Rip off alert - Digital River ripping off users on BI support

[panamint]

Don't see any postings about this. A few days ago I purchased a $29.95 support contract as usual. I used Paypal. I checked my bank and saw several charges from "MYORD.COM" for the same amount for Blue Iris support. I sent a quick furious email off to Blue Iris support, but didn't receive a response. Beware out there, not sure what's going on. Could not get through to Myord.com, which is Digital River and Blue Iris has chosen to ignore my emails.

I ended up filling a claim for reimbursement through my bank. Bottom line ... Careful folks, the crooks are everywhere and apparently our BI guys don't give a dang.

 

[bp2008]

Interesting. I hope it is just an isolated event.

BI support response time is not what it once was, even as recently as last year.

 

[fenderman]

Don't see any postings about this. A few days ago I purchased a $29.95 support contract as usual. I used Paypal. I checked my bank and saw several charges from "MYORD.COM" for the same amount for Blue Iris support. I sent a quick furious email off to Blue Iris support, but didn't receive a response. Beware out there, not sure what's going on. Could not get through to Myord.com, which is Digital River and Blue Iris has chosen to ignore my emails.

I ended up filling a claim for reimbursement through my bank. Bottom line ... Careful folks, the crooks are everywhere and apparently our BI guys don't give a dang.

Relax, the blue iris developer (one guy) has no control over Digital River. My guess is you refreshed the page when placing the order. I just used digital river to pay for 1 year of support the other day. Worked fine. He should move to a smooth platform.
You also indicate that you purchased support "as usual". The 29.99 option is auto renewed yearly. It is possible that you signed up again in addition to your past auto renewal(s). The one year option is $34.99.

 

[mickiete]

I pay with PayPal on autorenewal, and noticed today,
Software is saying "Expired" on 25th May,

PayPal says I have paid BI thru "Mycommerce.inc" a payment on 24th May, £32.23 and shows Blueiris Extended Sup
PayPal says I have paid BI thru "Digital River" a payment on 27th May, £27.90 and shows Blueiris Shareit.info

I only have 1 licence,

Not sure which value is the correct price.
Can anyone point me in the right direction.

UPDATE: Just received email from "MyCommerce" with new key on it.
So I think I will cancel the Digital Rivers auto payment as not heard anything from them and see what happens next year.

 

[eeeeesh]

Not a big fan of Digital River - I wish they would dump it. I needed an extra key last year because I wanted to start over from scratch and set up BI on a new computer. Instead of just using my existing account they added a -1 and a -2 after my email address which caused me a lot of aggravation trying to figure out what was going on.

 

[Flintstone61]

I have 3 BI licenses. I think I've been stopping the auto-pay feature by having my settings like this?


So I try to rememeber to turn off automatic updates, and let support expire, and hang with a working version as long as I can. I do see where I got a reminder email in March for the Condo license and I let that one thru because it's a commercial property.
As I recall you can keep using your current version, and it only wants the support $ if your expired and want an upgrade? right?

 

[sebastiantombs]

I've been seeing the dual charge phenomenon as well. I'm shutting down auto renewal once things renew this summer and will renew manually from now on. I don't mind paying for the updates and supporting BI, but I do mind supporting Digital River by paying twice for the same thing. I'm also going to drop BI support a note about this since it's getting out of hand. Once can be a simple mistake, every year with multiple users is a whole other thing. I think everyone who's getting double charged on auto renewal should be emailing BI with attachments showing what's going on.

 

[samplenhold]

I originally purchased BI in 2018 and have had auto renewal setup through MyCommerce since 2019. Never been double charged. I do not use PayPal for this but rather have a credit card on file with them.

Even on my original purchase invoice, it stated "MyCommerce a DigitalRiver Company".

 

[TonyR]

I was double-billed on my Paypal may of 2019 and it took a month to get resolved.
My foul-up was 3 years ago and apparently it's still happening.
There are many, many companies like DR/MyCommerce that are NOT in Europe that could certainly do a better job.
If it's because they're cheap, I don't think a few dollars saved by using them is worth the aggravation and poor service they have introduced.
Generally it's the company producing the product that gets the bad press, not the fulfillment company.

Naw, I think I'd drop them like a hot rock if they can't seem to get it right....but of course it's not up to me,.

