bmusedimaging

Wow Zachary! If your response time & attention to detail to my requests for help had been anywhere near your quickness to defend this complaint, I don’t think we’d be in the situation we now find ourselves in.

Tell ya what, I’m just gonna leave a full transcript here so that anyone who’s interested can read our exchanges for themselves.

Let me start by saying that I am a graphic designer by trade who sometimes builds wordpress sites. I recognize that my questions may seem trivial to some, but perhaps my skill level shouldn’t impact the quality of support I do or do not receive? Perhaps everyone deserves to be treated equally? Just a thought. Anyway, without further ado:

Day 1 – Oct 4th
me 02:18PM EDT – I’ve built 2 forms now using the multipage aspect and neither form is behaving as it ought to. basically some parts are divided as they ought to and others are getting added to a page theyre not supposed to be on. when you go to the page of the form theyre meant to be on, those pages are blank. on the editor side however, everything is set up as it’s meant to.
these forms can be viewed @…

Justin – 02:54PM EDT
Hello,
Can you check under the Layout & Styles tab and make sure that the fields are spanning the full width of your form? Also, can you update Ninja Forms to its latest version, 3.0.6
The 2.9.x and 3.0 codebases are included in the 3.0 Ninja Forms plugin, so installing the 3.0.6 version fo the plugin won’t automatically upgrade you to the 3.0 codebase.

I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions.

I’ll point out here that I was previously told by another tech on a previous support ticket that I could not upgrade to ninjaforms 3 due to an add-on that is not yet available on version 3. so I asked…

me -03:02PM EDT I was told last time to use the rollback because our freshbooks addon isnt available for 3.0 yet. is that no longer the case?
a couple blocks werent full width. that seemed to fix it.

DAY 2 – OCT 5
08:19PM EDT

Hey David,
3.0.6 still has both codebases, so it won’t make anything wonky even if your FreshBooks extension isn’t ready for the updated UI & codebase.
I hope this helps.

At this point I tried to update (after having already done the rollback per the other tech’s suggestion) but was prevented by the plugin from doing so without first deleting all my forms and current version of ninjaforms. I opted not to do that. At this point I had to turn my attention to other projects. I came back to this on Oct. 20th. Here is where we begin the discussion about Paypal and stripe integrations, although I also asked about whether I could update to ninjaforms 3

Day 3 – OCT 20th
Justin 9:21 am – As long as yoru FreshBooks plugin is installed, Ninja Forms will not allow you to update to 3.0 as it is not yet 3.0 compatible. The addon should still work properly with 2.9. I’ve never seen the verification issue you’re talking about…can you help me understand in more detail what is going on?

😐

me 12:04 pm – I was trying to get paypal APIs. when I go to paypal for that it asks me to “verify third party permissions” before it gives access to the API tokens. when I looked at the paypal documentation on your forum I think it was for ninja form 3,so the instructions didnt seem relevant. I just assumed, given the paypal menu option that I had to fill out the live API credentials. Is that not right?

Justin 12:42 pm – The API key documentation is the same regardless of Ninja Forms version. If you need our old plugin documentation, you can find that here: http://docs.ninjaforms.com/customer/en/portal/articles/2042279-paypal-express?b_id=9172

After taking some time to follow and implement documentation…

Day 4 – OCT 24
me – 2:06 pm – is there a similar documentation for setting up stripe on 2.9?

Justin 2:28 pm – The 2.9 docs for Stripe can be found here: http://docs.ninjaforms.com/customer/en/portal/articles/2034190-stripe?b_id=9172

Day 5 – Oct 25
me 5:44 pm – I still cant figure out what Im doing wrong. the membership form is on this page
I have it in sandbox mode. after submitting, it just refreshes the page, but theres no success message (or failure msg) and under the “submissions’ tab its not showing any activity. can you log into our site and see if you can figure out whats going on?

Day 6 – Oct. 26
Justin 9:31 am – David, can you provide the email address your licenses were purchased under? I can’t find them in our system and they’re not licensed on your site causing you to be a few updates behind.

