Dope crashes like fuck. We get told “We’re working on it”.
Dope gets ads and banners for not being logged in. We get told “It might lead to getting rid of P2P”
Crashes still happen, P2P is still in place. Now the ability to search has been taken away. The search function is still listed in Ed’s “Why should I subscribe” post.
So if the ability to search the database is one of the reasons we should be subscribing, and that ability has been taken away (and I have my doubts that the search is what’s causing the problems, given that there’s plenty of this type of board out there that allow searching and don’t have these problems), then surely ALL subscriptions should be extended for an equivalent amount of time. Search is down for a week, extend our subs for a week. Down for a month, subbed for a month. Down for good, we’d better not have to pay again.
It’s a gesture of goodwill from the management, showing that they value their customers enough to give us something back in exchange for removing the features which we are supposed to have access to.
I think this is entirely fair. Guests often ask “Why can’t I search?” only to be told you must pay for the ability to search. Friendly Dopers even offer to search topics for guests.
We’ve paid. We’re not getting the perk. I understand this is frustrating for Jerry, et al, as well, but the fact is “you” are not delivering your product to your customers.
As I mentioned in The Pit, we’ve been more than patient. I think we deserve answers.
As I posted in another “Dope’s Down” thread, they’ve extended our subscriptions a couple of times by a day or two in the past when there have been extended board issues.
I think it would only be fair to do so again, but this time it needs to be more than just one day.
Comping us a month or not requiring us to renew our subscriptions until the board is back up and running like it should be would be a nice gesture of goodwill.
Like ivylass said, we’ve been more than patient.
It’s one of the things that they use as a “sell” for payments. If my cable package dropped dropped a third of my channels due to technical problem on their end I would expect conpensation even if the channels that I lost were not channels I regulary watch. We pay for a service. When that service isn’t what we paid for we should expect and get compensation.
I am aware of that. In fact, the order you happened to list them in is pretty much in line with my priorities. Even if you assume they’re of equal value, then 3 days of no searching ability should only equate to one day of comped subscription, not 3. Which, in case you missed it, was the point I was making.
A core component(they’re all core IMO as they are so few) of the service is gone. The service is no what I paid for. Will the price go down this year if it remains off? Will it fuck!
I’m not going to quibble over some formula of how much each of us search vs how much we should be comped. The important thing is we’ve lost the ABILITY to search. I may search once a week, once a day, or every time I log on. How often I do it is immaterial. Right now, I can’t do it.
I understand that, and I agree with you. I don’t know what the fair amount should be either but, I don’t think it’s fair to expect them to give you the entire prorated subscription price for the loss of a single feature. Would you rather have no boards at all?
I think it’s entirely fair to comp the entire time that the search is down.
Search being down is merely the proverbial straw, if you will. The whole situation is
Repeated timeouts
Frequent complete downtime of the boards
Ads for paying members. Okay, so they took out the banner ads after we threw up a stink, but the google ads are still there
Slow slow slow browsing on a board that has no images for paying members
Search being removed
A post from **jdavis **in another thread promises (once again) that big things are coming. But they probably won’t be here until after the charter member renewal at the end of April. If all members were comped for the equivalent length of time that the search is out, it might be enough to move the charter member renewal time back beyond this fabled “New Better Things” time. At the very least it would foster more goodwill amongst the members and a lot who are grumbling at the moment about not renewing just might reconsider.
Fact is, for myself if not others, how this whole thing is handled is definitely going to have a direct relationship on whether I renew or not. And covering the whole time that we’ve lost search for (facetiousness aside, **amarone **is right, it’d come to maybe a handful of cents, perhaps a dollar per member depending on how fast they fix it) would be a great step from TPTB showing that they actually care about us as customers.
I know my own lack of renewal won’t break the bank. But I’ve been a lot more tolerant of the board’s repeated outages in the past than some other, more vocal members. If I’ve reached the point where I’m about to quit it, I can only imagine how many others are already past that point.
I renewed last month so I wouldn’t have to see the ads in the middle of the flippin threads, but I rarely post. I actually search more often than I post. I find it quite annoying that I can’t just click “New Posts” like I used to do to browse, but I still would have renewed If I had known last month that we’d lose the search functionality. It comes across as petty to quibble over prorated refunds when the total amount we’re talking about is less than $15. I consider the yearly subscription here to be a major bargain. I just hope they fix the search quick.
Perhaps comped is the wrong term. It’s not about refunds, it’s about having extra days/weeks/months added on to the end of people’s subscriptions as a way of saying “Sorry for the inconvenience”. Charter members HAVE to renew on a certain day each year, or else they lose their discount and title. If they’re going to be held over a barrel like that, surely it’s not a difficult thing for TPTB to say “look, we’re sorry, here’s an extra week for you before you have to re-up”. Normal members aren’t held to the same constraints, but it still would be a nice gesture.
And I get that $15 isn’t much. I’ve acknowledged in the pit thread that for me, once a year, it’s chump change. But it’s certainly not a bargain when it comes to messageboards. There are other boards, with larger memberships, that manage to avoid P2P but still have things like searching for guests, avatars, PMs, “who’s online” lists etc. etc.
Sure, some of those things are things we don’t want at the dope. Most dopers polled over the years have expressed that they like the simple interface, without masses of images everywhere and huge .sig files cluttering up the threads. Some people don’t like “who’s online” lists. It’s not saying we have to have those things. But others can and do implement them without major impact, why can’t this board be run efficiently with a pretty simple text and limited graphics interface?
Again, it’s not just about the search being taken down. It’s about the whole situation.
When your car is in the shop, you get a rental from your insurance company for the duration of the repair. Geico doesn’t generally ask you how many hours a day you drive.