 

[bp2008]

I have 3 BI licenses. I think I've been stopping the auto-pay feature by having my settings like this?
View attachment 129349

So I try to rememeber to turn off automatic updates, and let support expire, and hang with a working version as long as I can. I do see where I got a reminder email in March for the Condo license and I let that one thru because it's a commercial property.
As I recall you can keep using your current version, and it only wants the support $ if your expired and want an upgrade? right?

You can't cancel the recurring support plan within the Blue Iris application (need to go to their payment provider's website and log in to do that). All you have done is turn off update notifications.

 

[Flintstone61]

thanks.

 

[Flintstone61]

I searched gmail, and see I was billed $32.08 for one for the license/support renewals on April 06, and $37 for the other license on Mar 29,
So i went Googling for MyCommerce and requested a user ID login etc....gonna maybe take back control or see how they have it arranged.
It does not appear that Double billing is occuring at this time. One was paid with a bank card and one was paid with Paypal.
I don't mind supporting this endeavor with recurring support. It has made my job at the Condo much more manageable, and shortened my video review labor time at home as well.

 

[aesterling]

I'm thankfully not seeing any double charges here.

Interesting. I hope it is just an isolated event.

BI support response time is not what it once was, even as recently as last year.

Do you think there's really any difference between priority support and regular support?

I pay for priority because I think BI is a good value for the money, but I seem to only get responses to my support emails about half the time, and often days or weeks later. Yes, my support details are included in my emails. Maybe you have better luck with responses because of UI3, but it feels like my response times are getting worse. It makes the discussions here even more valuable.

It looks like he cut ties with Sam around the beginning of 2022 (?), so it's probably back to email-overload mode, even if Sam was just sorting through the easy questions. I feel like an actual ticket platform would benefit everyone, but it seems like Google Workspace is where it remains.

 

[wittaj]

I think it depends on the question or the timing. In the past 3 weeks I have sent two issues that popped up with updates and Ken responded within 12 hours.

 

[aesterling]

I think it depends on the question or the timing. In the past 3 weeks I have sent two issues that popped up with updates and Ken responded within 12 hours.

Good point. Sometimes I'll get an email response within 5 minutes of sending it, other times it'll be weeks. I suspect it depends on whether he's in the mood to deal with the topic at the time, or not. Or if it's related to a recent update, like you said.

 

[bp2008]

Do you think there's really any difference between priority support and regular support?

Probably not much. But I don't know.

Maybe you have better luck with responses because of UI3

Nope. It is like you say, very unpredictable how long it will take to get a response or if I'll even get a response at all. I definitely get more than the average amount of communication from Ken (and in the past from Sam too) because they forward me a lot of issues related to UI3. Often it is really obvious stuff and I'm thinking things like "how do they not know how to answer that without my input??".

I agree 100% they need a proper support ticket platform and I have suggested it before, but I guess the learning curve and complexity is more than he wants to deal with. Also anything that makes it harder to just ignore hard tickets would probably not be wanted ....

 

[samplenhold]

In the past 3 weeks I have sent two issues that popped up with updates and Ken responded within 12 hours.

Sometimes I'll get an email response within 5 minutes of sending it, other times it'll be weeks.

Wow, you all sure do send a lot of requests. I have had BI since May of 2018 and have never sent a support request.

 

[wittaj]

Well mine wasn't support related more than it was "hey I just updated to X and this now broke. I have done the following steps and it still doesn't work. Here is a screenshot. i rollback and it starts working again. Here is the screenshot"

It are emails like this why we probably see so many quick updates because it broke something.

 

[bp2008]

Well mine wasn't support related more than it was "hey I just updated to X and this now broke. I have done the following steps and it still doesn't work. Here is a screenshot. i rollback and it starts working again. Here is the screenshot"

It are emails like this why we probably see so many quick updates because it broke something.

Yes, I've been involved in enough quick back-and-forth conversations to know that is exactly how it works.

Its like:

Day 1

Me: BI 5.x.x.6 broke Thing A
Ken: Okay, try BI 5.x.x.7
Me: BI 5.x.x.7 made it worse. Did you try what I said?

Day 2

Ken: Okay, try BI 5.x.x.8
Me: BI 5.x.x.8 fixed Thing A but now Thing B causes a crash.
Ken: Okay, try BI 5.x.x.9
Me: Fixed, thanks.

 

[sebastiantombs]

I sent a support note complimenting them on a really stable recent release. Had a response in about a half hour.