Macecraft and JV-16

[MikeBCda]

Hi all

After 4 unsuccessful attempts to pay for registration of RegSupreme (essentially the reg-cleaner-only portion of JV-16), with credit rejected each time, I contacted the Visa customer-service people to see if it was a problem at their end, since Macecraft is one of the very few merchants enrolled in the relatively new Verified-by-Visa system (password required). They in turn referred me to the bank-ombudsman's office.

Tuesday a gentleman there "walked" me through one more try. Yesterday he phoned to advise that examination of their logs showed they had confirmed my password to the merchant, but had never received any request for authorization of the credit transactions. The next step was for me to insist that the merchant investigate from his end, since (in Canada, anyway) Visa apparently cannot demand such an investigation on their own initiative. So I emailed Macecraft last night with the info from Visa as well as my request, with a cc to the ombudsman's office.

Reply this morrning -- Macecraft is finally backing down from their "change your settings" attitude and concedes they've had a number of complaints about the payment service they're using (a long Finnish name which I don't have handy) and plan to switch to a "more reliable service in the near future". In the meantime, nothing they can do. Not even so much as an indication that they'll advise me when they do make the change.

So bottom line is, as great as JV-16 and its "sister" products are, best to stay the heck away from Macecraft until they've cleaned shop.

Oh, and my buddies at the RCMP are interested too -- if credit-card info is being collected but no sales result, they agree it's getting into a gray area they may want to look at more closely to check out the possibility of attempted identity theft.

Best to all,
Mike

[Paul Wilders]

Mike,

Very sorry to hear this!

As for:

-{ Quote: "Reply this morrning -- Macecraft is finally backing down from their "change your settings" attitude and concedes they've had a number of complaints about the payment service they're using (a long Finnish name which I don't have handy) and plan to switch to a "more reliable service in the near future". In the meantime, nothing they can do. Not even so much as an indication that they'll advise me when they do make the change." }-

I would be interested in a copy from this email. In case you feel like it, forward it to me (my addy is in my profile). If not: no problem ;)

regards.

paul

[MikeBCda]

-{ Quote: " quoting: Paul Wilders link=board=9;threadid=26590;start=0#msg153828 date=1080849992]
I would be interested in a copy from this email. In case you feel like it, forward it to me (my addy is in my profile). If not: no problem ;)
" }-

Hi Paul,
Thanks - and just sent it to you.
Best,
Mike

[Paul Wilders]

Mike,

Got it - thanks!

regards.

paul

[MikeBCda]

Just a quick update ... my Visa rep and I played "telephone tag" the last couple of days, but we finally connected about an hour ago, and I updated him on the correspondence plus letting him know I'd posted here.

He agrees that nothing more can be done at this point except sit back and wait for changes. He feels that Macecraft is committing corporate suicide -- if they accept no form of payment except credit cards, and are in effect unable to process those, they should be treating it as an emergency situation and looking for solutions now.

Anyway, I'll let you all know when and if I hear anything new -- and of course if anyone else hears first, I'm sure we'd all like to know.

Best to all,
Mike

[HandsOff]

Mike,

This is exactly the kind of attitude that gives software venders a bad name. And further, I would really question the collosal stupidity of the people who work there. You know, I could understand your initial problem as a situation that perhaps they didn't understand. Considering your persistance and the time and inconvenience you were put through, even if i were the lowest customer service agent on the totam pole at Mace Craft I would have simply responded back to you that we would give you an activation number, at least for the time being until we could sort out the issue of payment. I mean, what exactly are the risking? They are not having to pay shipping and handling to supply you with the product, and surely they will maintain some control over your updates and expiration dates or whatever stick they wield on their customers. I guess these idiots have never heard of checks or money orders, or paypal, or any of dozens of options.

I checked out Mace Craft, on the strength of other peoples recommendations and I somewhat liked it. I don't consider registry editing programs to be very important as a rule, especially compared to a lot of less glammorous programs that people seem to overlook. IMHO, the gains you get from "fixing" your registry are small if you consider that other types of programs block bad entries before they are written, and good spyware and antivirus and other optimization programs fix the important parts.

To further my case, my registry has roughly 500,000 entries. about 1000 are bad according to jv-16 because they are either empty or refer to programs that are no longer their. Okay fine, 0.2 % is just wasting space. Well, since I am "Mr. Open Mind", i go along with the program and "fix" them. Oops! My CD and DVD drives don't work.

I undo the problems and try to be more careful. Result: Even less stuff works.

Enter Dantz Retrospect backup/restore software. I restore the system to before JV-16. Everything is cool. Bottom line: Backup software is a lot better investment. And if anyone from Mace Craft's management is reading this, i have no complaints about the software. I could have worked out the problem and gotten some benefits from using it. However, I would have to need the software pretty badly before I would order it from a company that doesn't even care about a customer before they get his money. Didn't anyone tell you guys that you are supposed to get the money first, and THEN ignore them.

By the way, Have you checked out everest? I think i might. If i am going to get zero support, i am going to pay zero!

- HandsOff

[MikeBCda]

One more update, "news" release from Macecraft yesterday:

-{ Quote: "10.04.2004 - Online shop updated, new payment methods added
Our online shop was updated to offer more payment methods.

Because of the popular demand we updated our online shop to accept also PayPal payments, the option to pay with PayPal is located in the 3rd page of the online shop.

We can now accept Visa, Visa Electron, Mastercard, Eurocard, Discovery and American Express.

However, the PayPal payment method should be considered only as a backup method, we would recommend you to use the primary payment method if you have Visa or Mastercard.
" }-

In the absence of any info to the contrary, I have to assume their "primary payment method" is still that payment service they were using that's essentially non-functional.

OK, PayPal's big enough, sure -- but the guy seems totally ignorant that PayPal's reputation has driven off a lot of people who won't deal with them including myself and several others right here.

Hopefully Macecraft will come to their senses one of these days -- I'm inclined to think their best bet would be to license JV-16 to other distributors fast, before the thing no longer exists.

(Edit) As a P.S., just tried going through the procedure again -- and yes, it's either PayPal or the original service. "More payment methods" simply means PayPal accepts more types of cards.

Incidentally, I also discovered they bump the price up $3 (US) if you use PayPal to cover PayPal's fees. Why should they bear the cost, after all? :P

[Blackcat]

The 'new' system seems to work okay. In the last few days, I have paid by Visa Card and had my key-file within 24 hours :)

I had previously used the 'free' RegSeeker, but I found that RegSupreme found more entries.

I have used it ( trial version ) for about a month now on a number of machines and touch wood it has not broken any key files when I have removed the 'dead' registry entries.

I mainly carry out a Registry cleanup about once a month on my machines and then follow up with ERUNT to defragment the registry, which seems to speed everything up.

However, I also use WinRescue and Acronis True Image as backup BEFORE I use any registry cleaner.