I give requested info @ 1:24 pm

Justin 1:34 pm – David, do you see the same issue on a default theme like Twenty Sixteen with other plugins disabled? I think your current behavior might be related to something else breaking the form output. Before we test that, though, we need to make sure your licenses are active on that site and your plugins updated.

me 3:14 pm – I think I activated all the licenses. I tried it with twenty fourteen and had the same issue. there are no updates listed on the site as being neccessary. let me know if you need anything else from me, but I’d appreciate at this point if you’d step in and do some troubleshooting for me.

this part is important. when I changed to a default theme, I went back to my test page, where I had three separate forms set up to test all of which contained required fields. While I had followed all of Justin’s suggestions he indicates that he suspects a theme or plugin conflict but emphasizes the necessity of checking all our lisc. activations first, which I did.

DAY 7 – Oct 27
Justin 1:24 pm – I disabled AJAX submission for the form in display settings, and that seems to have resolved the issue. Can you confirm?

This response amounts to logging in and ticking one box. something I myself had done and tested both with and without Ajax, long before I reached out to support, none the less…

me 3:18 pm – im still not getting succes messages or submission data or confirmation emails or anything to indicate to forms are working correctly

DAY 8 – Oct 28
Justin 1:49 pm – Is your form still in debug mode? While in debug, the debug output from PayPal will show in the console but it will not complete firing the other actions.

At this point I’m frustrated and also confused by the question, as I hadn’t (at least intentionally) set any of our forms to debug mode. I’m not asserting that Justin necessarily did, but given my responses it would be easy to infer that I wasn’t following his line of questioning…

me 2:00pm – I feel like you’re asking me a lot of questions that you could answer by logging in and troubleshooting for me. So far the only thing you’ve done for me is to send me links to forums and untick an Ajax button.(which I also did FYI before I ever reached out to y’all) I need help that doesn’t involve me finding and executing the solution myself. This is taking waaaay too long going back and forth. Please take some initiative or get someone involved that is actually qualified to offer a solution. I’m starting to get super frustrated with this whole process.

And yes it’s still in debug mode, but I’m not getting it to “show in the console”. It just goes into an infinite ” processing. Same with stripe.

while I recognize that my response was saturated in frustration I did not expect such a defensive rebuttal from someone whose job is literally to help people most of whom experience frustration when things don’t work as expected..

Justin 2:25 pm I have actually done a lot of troubleshooting on your site, and in fact gave you the exact piece of advice needed to solve your issue. Troubleshooting these kinds of issues is a partnership, and I have provided you with guidance that was not followed, increasing the amount of time it took for you to reach a resolution.

I disabled debug mode, and the form submitted properly and directed me to PayPal: https://goo.gl/wV5BDr

I completed this testing on your site on a default theme. I have verified that Ninja Forms and our PayPal addon is working properly.

If you continue to have issues on another theme, I would strongly recommend reaching out to that theme developer for support.

What Justin isn’t mentioning here is that he accomplished this by setting up a new page that he added the form in question to. Given that the problem I was having actually turned out to be related to placing 3 forms with required fields on one page, I was not able to verify what he was saying. He is also not mentioning that the other two things he is claiming to have done on my behalf happened AFTER my expression of frustration. At this point, however, I’ve discovered the actual problem and just want to move on…

me 4:06 pm – Your lack of professionalism is astounding. can you either transfer me to another support tech, or can we move onto the membership form that is attached to stripe [ninja_forms id=9]
I have it in sandbox. when I submit im just returned to the form again. no success message, nothing.

Justin doesn’t want to move on. Justin just want to continue in his defensiveness. Or perhaps this is where Zachary steps in. I’m not sure when that happened…

DAY 9 Oct. 31

<ninja personnel> 11:28 am – David, I had this working for you. I explained in detail multiple times the steps to get your form working. At this time, I would like to offer you a refund as it appears our support and product will not be able to meet your expectations. Please let me know the email address <ninja personnel> 11:32 am – you purchased your licenses under so that I can process that for you.
David, I have found your purchases and processed your refunds. We wish you luck in whatever form solution you choose moving forward.

“working” in a default theme obviously does no good when the site is already live and built around a specific theme. MY solution worked WITHIN the theme. I told Justin/Zach that. At this point they don’t care. At this point it’s personal to them because of my audacity to express my frustration. They also didn’t seem to care about the fact that our professional package was already being used on 2 other websites, which they no doubt would have seen when they were dropping the nuke on our entire list of purchases which totaled nearly $300 in products.

me 12:18 pm – Seriously?! I did not request this. I did not suggest this. This is a clients account. I dont make the decisions on their behalf. I need a solution that works with ninjaforms. Yours was to change the theme. thats a big undertaking, especially considering that ninjaforms was included with it. Im allowed to be frustrated. Im allowed to express it. If i feel that you’ve not communicated a solution that I was not able to follow or duplicate perhaps you should take some accountability for your method of communication? now I have to go over your head. If you’d like to try to fix this in a manner Im in agreement with, I’ll give you the opportunity, if not I’m gonna have to speak to someone about how ive been handled by you.

