Community Forums › Forums › Archived Forums › General Discussion › Support Tickets are a JOKE!!!! Really, Studiopress???
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- This topic has 13 replies, 8 voices, and was last updated 11 years, 3 months ago by RonnyMac.
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January 15, 2013 at 9:58 pm #12198robinbrodskyMember
I submitted a support ticket over a week ago when Genesis 1.9 (aka: site destroyer) was released. Over a week later, NOT A SINGLE RESPONSE FROM STUDIOPRESS. Over 48 hours ago, I submitted another request and GUESS WHAT???? NO RESPONSE FROM STUDIOPRESS!!!
What does it take to get a response from this group? It used to be such a great place with a great community forum and product. Now, you release changes that completely break sites and cannot be bothered to respond to people who have PAID MONEY for your product? I have 3 sites myself running Agentpress and Genesis and about 10 others that I have either created for others or referred to use your product. SIMPLY UNACCEPTABLE CUSTOMER SERVICE, STUDIOPRESS. UNACCEPTABLE.
January 15, 2013 at 10:20 pm #12204ezinesParticipantI second that... but it seems that when you speak up you are passive-aggressively censored.
So you can now expect to have your forum posts ignored by moderators, as mine have been.
In addition, anything you ask via support becomes a "customization" outside of their scope. In short, go pay someone to get the answers that you used to get in the old forum.
And it's not just here at... Woothemes is now far worse than this! I guess the new trend in selling themes is, "We're so big that we no longer have to care about each of you anymore."
BTW, I've stuck my neck out and responded to this post in the interest of making things better, which I believe was Robin's intention as well.
January 15, 2013 at 10:26 pm #12206robinbrodskyMemberThat is the truth!!! They won't ignore when I blog all over the real estate universe about how horrible the service at Studiopress now is and when I take my blog (which, by the way has been featured in several NATIONAL real estate publications) elsewhere and send messages to those publications indicating WHY.
They have 24 hours from my initial post TO RESPOND TO MY TICKETS, then I unleash all over social media and elsewhere ... Let's see them moderate that.
January 15, 2013 at 10:46 pm #12209ezinesParticipantThat's one of the things that makes the web so wonderful... you often don't really know whom you're dealing with and just how much influence they may have.
Despite of my (our) lack of coding knowledge, my business partners and I have deep skills in other areas and we're highly sought-after for WP meetup presentations.
Good S-U-P-P-O-R-T is the number-one thing I look for with any product or service, and I tell everyone who'll listen how important support is.
I have repeatedly slammed Woothemes to our email lists with over 200,000 subscribers total, and at every WordPress meetup where I've made presentations or attended. People thank me profusely in-person and by email.
January 15, 2013 at 10:57 pm #12214ezinesParticipantBTW, "ezines" is short for "ezines2001" @my-fave-email. When I began using it, 2001 was so far in the future that I didn't even consider that one day it would be ancient. That's how/why my lists have over 200,000 subscribers.
January 15, 2013 at 11:07 pm #12215SusanModeratorHi, Robin - I'm sorry you haven't seen any response to your help ticket. Is it possible that it's gone to your spam folder? Most of the moderators on the forums (myself included) do not work for StudioPress, so we have no ability to look for tickets which you have submitted. I can see if I can escalate this thread for you, so that someone who is in a position to help you with your ticket can look for it.
January 15, 2013 at 11:15 pm #12217robinbrodskyMemberHi Susan,
No, no responses at all from anyone at Studiopress. I regularly check my spam folder and have no messages that are in any way related to SP.
Thank you for responding to my message and I would appreciate any help that you can provide so that I may get some answers to my issues.
January 16, 2013 at 6:38 am #12257nickthegeekMemberWe do not have any tickets outstanding. We work very hard to make sure tickets are replied to in less than 24 hours. Often they are answered in under an hour and I have personally answered many within minutes.
In some cases the emails are blocked and do not even go to spam. Please make sure that you have copyblogger.com and studiopress.com whitelisted with your mail service. It is also possible that the email address we had was wrong or goes to an account you aren't regularly checking, so please double check that when leaving the ticket. You should receive a confirmation receipt shortly after submittng your ticket, so if you do not then either the email is being completely blocked by your email service or the email address was wrong.
