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You charge, I don't know? What the hell?

Hey there slife team,

I'm really wondering about you! I don't know if I did sth. "wrong", but at least you didn't inform me! I test-drove Slife (Web?) and today I got my credit card report and there a charge of $5 showed up. When did I have to cancel? Who mailed me? No-one? I mean ok, you can do that, may be also written down in your legal notice, but that's not a nice way!

But now it is even worse: You somehow subscribed me to the "Premium" level (still I got charged only $5, so I couldn't have subscribed to a Premium trial huh?) instead of just downgrading me to "Basic" until I (manually) roll it over. I mean ok, you do just roll over it "for me", but why can't you even inform me via e-mail about it? I have so many things going on, who cares about ones tray icon running? Or maybe I'm just the wrong person for this stuff...

And the icing on the cake: One can't find a way to cancel all this! Yes, I can "cancel at any time", right. Um, the only thing that I can is delete my account! Why should I want to do this?
Why do you not just block my account / show the details of the past?
I don't want to start all anew with my data, just because I'm e.g. on a one-month trip around the world or changing my ISP (and cancelled for that reason) or whatever!

And by the way, there is "No activities logged" at all! Why is that?
I definitely used the Slife desktop client in the "30 day free trial"!

Another question: Still no x64 and Windows 7 support? There are people using one of it or even both! (TechNet + MSDN(AA) both probably an overproportial part of your userbase)

Thanks for listening...

Kind regards
 
sad I’m "disappointed" to say the least.
Inappropriate?
1 person has this problem

  • Inappropriate?
    Hi there,

    Sorry about the confusion, and let me try to address your points/concerns:

    1. Since we released Slife Web, we've been offering a 30-day free trial. At the end of the initial 30 days, we start charging your account. We are planning to make modifications to the registration workflow so that your account is simply locked after 30 days. It will eliminate these kinds of issues. Sorry if you were not expecting the charge - we can refund it - we try to make it clear that you have 30 days to test out the service.

    2. We introduced 3 plans not too long ago, Basic (free), Plus ($5) and Premium ($10). When you signed up, there was only one $5 plan. For users like you, we brought you to the Premium plan, but at the price point you agreed to before.

    3. You can cancel you account by clicking on the "Account" button and then following the steps there. No need to recreate new accounts if you are gone for a long period of time. We are planning support for data export, so that you can get your data out before you delete your account.

    4. I don't know why there are no activities logged. If you've been using the app, there should be. I would be happy to help you figure out what's wrong.

    5. No x64 and Windows 7 support. The Slife client should work but we haven't tested it on these platforms yet.

    Finally, I would like to say that if you feel that Slife is not working for you for one reason or another, I would be glad to refund your credit card. We have a "no-unhappy-customer" policy :-)
  • Philipp Grunwald
    Inappropriate?
    Hi there,

    thanks for so quickly addressing my points. As I'm thanksful for your answers, I'll address them in detail just as I came home now.
    I'll keep the structure:

    1. You are of course right and I think I knew this when registering. But I just forgot it. Ok, my fault. The point is, and I know it exactly, I deactivated the autostart of Slife Desktop because of a problem with your software!
    I think that is really important to know, because that started it all!

    Ok, after making that clear, this also shows, why a notification INSIDE the software (at least concerning this point) might not be the best way (just saying, before you think of it ;-)), whether out of general or e.g. startup/autostart problems or whatever.
    I don't know, but one has so many things around, my password manager is filled with services and stuff, I only actively monitor, what I use daily - or what grabs my attention! Strange enough, at least e-mail most often gets my attention.

    I'm sad at this point, that you didn't mention the "notification" issue at all, sth. I mentioned several times, but maybe it got lost in my general ranting.
    The point for me mainly is to notify your users of such things, I mean, think about your e-mail marketing (policy), how many e-mails do you send out?
    It is not about expecting or stuff, I don't try to be a cherry picker! :) And even then it would be my fault. But there can always happen mistakes and you just have to admit that your charging-process model isn't the standard procedure in webservices (as long as you haven't subscribed), right?!
    So this way you almost certainly will be more likely to get into trouble. I just wouldn't have wanted this extra work, but I never just put those $5 dollars away, I do care!

    2. Sorry, but what do you mean with "for users like you, we brought you to the Premium plan, but at the price point you agreed to before." ? You mean I got "Premium" service for "Plus" pay? That's very nice!!
    Why not congratulating me with a nice (HTML) e-mail? *haha*
    I think you get my point.
    ...or do you mean "users that don't use our service"? I don't think that.

    2.1. But I don't know, don't you see the confusions add up? You have to be as clear in your wording as possible. If the above is correct, do I have "Premium" service forever (for Plus pay) or just that one month? If only for that month, what will happen afterwards, would you've notified me? I suspect not...and if "forever", what would've happened if I tried to "cancel" Slife?

    2.2. The problem here too is (for every customer you "upgraded"), he'll panic or be confused, because the "monthly charge" is listed with a $10.00 pricetag! That is just what it says, what do you except from me?
    I can't divine that you change/expand your pricing model, upgrade your customers "out of no reason" and (just for the first month??) don't charge them for this upgrade - all without informing them with a single line!!!
    I mean, sorry, maybe you twittered or blogged it, but you can't expect me to follow that all the time! I was so busy the last month, I just had anything in mind but web2.0 services in my tray bar!
    I hope you get that point...by the way, even twitter DM would've been possible, as at least 95% of the people using twitter get an e-mail when having received an DM...

    3. Please, put it as it is. If I get you right, the data will be deleted indeed! Right? Because you don't support it. Please just be plain honest like in 5., don't you think that would benefit you to in your attitude concerning potentially needed change? And another point, no I just can't follow any steps in "Account", because there are several fields. What you mean is, I can go there to "Delete Account", type in "goodbye" and click on the "delete" button.
    Just one sentence, but that is the truth. But it is not comforting (esp. for your customer), it is confusing and creating trouble for the customer, as he just wants to "pause" or "deactivate" his account (I suspect!) not delete all the valuable data! I mean if your service works, what data could be more valuable? Not much...

    4. Might be because I deactivated the auto startup pretty early. ;-) (I not even uninstalled it as I see now!) But hey, it is really strange, because I even saw data there, did you have any problems there or could there have been a connection/sync problem?

    5. Ok, I have to admit, I didn't try it either yet. This is ok so far, but why didn't you start to test, at least for x64? x64 shall be great for such small apps right?
    And ok, if you have no access to Windows 7, I can understand, yet you should optimally strive to push in that direction! :)

    6. Concerning the pricing, no problem. Just please tell me how to stop it for the next months! And - as one month of my usage might not cost you as much as you charge me - it would be great if I could just test it that/one full month!? Because I'd really love to use it (although I'd maybe go back to Basic) as RescueTime doesn't really help me and I'm sure you're better. :)

    Thanks for listening and thanks for your quick answer again.
     
    happy I’m confident + optimistic
  • Inappropriate?
    Thank you, I think you bring up some great points and we are always striving to improve our product and the way we communicate with our customers.

    We do have the blog and Twitter and we do send emails out occasionally. Looks like you seem to indicate that you would like us to communicate even more and more clearly, which is a fair and good point. We will work hard towards achieving that.

    Regarding the point of supporting other OSes, there are lots of issues associated with supporting multiple operating systems, especially with regard to testing. We would love to support every OS in every configuration but we don't have the resources to do so.

    Please contact us at support (at) slifelabs (dot) com and we can talk more specifically about how you would like us to handle your account.
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