Next whomever is now writing to me is furthering their defensive and emotional posture and exaggerating the lie that the problem was resolved and THEN BLAMING ME for not follow instructions:

<ninja personnel> 1:41 pm – David, the issue is in your theme. There is nothing more we can do on our end. Per our terms and conditions: “Ninja Forms is designed to function on a clean installation of WordPress using the default WordPress theme and has been tested in that environment. We do not guarantee it will function with all third-party plugins or themes or with all web browsers. We are not responsible for any plugin or theme compatibility conflicts that may occur.”

I have communicated with you the resolution to your issues on more than one occasion (before the theme was determined to be the major culprit) and was met with hostility for not logging into your site and fixing the issues myself (even though I had logged into the site to troubleshoot.) Then, when I communicate to you in a very professional manner that your theme was the cause of the issues (which I was able to prove by testing your forms on a default WordPress theme) I was met with even more hostility about my “astounding unprofessionalism” at that resolution.

[aside]I’ve clearly hurt this person’s feelings.

You did not request a refund, but we have decided to provide one anyway per our terms and conditions (which you agreed to at the time of purchase and may review here: https://ninjaforms.com/terms-conditions/): “WP Ninjas, LLC reserves the right at any time to modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, an Add-on License with or without notice and for any reason or no reason. If an account is suspended no refund will be granted.”

In your case, since our product and services are obviously not a good fit for you and your projects based on your interactions with us, we have terminated your licenses and provided the refund despite the “no refund” clause in our terms. You may even continue to use Ninja Forms on this project…the code will continue to function despite the license termination, though you will no longer receive automatic updates and will not be receiving support for the unlicensed add-ons.

We hope you are able to find another solution that meets your needs from both a product and support perspective and works well with your theme.

At this point they have effed me. on 3 websites, not just one. I try to plead…

me 1:53 pm – the product I bought provided me usage on 20 websites. I already attached it to 3. I still nedd your product. we actually got paypal working. stripe was the final step. I have options for making it work (no thanks to you). I’m assuming I’ll have go update all the licenses and api keys now. you’re making my life harder not easier. kinda the antithesis to what “support” implies. your communication style and method isnt as clear or concise as you keep insisting that it is. I’d like to be put in touch with someone else (as I already stated in a previous email), who might be a little more open to my grievences. I keep hearing you justify your point of view and perspective on our exchanges. I have a different point of view and need to be allowed to be heard by someone other than you. please and thank you. this isnt personal.

but they don’t care. apparently neither does their CEO…

James Laws – Co-Founder | CEO 2:41 pm -David, I’m sorry you feel you have not received adequate support from my team. I have read over all past correspondence that we have had with you and I see that we have treated you kindly, professionally, and thoroughly. Zach went above and beyond testing your site in and provided in detail where the issues were occurring. That is your theme. When tested on a default theme, everything you mentioned worked as expected. I understand that you chose that theme for some specific reason, but we can’t spend time redeveloping the theme for the issues when we know it works in a properly developed one.
The refund we provided you was meant as a courtesy as you are well outside of our refund period. It was provided also, because you feel we are not assisting you to the standard that you require. While I feel we have done above and beyond for you, you so not not. The only conclusion we can come to then is that we are not the right fit for each other. You have expectations we cannot fulfill. The only right thing to do is give you your money back and allow you to move on to another solution that is more suitable for you.
I know you are concerned about your other sites. I can assure you that refunding those licenses does not impact the plugins functionality and they will continue to work as they are until you find the perfect alternative.
I wish you the best of luck.
Best regards,
James Laws
Co-Founder | CEO
WP Ninjas, LLC

