please note the following two things

1) If you have sent email directly to our helpdesk without logging in, it does not reach us (as mentioned at the top of email from helpdesk response you receive)

2) Make sure you have not unsubscribed to email alert from the helpdesk (of the query you generate)

3) Worst case scenario, please also check your spam mail box for any email from [email protected]

Nope, we are not closing. Infact we are looking for atleast 10 more people (https://templatic.com/jobs) to join our company so as we can improve everything

@richrf – you seem to be passionately hate us :). I believe we have had conversation earlier in this thread and let me know if there is anything specific I can help you with.

@rbhavesh. You have a huge problem with your support and you don’t seem to understand it. People do make posts here and at other forums when they do not get your attention the ‘usual’ way, that is to say through tickets or your own forum. If you look around on the Internet you will notice that there are a lot of people who like your themes but are extremely disappointed with your lack of support.

It is simply not true that you each morning check all the unanswered tickets and respond to them. Maybe you check them but you do definitely not answer them. I and several of your customers can confirm that. And I honestly think that you really should take a look in your own system because there is obviously something that is not working.

Of course I cannot know whether it is an employee who hides certain tickets or the script that you are using that is simply not working but you should really take a close look into it since your perception of the reality obviously is not the same as that of several of your customers.

We do not hate you. Far from. But we have paid for a theme WITH a working support and we are expecting to receive that. And when do not get what we have paid for we warn other people for spending money on something they will not receive. It is simple as that and it is the way the ‘WordPress world’ works. You get the attention that you deserve.

It is nice that you take time to participate in the debate here at www.ads-software.com but I think the time would be better spent answering and RESOLVING tickets at your support.

And finally we have logged in, we have not unsubscribed and we have checked our spam filters. Still no answer from the support at Templatic.