Got Banned from vBulletin.COM today

So the other day I logged into the ForumRunner site to see if there were any updates. I purchase a branded ForumRunner app, and up until vBulletin took them over there was an update or two a month. It has been awhile since there have been any updates so I went there to check for an update.

So I check for an update and there tells me there is a new update which was released on March 1st which is newer then the plugin I have what was released back in January. So I went to download it.

I clicked I was using vBulletin then selected the version of vBulletin 4.20 I was taken to the Plugin Download Page. You will notice on this page (see attachment) there is no place to download the plugin.

So I posted in the Forumrunner support forum about the issue, and a few days went by then I get a reply from Zackery of vBulletin support telling me to download the Plugin I need to go to the Plugin Download Page. Huh? Did he read what I wrote about going to the download page? Did he look at the picture I attached? I was on the Plugin download page.

Time passes again and he tells me to use the vBulletin 4.1 plugin. I write him back that I am using 4.2.

So I am tired of the run around and go post a cry for help in the vBulletin.COM seeking support. I posted what happened and then got back a message from Wayne Luke saying that there is no plugin for 4.2 because it is included with vBulletin. He then goes on to say that vBulletin has nothing to do with Forumrunner. (Huh? It comes with vBulletin yet has nothing to do with vBulletin?)

So I go to write him back and click on submit and am told the thread is closed.

I then post again (since my issue was not addressed and worse then that the info I was given was wrong) again the thread is closed. I post again and get a reply back that I am not allowed to talk bad about support, if I have problems with support to email support. (Lot of good that is going to do) but no answer to my question. So I post again and agree not to talk bad about support but could they please answer my question. I click on submit then load a different page and it says vBulletin is not the support site for Forumrunner.

Back on the forum runner support site he then writes me back and tells me that 4.1 and the 4.2 plugins are the same and I should have seleced 4.1 to begin with... Huh? Why would I select 4.1 when I am running 4.2 and even better yet why have a selection for 4.2 if your not going to put a download link there?

What is going on with vBulletin support?

 

Sounds confusing and frustrating.

 

*Gasp* IB/vBSI doesn't recognize ForumRunner as a product they internally develop, and market? The fact that they don't recognize that they themselves own ForumRunner... WOW.

Why acquire a company or product if your employees will shun them like it's nothing? WTF is this shit!

If I was the manager of support at vBulletin, I'd fire the person who locked that thread, or even banned you. Yeah, vBulletin.com isn't the support forum for ForumRunner, but if you, as the company - ship - another product (especially one you acquired) with the actual product, then you must provide support. If I were you, and I paid $400 dollars on vBulletin and associated products. I'd not want to do business with vBulletin ever again.

Fight with customer support via tickets, fight with them, hard. Get your refund.

Move to a new forum software, man. Go xenForo. Join us!

This actually goes in line with their new structure at vBulletin.com support forums. The fact that they restrict license support to the actual license "level." They have to tell you that it works with a particular link.

[****][****][****][****] 'em. Move.

 

Internet Brands acquired ForumRunner, not vBulletin. vBulletin and ForumRunner are separate projects in the IB hierarchy and vBulletin.com is not a support forum for ForumRunner. These are simple concepts to understand.

Regardless however, as a forum Admin you should know if the staff of another forum closes your thread you do not re-make it. You definitely do not re-make it several times, if staff closed it, it was closed for a reason. That is a quick way to get you banned from any forum.

 

Joe... I reposted it because the question was not answered correctly.

Also Forumrunner is INCLUDED with vBulletin, making it a vBulletin product, what part of that don't you get?

It comes with vBulletin then it should be supported by vBulletin.

Joe if you buy a car and the car stereo stops working, is the car maker going to tell you too bad go call Sony since we didn't make it, or are they going to support it since it came with their car as part of the package?

 

Skimlinks is included with VB4, as is Google Adsense, as is Vertical Response, as is Post Release... These are all independent scripts that just happen to be included in VB4. If you had an issue with one of these add-ons you'd likely need to get help from them unless the issue was due to VB4 integration itself. The same goes for ForumRunner- it is an independent project from VB. Your issues were ones that are not supported on the vBulletin.com forums.

That is why your threads were closed/unanswered.

 

Well Joe, you guys simply broke a golden rule about customer service and that is always try to take the problem off the shoulders of the customer, even if it means going an extra mile with something that isn't part of your service. That is what makes a service organization exceptional. I guess that isn't in your alls plans now either.....

