Developer is not ethical!

[vikasnshah]

You're absolutely right. I should not have made the assumption that he was lying. Based on the information I had, I thought that it was uninstalled. I did know for a fact that it was refunded. I also did know that neither I nor, at that time, 120-some-odd customers with a variety of devices had had any problems with uninstallation. When you get a comment that reads something like "APP DOES NOT UNINSTALL! REQUIRED HARD RESET! SHAMEFUL!" without any warning... it throws you for a loop. And, as I recall, I did not mark his comment as spam for about 24 hours after I emailed him - to see if he had anything to say.

Vikas

With over 20yrs Dev experience, what would I do? I can tell you what I would NOT do. I would NOT assume the user is lying.

You don't KNOW that the App was uninstalled.

You might KNOW that his phone reported back to the marketplace that the App was uninstalled, and you might assume that if everything worked as intended, the app should have been unistalledfrom his phone.

But, unless you have his phone in your hand so you can see it, you don't KNOW it uninstalled.

 

[deputc26]

Wow what a thread, dev gets flamed *and then shows up!!* I applaud your showing up here and giving a defense; it looks like both of you aren't totally in the clear, personally, marking as spam wasn't legit but the flame clearly wasn't accurate even though I can see how it totally would have appeared to be the apps fault for not uninstalling.

App user: maybe chill out a bit.

Dev: I bet you could have gotten the user to change his flame if you had tried to be a little more understanding.

 

[allikanbe]

Um, we are talking 99 cents here. In either case, it's not worth all the noise.

 

[cereal killer]

Um, we are talking 99 cents here. In either case, it's not worth all the noise.

actually it's just not about the .99 cents. Potential customers may see this and not buy it because they are afraid that they won't be able to uninstall it.

If one doesn't know any better they take that for what it's worth.

 

[Sam]

Um, we are talking 99 cents here. In either case, it's not worth all the noise.

to the OP: i bought something for 99cents one time that i didn't like. know what i did? nothing. it's 99 cents. can anyone even be unethical over .99? is that possible? maybe. is it worth your time? maybe. is it worth ours to listen to it? over 99 cents?? nope.

dev: thanks for showing up and shedding some light on the matter. i don't care who is right and who is wrong in this matter any more. we all see that things are (maybe) not as they were originally told. fine. whatever. thanks for joining the community, please feel free to enjoy the forums further and gain whatever feedback you might need. feel free to contribute in any way you can.

but i think we are all pretty much done with this.

 

[vikasnshah]

I appreciate all the feedback. I agree that this horse probably ain't worth beating too much more.

But I have to also say that this isn't about 99c. As cereal killer points out, a caustically negative comment could scare off hundreds or thousands (over the longer term) of customers - all of a sudden, 99c * xxxx * 0.7 = real money.

In addition, I take pride in my work (as I think we all do). None of us want to see our hard work maliciously slandered.

Vikas

 

[Sam]

yup, you are right. and i agree that you probably should have come here to defend yourself.

 

[PhoneSter]

Ok I deleted the original post cause I didn't wanna deal with a dude that marks my comment as spam and sends me the stupid email.
1. Yes, I uninstalled and got my 99 cents back
I had 2 bigger problems after that
A. The program DID not uninstall from my droid. I have not had this issue and have removed other programs without problem. I tried battery pull, several cycle on and off and guess what THE PROGRAM WAS STILL ON MY PHONE. I deleted what I could thru astro file manager but did not get it all. Hence phone reset
B. THIS WAS MY BIGGEST PROBLEM. 500 PLUS DOWNLOADS AND NOT ONE COMPLAINT? DEVELOPER STATED 100 PLUS REFUNDED AND UNINSTALLED.
WHAT DO I FIND ODD? WHAT DO I FIND NOT ETHICAL? ALL 5 STAR RATING AND NO BAD ONES? ONLY 23 REVIEWS OUT OF 700 DOWNLOADS. I SAY RAT! THE DEVELOPER IS SPAMING ALL HIS BAD RAPS LIKE HE DID TO ME IMMEDIATELY
How ethical is that. come on think about it. all those downloads and only 23 comments? how many do you think the honest man :icon_ devil: spamed to keep his ratings up Vicas.. how many of the 23 are your friends?
Oh. PS after your second email, I send your emails to spam, ... perhaps it is my droid, but it only happened with your program. leave me alone I've stopped, I should call the BBB and report you.. but I will not. Stop bothering me and I will go away so you can spam others without my input.. have a nice life

 

[vikasnshah]

Yeah, that's a rational response to this entire thread.

Did you bother reading the parts of this thread from other experienced developers who have noted application-independent problems with uninstalling?

One of the reviews is from a friend - Subir, one of the first reviews - because he genuinely finds my app helpful. Granted, he might not have been inclined to post anything if he thought it was a piece of crap.

And not all my ratings are 5 stars. There are a couple of 3 and 4 star reviews in there. Which is fine. Not everyone is going to think that this app is God's gift to the Android.

But I generally get good reviews because when people have problems and email me, I email them back quickly and try to solve whatever problem they are having. After interacting with a couple of customers and fixing the issue they were having, several have changed 3/4 star ratings to 5 stars.