That is the end of the "general" advice.
I looked up your email address registered in the forum and found your tickets. We received the first one 8 days ago and it was replied to in less than 3 hours. Here is the core of the reply.
I took a look at your site and see that your theme folder actually has a space in the url (agentpress 2.0). That is actually what is causing the issue. If you remove the space, then you should be able to upgrade to Genesis 1.9 without issue. Usually, it is installed as just agentpress as the foldername.
I actually cannot find a follow-up ticket. This may have been submitted under a different email address.
Please let me know if the answer addresses the problem you have with your site. Thanks.
January 16, 2013 at 7:37 am #12266robinbrodskyMemberNick,
As for the "general" advice, I'm not an idiot - I use the same email address that gets delivered to 3 devices and is constantly checked. I have never had an issue receiving Studiopress emails in the past and find it quite odd that suddenly, simply haven't received a reply.
As for the other advice ... that is NOT the issue. Removing the space in 1.8 causes the site to break. Upgrading to 1.9.1 with the space removal STILL results in a BROKEN theme. Header - gone. Widgets - gone. Footer - gone. Home page content - gone. Slider - gone. Menus - gone. I have spent HOURS on the phone with Bluehost and have escalated to the highest level of tech support who have indicated that there is a break caused in the THEME - Agentpress. I disabled all plug ins prior to install - NOTHING. Clearly, there is some sort of issue going on which sounds like MANY others have had with their various themes after the 1.9 update. Why can we not get confirmation of this issue from SP and support which would likely help quite a lot of other people?
I also spoke on the phone with a WP guy who uses SP and had the same basic issue as mine. He removed the space in the folder name (which, by the way, STUDIOPRESS put there. The file I downloaded came from you guys WITH a space in it!!!) and had no further issues, but with mine and Agentpress or Genesis Slider or whatever else is causing the break, I continue to lose menus, content and formatting.
I would appreciate it if someone would address and acknowledge these issues.
January 16, 2013 at 8:34 am #12275nickthegeekMemberI never said you are an idiot nor would I ever say or think that. I am simply giving the most common reasons why users do not receive a reply. Mail services change so please do make sure that studiopress.com and copyblogger.com are both whitelisted with your mail service to ensure you receive all communications.
All I can say for sure is that you did get a reply less than 3 hours after your original ticket. I do not know why you didn't receive it, but usually whitelisting studiopress.com and copyblogger.com resolves those issues.
As for the issues you are experiencing. No StudioPress child theme adds a space to the folder name. There are cases where that gets added during manual install processes. However this may not be the issue.
I understand that you are frustrated because you did not receive a response for 8 days. I do apologize for that and I'm happy to help to the best of my abilities. In general that actually means something. So lets take a breath and focus on the issue.
Could you please share a link to your site. If you wish to keep it private simply use the "set as private reply" option and it will only be visible to moderators, administrators, and myself. Thanks.
January 16, 2013 at 8:34 am #12276Jared WilliamsMemberRobin,
You are acting like StudioPress did this on purpose.
Genesis 1.9 (aka: site destroyer)
I mean, really? These guys (and gals) work very hard on making Genesis the best framework around...and when the issue came with 1.9 they quickly released a fix with 1.9.1.
Sometimes these things happen and are out of anyone's control. The Copyblogger Team and Support Staff at StudioPress are great and make support a priority. (Unpaid moderators, as well!). I use just about every product under the Copyblogger Umbrella and have always received outstanding support.
With that being said, StudioPress is quickly approaching 100,000. That's a lot of support for a small team. The same goes for WooThemes. It can be very hard to provide the level of support needed for that many members but I feel that StudioPress has kept up their reputation.
I can completely understand your frustration but attacking the Support Team is a little extreme. And threatening to bash StudioPress is even worse if they don't respond within your time frame.
Nick's response was perfect. They received your Ticket and responded in a timely fashion. It is possible that maybe you did not receive the response. I have Copyblogger white listed and sometimes miss his emails...
