Dear Collectorz: Catalogue this, arseholes!
I’ve been using Collectorz for years now. To bring you up to speed, “Collectorz.com is a series of catalogue programs for cataloguing your music, movie, book, comic, game, audio file and photo file collection in a database.”
I have even defended it while my brother, languishing on my bed in his best impression of Hedonism Bot during one of his interstate visits, and bathed in the light from his MacBook, extolled the benefits of Delicious Library.
“But,” I said, “I don’t run a Mac. Besides, I know it’s a bit more expensive, but It’s worth it and covers all future upgrades.”
Just to be clear, while I agree with most that Collectorz is a terrible name, I’ve always been pretty happy. I read the emails when they come, and while I currently only use Game Collector, I have gone so far as to recommend the other versions to friends and family.
Now, I’ve been having a bad week. The absolute ‘crapalanche’™ of things that went wrong on Tuesday doesn’t bare repeating, and yesterday I had a not very pleasant trip to the doctor. So, when I got home and found that Collectorz had sent me an email announcing version 3 of Game Collector, including spiffy new features, I was somewhat cheered. So I opened the program and hit ‘Upgrade’, and away it chuffed, downloading the new goodies that I was eager to test out.
Until it told me my license key was no longer valid.
See, stupid me, had a license key for version 2, and this was version 3! The audacity of me to think that when I was told my initial cost would cover all future upgrades, I would think that it would cover my upgrade from version 2 to version 3!
No where in the email, the documentation before or during the upgrade did Collectorz feel the need to tell me this would happen. But, lo and behold, they are willing to offer me a 50% discount on my version 3 key, meaning it will only be $25!
It’s not the money in this case, it’s the principle. It’s the fact I feel bad for defending this company and product to others, only to be lied to and, as I see it, tricked.
I will be contacting the company about this, but given my week I felt the need to get this off my chest first. I actually wish I used their Movie Collector so I could enter How To Lose Friends & Alienate People as one final gesture. As it is, Animal Crossing: Let’s Go To The City!, doesn’t have the same ring of ‘fuck you’ I’m looking for.
~Warlach
That sucks, but it is a pretty standard software app pricing model: all minor updates free, major updates half-price. We’re just used to the web-based stuff these days, where there is no such thing as a version.
And, come to think of it, no such thing as a fee!
I know, @Squozen stated the same thing on Twitter. My main problem is that at no time prior to the upgrade was I informed it would not be covered, and that they made a big point of the fact that it was a ‘lifetime purchase’ back when I originally bought the software.
If they’d told me, I’d be annoyed slightly because it seems contrary to their previous statements, but I would probably have paid the $25 by now.
As I said, it’s the way it was handled that most annoyed me.
(Also, everyone should check out Mr Speaker’s blog because it’s far more full of awesome than mine.
)
are you saying you now have an application on your machine that you can’t access, content you have entered that you can’t use until you have paid your licence. That’s not on. You should be able to revert until you want to pay…
Same thing here. I bought the book collector(z) software on the assurance that upgrades were free for life. Their website clearly stated that with no caveats whatsoever. After over 3500 books entered into the stupid software I find out I can no longer upgrade without paying. NEVER! They lied so I will never give them another dime, and I will tell everyone I think might even be remotely interested in reading to stay away from that dishonorable sham of a company!
Hi Jim,
Yeah, I’ve become very disapointed with Collectorz over this and other issues - they released an expensive iPhone app but I can’t add items to my lists through the app?
I assume you found this post so long after it was written through Google, so anyone arriving that way, take out advice: stay away from Collectorz.