Since IB owns Forum Runner (and the big difference here between all the other "independent scripts" in vB4 you mentioned. It is an easy concept to understand.), it is well within vB.com's Support Team's realm of influence and even responsibility to take on an issue about Forum Runner and help the customer in some way, if it is only to get them to the right people (possibly above Zack, which amazes me, he is on both support teams!!) for a proper answer on the Forum Runner side of the IB house (and to go that extra mile). It is what Scott expected and the best you all could do was slam the proverbial support door in his face? Nice work......

Just goes to show where priorities are placed, when it comes to customer support at IB now. It's exactly in line with the level of quality they expect from their own products too. Amazing.

I think this is just another story in tons to come about how IB ends up loosing face badly with its customers and will be the core to its dropping off the face of the business world. It seems like their "norm" is to actually spite customers. It just doesn't seem to be clear to IB, customers just don't sit around and take it up the yingyang like this, especially when they forked out money for a premium product and they aren't getting it nor good service either.

There is nothing to defend here Joe. You guys (as in IB as a team) blew it and the whole scenario at IB will continue to stay ugly, as long as certain people at IB don't change their minds about how they are running the show. It shows so clearly how a business culture is created by the business' leaders and how a rotten one can ruin so much so fast.

Scott

 

Strange thread. In the members area in vbulletin is an option to activate forumrunner is there not? I would have thought that would entitle support? Then again, there's an addon for adsense too. Mental stuff going on there right now. Wish I wasn't a customer to be honest. Disgusting lately.

 

Why put something into the core product if you can't fully support it? Even though it is a third party product I would have thought support would have tried to their best of their abilities to fix this issue. I really like vb but this among other things is really starting to put me off.

 

If they are included with the product then they should be supported. PERIOD.

Again you buy a new car and your radio dies. The dealer (the one who sold you it) has to fix it. Not Sony or Panasonic or whoever made the radio.

I was talking to my lawyer yesterday and mentioned this to him and he came up with the same analogy about the car and agrees if its included in the package then they must support it under their normal support terms.

 

The reality is there is a place in the Member's Area to activate Google Adsense too. But if you have a problem with the ads not getting served, that is a problem you need to take up with Google- it is not in our ability to support.

If you think we should be supporting Adsense issues because we offer Adsense integration I guess you are entitled to your opinion but you will be disappointed.

ForumRunner support is provided on ForumRunner website.

vBulletin support is provided on vBulletin.com.

Zach may be staff at both sites but he is an exception, not the rule. The rest of us have no ability to see ForumRunner accounts or are in any position to provide ForumRunner support. The "Golden Rule" should be to help the customer get the answers they need as fast as possible, and them posting on vBulletin.com is not going to get them any answers at all when the issue is a ForumRunner issue.

Internet Brands owns vBulletin. Internet Brands owns ForumRunner. vBulletin =/= ForumRunner. The OP still had it wrong in his first post here claiming vBulletin took over ForumRunner- that never happened.

 

Here's a more relevant analogy.

You upgrade your Java software. McAfee Anti-Virus is included with the download by default.

The software gets downloaded from Java's servers as part of your Java Update.

But if you have a problem with McAfee so you expect Oracle (who owns Java) to support it or McAfee tech support?

 

But Oracle doesn't own McAfee, so it would be a correct position for Oracle's Java support to say please use McAfees support for a problem with McAfee.

IB doesn't own Google Adsense, so it would be IB's correct position to ask the customer politely to go to Google's support for help with Adsense.

And now the big difference.....

IB DOES own Forum Runner. So it would be in IB's best interest to help "IB" customers no matter where they come for the support and that should be within your abilities as a vB support person to get them that help or at least get the right people on it for the customer. That is just plain common business and support sense.

Scott

 

Carlos, stop telling people to jump ship to XF. XF may be slick but it certainly isnt where some people need to be. Heck, I have no interest in jumping ship from vB3. That being said XF has promise but so does phpbb (maybe not, but seemed like the thing to say).

People who should be fronting the push to move to XF should have large active bigboards with data to back the conversion process and how it affected traffic, user involvement etc. And i mean REAL data, not something like "bro it worked amazing". I have yet to see anything compelling to make me want to switch over.

As for who owns what and where. I assure you from the internal IB staff site... half the warm bodies manning these sites don't know where their heads are. Posting questions generally will confuse them.
This is a management issue, poor training of front line staff with little to no experience.