Customization support has never been guaranteed in the forums. There are many talented developers who take time to help with these things but ultimately have their own day jobs.
Before upgrading it's always best to test out your theme. While StudioPress does their very best to make sure that upgrading is as seamless as possible, things happen. That's just the web for you.
I try and keep a local dev site or on a subdomain for testing new releases to make sure there aren't any issues. This goes for all WP updates, Genesis releases and plugin updates.
I hope you get your issue resolved because I understand your frustration. But please be nice to the Staff 🙂
January 16, 2013 at 8:48 am #12281pauldewoutersMemberThis is a good reminder to make a full backup of your sites before upgrading. If a site is as mission critical as it seems it is in this case, I suggest setting up a test server to mirror your live site and test the upgrade there before upgrading your live site.
January 16, 2013 at 9:08 am #12292Daisy OlsenMemberRobyn, I have just sent a response to the support ticket you submitted last week. An initial response was sent on that same day so if you are not receiving our emails then we would like to help you determine why that might be happening.
We will always do our best to help and if something is preventing us from doing that we will do what we can to help clear up that obstacle. The forum is a place for constructive discussion about using and developing with the Genesis framework.
I am closing this thread but I encourage you to continue with your support request by either replying to the email I sent or by submitting a new ticket from the members portal to let us know that you did not get the response. If you are not able to access our reply please email [email protected] so that we can try to help determine why you are not getting our responses.
January 16, 2013 at 9:20 am #12299RonnyMacMemberThere's a lot of emotion in this thread, probably born from way too much frustration.
I can't agree that Genesis 1.9.x is a 'site destroyer.' Over the course of a few days I upgraded over 70 WP sites to 1.9.x with zero problems; and all have custom themes or themes from the Genesis library. Zero problems.
I can sympathize with those who have problems, though. There have been many instances where something goes wonky on a site and it takes hours to days to track down what turns out to be something simple in an obscure line of code.
And, I can sympathize with those who don't like the new ticket arrangement for support. Those common user problems and their solutions are no longer available to the rest of the StudioPress community. Many times I could find a solution to a problem or an issue in the forums within a few minutes of digging around. That's seldom the case since the ticketing arrangement was implemented. That said, I also understand why StudioPress moved to a ticketing support system. It's economics. Free online support sounds great and works for awhile but as the customer base grows so the customer base changes and many new Genesis customers require a level of hand holding that goes well beyond the scope of support for Genesis.
I've been known to seek support for PHP and CSS issues only mildly related to Genesis framework. I appreciate the responses I've received, but understand why StudioPress needs to help with problems only related to Genesis themes or framework.
For those who have problems with upgrades, you will save yourself a boatload of problems, frustration, anger, and disappointment if you keep a local version of your site on your Mac or PC, for modifications and backup. Making major changes or upgrades to a live production server is asking for trouble. Make changes to a site or upgrades to a site only on the local version first. If all goes well, chances are very good that the same changes and upgrades will work fine on the live production server.
Options for local development are many and varied. For Mac users there's MAMP, which makes it easy to replicate a live site on your Mac. Ditto for WAMP for Windows PC users. And, that local site can act as a good backup for the live production site. And, for what it's worth, I don't do backups of the live site. Instead, I keep backups locally of the site's database, custom CSS, images/uploads, config.php, and functions.php site (needed for a locally maintained copy of the site anyway). It's almost trivial to recreate a busted site if you have all the pieces. And I have yet to run into a good backup system that does a seamless, error-free restore that's any faster or easier than recreating a site with the pieces.
Finally, I like using Genesis. I scoured the web for over a year and tried a dozen different WordPress frameworks before settling on Genesis. I transferred dozens of sites which started life on ExpressionEngine (love it, if it only worked as it once did) to Genesis. I don't know of a faster, more secure, more easily modified framework than Genesis. And I can't spell PHP or CSS.
That said, I'm struggling with the new Genesis 1.9.x Child Sample theme's CSS. It's less code, but organized and layered fare more different than the previous versions which were more logical, and a better option to use as the basis to create custom themes.
One more thing: Responsive themes, like children, are highly overrated.
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ronnymac
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