Honorbuddy Store Question - Bad Products

[pheelgood]

Question: What if you purchased a product from the buddystore.. it showed promise so you kept it well beyond it's 30 days. Yet the product never seems to become 'reliable'. It works for a while then crashes, then doesn't work for a week. Always some excuse, some other reason why it won't do what it said it would do.

What happens to said products? Is there a way they can be flagged/reported? Is there a rating mechanism for these items that are paid for? If not/why not?

Where are the protections for the consumers (i.e. testing) of these products?

I'm not going to call out any products as I think developers should be compensated for their hard work... as long as their products work.

 

[Frayman]

Good question ..I have one I wont mention but was concerned about

 

[Gleeky]

94.58% support for a rating system for buddystore products. My thread got closed as HB team said they were working on it, but it wasn't a priority.
https://www.thebuddyforum.com/honorbuddy-forum/194672-request-voting-system-buddystore-products.html

EDIT: Did a little research.

Apparently HB-1064 ("Testimonial / Rating option for store?") is not in the list of "known bugs" - See https://www.thebuddyforum.com/releases/198885-honorbuddy-v2-5-12600-764-a.html#post1817414

However:
"This list represents reports that will be of interest to the general user Community. It is approximately 25% of our open bug workload. The rest of the reports are future considerations, internal concerns, or of concern only to the Community Developers."

To me this is a bug that is of interest to the general user Community, so should definitely be in the list.

 

[AknA]

I know that a rating system is being worked on but it's not easy to implement a fair one.
Say you buy a product and it simply works, you never have any problem what so ever with the product, are you even going to visit the support thread to give it a rating ?
The products that is going to get a rating (good or bad) is actually the ones that have issues (if they get fixed fast then great, a good rating, if they don't get fixed fast, then it's a bad rating), still the ones that you never have any issues with will never get a rating at all (from most ppl).

 

[namednoob]

I know that a rating system is being worked on but it's not easy to implement a fair one.
Say you buy a product and it simply works, you never have any problem what so ever with the product, are you even going to visit the support thread to give it a rating ?
The products that is going to get a rating (good or bad) is actually the ones that have issues (if they get fixed fast then great, a good rating, if they don't get fixed fast, then it's a bad rating), still the ones that you never have any issues with will never get a rating at all (from most ppl).

Not if they implement a force rating system where after a period of N custom days(depending on product type and complexity which is set by whoever Staff approved it) you are obligated to rate it good or bad otherwise it gets auto disabled in your account and to re-enable it, you are forced to rate it.

Of course that is just an idea some users might actually get mad if that is not explained before ahead but is one way to it there might be easier and better way to approach the idea as well or so I hope...

 

[Phearless]

I know that a rating system is being worked on but it's not easy to implement a fair one.
Say you buy a product and it simply works, you never have any problem what so ever with the product, are you even going to visit the support thread to give it a rating ?
The products that is going to get a rating (good or bad) is actually the ones that have issues (if they get fixed fast then great, a good rating, if they don't get fixed fast, then it's a bad rating), still the ones that you never have any issues with will never get a rating at all (from most ppl).

This is a very good point. Most people wouldn't rate, and you'd only get the bad ratings. One way to combat this would be to auto vote everything to a 4 and periodically ask for feedback. If you're using the store to access your purchases, the store knows you're connecting. It can check if you've selected the 4 stars or if it defaulted there, and every so often request an actual rating of the product. This wouldn't be that difficult to program if taken into account when laying out their system, but then again, I don't know the schema of their DB, nor their software, so maybe, at this point, it would be a big PITA to get it working right.

 

[Gatherit]

I think if the product owner posts a link to a support thread here on the forum and people are reluctant to read it for feedback, that is their own fault. Also, you can rate threads on the forum, why do we need a rating system on the store? Previous to buying anything I would always click the forum link and see what kind of feedback it's getting. If you can't do that then how is it anyone elses fault?

I do agree with AknA on the point he made about the rating system. I think it's a disaster waiting to happen.

 

[odano1988]

instead of having a support thread linked somewhere else maybe it should be linked on the store?also wouldnt mind at least seeing how to set up some of the items on teh store, so many things there are completely misunderstood because no info on how to truely set up. Just my opinion.

 

[namednoob]

Honestly they should deploy a HelpDesk for the store where each developer is required to assist users with issues pertinent to their product in there, this way it would reduce the massive flood and have a centralized way to deal with it.

The internal support system allow for users to rate the support and leave comments which the Staff could then evaluate on whether or not that developer is keeping their word.

Of course if users try to make a developer do something they are not supposed to, they can also see that and nullify that ticket as a monthly or weekly weight of that developer's performance and with those rating they could show at the developer's product profile that this product of developer X have a rating X of support given or whatever.

 

[oniknives]

I think if the product owner posts a link to a support thread here on the forum and people are reluctant to read it for feedback, that is their own fault. Also, you can rate threads on the forum, why do we need a rating system on the store? Previous to buying anything I would always click the forum link and see what kind of feedback it's getting. If you can't do that then how is it anyone elses fault?

This Statement makes me wish we had a +1 or Rep function (unless im an idiot and there is one already)

HAHA look at that right after submitting this post i saw the button.... Im so failtastic!

 

[Gatherit]

This Statement makes me wish we had a +1 or Rep function (unless im an idiot and there is one already)

HAHA look at that right after submitting this post i saw the button.... Im so failtastic!

Thanks for the rep buddy!

 

[JustinTense]

I would rather prefer developers be required to post a link to an official support thread. It'd be just as easy to jump to the last 4 or 5 pages and read what people are saying. I think this is better because a product may be a little bad at first and get a ton of bad reviews, but then gets fixed & working perfectly, but now has previous bad reviews holding it down.

What I'm more worried about is completely losing support after the dev's contract is over because they aren't seeing the same paychecks they were getting when they first released the product.. Before the buddystore people in the community could at least update it to work since the source code was there. Just look at LogMeOut and RareKiller as examples. If say Mills decided to stop support for BGFarmer (not saying he will), a lot of people would be out of a great product with little to no hope of getting it updated since it's closed-source. Sure someone could remake it, but it would be a lot of work for something that is wasting away on a server, and customers will probably be deterred from spending more money if the product is only going to last 3 months or whatever. This is one of the reasons I think products should be opensourced if the developer decides to not update his contract with Bossland

 

[mishrathium]

rather then a rating system they could use a "running" system as proof is in the pudding.

Amount of hours CR ran compared to others or something.. would show top used profiles

 

[namednoob]

rather then a rating system they could use a "running" system as proof is in the pudding.

Amount of hours CR ran compared to others or something.. would show top used profiles

that's a completely unrelated feature, for example a CR that is in development won't hold many hours or as many members or people might stay away due to the fact its in beta and have few run down or shows up on the most used.

This looks to me like a feature to have on the store(unrelated to rating system) but doubt it would be beneficial to developers, I mean if know what are the most download profiles and the such is just as good as knowing what NOT to use due to the amount of users using those profiles.

On the other hand a botbase would be slight different case scenario.