Sadly I think the best resolve in all these cases is to develop your own plugins and addon. Find a platform you like, XF or VB or whatever and work from there. Its a bit more work but I assure you its alot easier to find new developers to work on a product you understand and helped build then to expect some volunteer halfwit to be able to assist you. And SatGuyScott, what you experienced is what many people experience with ALL these companies / sites. I feel your pain, trust me.

As experienced forum owners getting banned should never come as a surprise to any of you. Any time I have been banned from a site its not as though I didnt understand why or consider the fact I would have done the same to a user acting as I did. SatGuyScott questions should have been answered perhaps more thoroughly. Inhis Scotts defense, i hate when a developer (think my vBcover experience) / soft dev company expects you as the customer to know all the ins and outs of something you don't own. Its unreasonable for a customer service rep to tell you that you should have known to use 4.1 plugin instead of 4.2 since they are the same. That's retarded.And while you deserve help with IB or any of these companies just dont expect it.

 

In my experience any internet only company has bad customer support

 

Shawn from Digitalpoint did a nice write up on the effects on his site after the migration to XF.

https://forums.digitalpoint.com/threads/one-month-after-switching-from-vbulletin-to-xenforo.2637721/

I disagree. There are two aspects here. A silly mistake in the UI, that never should have been there to begin with and someone expecting some words of comfort that the mistake will be corrected for other people and IB failed to "fix" both. I bet the problem is actually still there too. Instead of banning customers, IB should just fix the problem.

I believe whole heartedly a customer should expect a company to not make such a mistake and also fix it, when the customer complains about it. He certainly can expect a decent answer. Why? It will be the companies that don't make such a mistake or when it is made, quickly correct it, when a customer complains about it, who will prevail as the better company and will win more customers. So definitely, customers should always expect high quality in the products, web sites and especially customer support from any company, not just "internet" ones. It is what will keep the quality up for the rest of us too!

In other words, if everyone becomes complacent and learns to expect and accept crappy support from all companies, than that is exactly what we will all get as consumers. Crappy support. "Why is that?", you may ask. Because, we as customers set the quality standards. No one else.

Scott

 

Id be curious what steps Shawn took to increase the speed of his forums before jumping to XF.
Sphinx seems like a great option, but what else?

How did Sphinx improve the forum speeds & server load?
CDN?
CSS?

There is a lot you can do before you jump ship to forum software in the middle of a lawsuit :p But whatever his agenda or reasoning Im not there yet. I have thought about trying XF out and perhaps porting some of my dead vb4 sites, but I cant wrap my head around embarking on a port of all my custom coded stuff in vb3.

Shawn is a dev? If this is the case it certainly makes for an easier transition compared to someone who is not a dev when the site in question is a big board.

Expect nothing from any corp and you will be less stressed. lol.

 

I'd venture to say Shawn, if anyone, did the most to make his vB forum perform the best it can. He has also given his insight in how to optimize vB too. I wouldn't say those are all the steps he took, but if you are inferring to his making sure he did his best working with vB and getting all he could out of vB, before making the jump to XF, you can be sure he did it.

I'd say, because he is a dev and practically a one man show with a very big forum, his decision to move away from vBulletin is one of the most significant decisions/ customer occurrences for vBulletin. It is just another notch in IB's pistols, which they constantly use to shoot themselves in the foot with. Just like how they handled Scott in this thread.

Scott

 

A better question would be what I *didn't* do... Our vB4 install was more or less pushed to the limit... Everything from doing a better job at minifying the JavaScript/CSS to storing templates as files so that they could be pre-compiled by opcode cachers.

The biggest thing it did was make our database replication actually work. The only other option for us was to disable search completely. With default search enabled without Sphinx, the end result was that the way it worked with table locking and how vB4 stores searchable content, we ended up with roughly a 45-60 minute lag in replication (rendering the site more or less unusable).

We have our own (sorta).

XF's lawsuit had nothing to do with me. I also didn't make the migration because of anything vB4 currently lacked or speed issues or anything else. It was purely based on what I thought the *future* of vBulletin looked like from my standpoint. Obviously I could have been wrong, but after seeing vB5, I'm pretty sure I was right. I never *wanted* to switch platforms, I more or less felt like I *had* to for long-term issues. I build huge apps on top of the framework we use, and when it comes down to it, XenForo is a far better framework internally for doing that than vBulletin is.

What works for us might not be the best option or work for others (and vice versa).