The thing is if they DIDN’T provide me with a refund, simply deleting all products and purchase history from our account would be theft. Given Zachary’s decision to inaccurately portray my response to James as a threat, allow me to elaborate on what their decision actually represents. Instead of theft, what they’ve done constitutes what is called DETRIMENTAL RELIANCE. By accepting money from our company Ninja Forms entered into a contract with us. One which assumes liabilities on both parties. For us its that we only use their product in accordance with their terms of service, for Ninjaforms that they PROVIDE us WITH the products and support that we purchased. The terms of service were for one full year. By deleting our account and refunding our money against our will, they’re in breach of contract. Regardless, I simply informed them of that and asked that we find a solution that DIDNT require involving the courts…

me 3:53 pm –
James,
Thank you for your prompt response. I feel that If I had been afforded the opportunity to be heard ealier much of this could have been avoided. I appreciate you familarizing yourself with my case, but would like to point out where my frustrations stemmed from. I still feel they are valid and I still feel that finding another form plugin to suit our needs is not something that needs to be our FIRST solution to all this.

You can obviously see that this exchange began on October 20th. the length of time all this has been taking was my first frustration. the first solution offered was that I read documentation on paypal and later stripe and seek to find my own solution, which I attempted. I then followed up with further questions. I was instructed to activate licenses, test in a default theme, disable plugins, as well as update anything in need of updating, all of which I did. Justin indicated that he disabled ajax and the paypal form was working and asked I verify. what he didnt say was that he had sucess in a default theme. so when I tried to verify i didnt get the same results. thats where the frustration began. he assumed I knew he was testing in a default theme. I did not. This was our now our 5th exchange over 7 days. I told him I was frustrated and asking if he could verify that I hadnt incorrectly setup any of the forms. I still dont know if that was ever done. I was able to get the form attached to paypal working by putting it on a diffent page that was set up differently. the problem was actually NOT because of a ninjaform/theme incompatibility. It was due to me having three forms on one page. when one form was submitted, the other two acted as if REQURED FIELDS weren’t being filled out and as such halted submission of the form I was testing. I figured that out all on my own. So I asked if Justin could turn his attention to the form attached to stripe or pass me off to someone else who could take a look. there are no submission records for the form attached to stripe. Justins responses continued to reference the paypal issue and now announced to me that the theme was the problem and that he had stated that clearly to me prior (he had not) and that my articulating my frustration was “hostile”.

Ninjaforms works on our other sites. ninja forms works on this site. the paypal add-on works on this site. Whether stripe does or doesnt will only impact my solution strategy. changing the theme is another option as well, although (much like this nuclear response to my grievance) not my first choice, but rather my last choice.

I’ve been looking to your support team for help. My frustration stemms from what I consider to be poor communication. Thats not cause to burn down the whole farm, so to speak. In my opinion airing client frustrations is literally the job description of a support team. being rejected and turned away for articulating my frustration is far from reasonable. I have the ability to let you know whether or not I want a refund. I dont need those kind of decisions to be made on my behalf.

That being said I took the liberty of running this situation by our legal counsel. They determined that this constitutes “detrimental reliance” and offered me the option of filing a tort action against your company with damages to the tune of 6 figures. I personally, dont like the idea of going straight for blood. I prefer to see if we can resolve issues with effective communication, and as such will give you an opportunity to turn back the clock to where I asked if we could troubleshoot our stripe form. I’d like to stick with ninja forms for the time being as it has thus far met most of our needs. If I need to alter my approach specifically for this website, I’ll make that decision all on my own.

DAY 10 – Nov. 1
<ninja personnel> 12:14 pm –
David,
The reason we have decided to part ways is because we told on on more than one occasion what the issue was and you were not satisfied with our answer, but it was the correct and only answer we could provide. If you are not satisfied with the quality of our support & product, the only thing left to do is provide a refund. We have done this and consider the matter closed.
As you seem to have decided to bring your legal counsel into this, we will do the same. Any and all responses moving forward will come from our attorney.

So there you have it. A total of 10 days of back and forth. Justin was on the right track on Day 6 when he suspected “…current behavior might be related to something else breaking the form output” this was however not pursued. nor was it related to the theme or other plugins. It was caused BY the NINJAFORMS PLUGIN having multiple forms on one pg. If justin had tested the forms I set up in a default theme he would have seen despite the form working on his page that they did NOT in fact work on my pg. just a TIDDLE of INITIATIVE could have ended our interaction right there. Likewise if I had been met with an IOTA of sensitivity, sympathy, or accountability, rather than defensiveness we STILL might have found a resolution. Instead here we are. But by all means, draw your own conclusions.

• This reply was modified 9 years, 7 months ago by bmusedimaging.
• This reply was modified 9 years, 7 months ago by bmusedimaging.