Vikas

PS Making the font bigger doesn't do much in the way of adding weight to your argument.

Ok I deleted the original post cause I didn't wanna deal with a dude that marks my comment as spam and sends me the stupid email.
1. Yes, I uninstalled and got my 99 cents back
I had 2 bigger problems after that
A. The program DID not uninstall from my droid. I have not had this issue and have removed other programs without problem. I tried battery pull, several cycle on and off and guess what THE PROGRAM WAS STILL ON MY PHONE. I deleted what I could thru astro file manager but did not get it all. Hence phone reset
B. THIS WAS MY BIGGEST PROBLEM. 500 PLUS DOWNLOADS AND NOT ONE COMPLAINT? DEVELOPER STATED 100 PLUS REFUNDED AND UNINSTALLED.
WHAT DO I FIND ODD? WHAT DO I FIND NOT ETHICAL? ALL 5 STAR RATING AND NO BAD ONES? ONLY 23 REVIEWS OUT OF 700 DOWNLOADS. I SAY RAT! THE DEVELOPER IS SPAMING ALL HIS BAD RAPS LIKE HE DID TO ME IMMEDIATELY
How ethical is that. come on think about it. all those downloads and only 23 comments? how many do you think the honest man :icon_ devil: spamed to keep his ratings up Vicas.. how many of the 23 are your friends?

 

[someone]

Great response. I think I will purchase your app just based on your attitude and commitment to customers.

 

[vegainey]

Ok I deleted the original post cause I didn't wanna deal with a dude that marks my comment as spam and sends me the stupid email.
1. Yes, I uninstalled and got my 99 cents back
I had 2 bigger problems after that
A. The program DID not uninstall from my droid. I have not had this issue and have removed other programs without problem. I tried battery pull, several cycle on and off and guess what THE PROGRAM WAS STILL ON MY PHONE. I deleted what I could thru astro file manager but did not get it all. Hence phone reset
B. THIS WAS MY BIGGEST PROBLEM. 500 PLUS DOWNLOADS AND NOT ONE COMPLAINT? DEVELOPER STATED 100 PLUS REFUNDED AND UNINSTALLED.
WHAT DO I FIND ODD? WHAT DO I FIND NOT ETHICAL? ALL 5 STAR RATING AND NO BAD ONES? ONLY 23 REVIEWS OUT OF 700 DOWNLOADS. I SAY RAT! THE DEVELOPER IS SPAMING ALL HIS BAD RAPS LIKE HE DID TO ME IMMEDIATELY
How ethical is that. come on think about it. all those downloads and only 23 comments? how many do you think the honest man :icon_ devil: spamed to keep his ratings up Vicas.. how many of the 23 are your friends?
Oh. PS after your second email, I send your emails to spam, ... perhaps it is my droid, but it only happened with your program. leave me alone I've stopped, I should call the BBB and report you.. but I will not. Stop bothering me and I will go away so you can spam others without my input.. have a nice life

My response to you is the same message I gave to the developer.

Don't assume the Developer is lying.

You had a bad experience while trying his product. You made a LOT of assumptions about what caused those problems, and about the developer in general. You didn't give him a valid opportunity to assist you with the problem, or to even determine if his product was really at fault in the problem.

All of the numbers referenced about how many were sold, returned, reviews, etc, sound perfectly normal to me. There is nothing in those numbers that leads me to believe he is doing anything unethical.

Based on the comments made by both of you, the only thing I see that the developer did wrong was:

a) He did make an effort to help point you to information on how to deal with the problem with the app not uninstalling, so you might understand that is wasn't his app that caused the problem.

b) How he chose to deal with (remove) the inappropriate and unjustified comment you left about his product.

I don't see any of the that as unethical.

This problem is not unique, and the solution is actually quite simple.

When something goes wrong:

1) No NOT assume someone is at fault and the make additional assumptions to justify and defend your original bad assumption

2) Make EVERY EFFORT to communicate and allow everyone involved to assist in finding a resolution.

When you realize you've made bad assumptions:

LET IT GO!!!

 

[mikes]

Ok I deleted the original post cause I didn't wanna deal with a dude that marks my comment as spam and sends me the stupid email.

Kudos to vikasnshah for putting up with you at all. You've convinced me that the problem is with you, not the application, and not vikasnshah.

 

[allikanbe]

Um, we are talking 99 cents here. In either case, it's not worth all the noise.

actually it's just not about the .99 cents. Potential customers may see this and not buy it because they are afraid that they won't be able to uninstall it.

If one doesn't know any better they take that for what it's worth.

The point was that had I bought the app for 99 cents and then uninstalled it, I would not bother to post about it to the degree that it has been.

 

[Zippster]

More and more posts starting up about dev's either trying to buy or edit their way to a constant 5 star rating, android marketplace needs to step in and fix this ASAP because if customers cant count on the ratings, they wont buy much of anything. No need for devs to have any access to deleting spam or negative remarks, were all smart enough to read through the sour apple postings that come from some people and see the overall thoughts and feelings on a particular item.

 

[techguru]

Great response. I think I will purchase your app just based on your attitude and commitment to customers.

Just bought it myself. Seems a decent app, and I might not have found it without this stupid thread...

Alan