Edirectory.com - Frustrations

If you are a licence holder or considering getting Edirectory.com, read this letter I just wrote them!

Dear eDirectory,

I am writing this email in regards to the service you have been providing to me lately, and I would appreciate it if you could pass on my concerns to Management.

I have a few things I would like to bring attention to you.
I have seen quite a few posts on internet forums in regards to your company charging excessive prices when people who have edirectory licences, who need simple code changes made and when they need site upgrades done, to the latest edirectory version. As you know internet gossip, reviews and bad feedback can give a company a unreputable name.

I have recently seen this with a company called www.buildanichestore.com

In regards to some people having problems such as myself doing minor code changes, I have found it difficult to get information when request help to the right areas to do my changes.

I also understand that some webmasters can carryout the changes themselves, but I am sure there are many of your licence holders or are unfamilar with coding, html and so forth, like I am.

In my case this has also been a major frustration and turn off in staying with your company.

I once asked the following question through the
changerequest helpdesk:

Quote
Is there anyway I get the Black Advertising Box which is on every page to be changed to the colour white - same as the page background.
I would also like to be able to add 120x600 sized banners in that Advertising Spot where the Black Box currently is instead of the current 180x150 pixel banners which go there at the moment.
Unquote

I did receive a reply in regards to this question and the quote was $127 USD …. just for a simple code change.

Another question I asked as follows

Quote
Hi, can you please change the list times for
Classifieds to Per 90 days and Events to Per Year
Or please advise me how I can do this myself via ftp
Unquote

Your reply did not include instructions on how I could do this via FTP myself, but it did give me another price quote of $42.50 for another simple code change.

I would like to know how you can justify charging these high prices?

When I bought this licence, there was no mention of these licence holders being quoted prices to do simple code or html changes and I do realise there is the option of of paying $399 for phone and email support, but does your Phone support, include customers who live in international countries such as I do in Australia.

Is there anywhere on your FAQ that mentions to your potential customers, that they will be charged an hourly rate for customizations or fixes?

I bought my licence from you 11 months ago, and I understand my version is 6.1.01. and the most current version of eDirectory is 6.4.00, not once have I received any emails informing me of these new Version Updates, and in 11 Months, you would think I would be able to get my current version upgraded for free, not having to pay $399 each time there is a new upgrade of eDirectory.com.

Why don't you create a proper forum, like www.vbulletin.com where other Licence Holders can help each other, your current forum is too basic, and it seems that when people want help, it takes days, and weeks to get a response, such as this question here: http://www.edirectory.com/forum/topic.php?id=22 this same problem also occurs in the changerequest help desk, it takes days to get a simple reply.

You also state in your FAQs that the Ad Banners is hard to understand at first.

The worst thing about adding Banners is that you have to manually add banners to each category, and I find this time consuming, it took me many many days just add my google adsense banners to each category 140 plus of them, in the end, I just gave up, who wants to add 140 plus banners to the site.

Why don't you just have it so you can add one banner, so it displays in every category, especially the 468x60 and 728x90 banners which display on the top of the pages, it would be so much easier if you could just do this via the Header and Footer.

I have many more questions, but If I ask them you may think I am causing trouble … which I am not.

I am just a very very frustrated edirectory.com licence holder, who paid $2200 for his licence, and just cannot afford your high help desk quoted prices for fixes and minor changes, as I have heard, many other licence holders.

With Regards

William

 

William your letter is professional and decent!

I am sorry to hear you are having these issues. I looked at purchasing eDirectory a few times but always got stopped by the INSANE price tag. One time I was pretty close to buying it so I sent in an email about a few simple questions. The support was rude and arrogant. Enough said: I never bought it.

And after reading your letter now I hope this company goes under and some new ones fill the place. Sometimes I wonder how some script owners think, some have good products others not so. But very very very few know how to really make the most of it.

Vbulletin is to this day the only script where I can say I am a happy customer (even though I have had my fair share of frustrations). They know what they are doing, the prices are very fair and support is both fast and professional but also boosted by their huge online community forum.

Any script maker out there who is serious about succeeding should take vB as an example.

P.S. I hope you get your problems sorted!

 

William,
Great letter! I have heard many times over that this lack of service was rampant. I'm sorry to say that your horrible experience has helped us all.

 

Hi,

I was also recently considering eDirectory, but I decided not to go this route for three reasons:

1) It took many days to have my questions answered, and the answers were incomplete.

2) Looking over the basic design of the product, I found many fundamental flaws (spam protection, events management, template design ... ) , and I knew that it would probably cost me thousands of dollars to get the product where I want it to be.

3) Too much upfront costs and risks before I could prove to myself whether the cost of the product was justified. Very few references, and many of the sites were no longer in operation.

The most discouraging aspect of my due diligence efforts so far, is that eDirectory is probably the best of the directory scripts. They are all pretty disappointing in one way or another.

For me, the only worthwhile script that I have ever used, was Wordpress. Fine product, well maintained, well thought out, and well supported. My experiences with WP are similar to yours with VB. It is a shame there isn't a counterpart in the directory world, but I think the target market of directory owners are probably serviced well by current offerings, but the directory scripts unfortunately fall far short of what I am looking for.

Good luck with your situation at eDirectory. I know how frustrating it must be.

Rich

 

Hi Rich,

One of the bosses from edirectory rang me from USA the other day, he helped a tiny bit.

In regards to their delays in replying, I put an "Urgent / High" help ticket in 4 days ago and still waiting for a reply.

Thanks for your feedback

 

Yep, this is why I couldn't go with eDirectory. I couldn't take the chance that I would have to wait days for support. The reason I didn't go with phpMyDirectory is that my whole site would rely on an encrypted script and a single developer. What if something happened to either? It's OK for a simple, low traffic domain, but too much risk for me.

Rich

 

I had a call about a month ago wanting my company to fullfill thier fashion department, after asking about the price tag, that scares us away. I just need to ask any one of ya'll that been on edirectory, do you actually get traffic result to paid customer via edirectory? does it worth it? if you pay that much price tag, i guess you should have alot of paid customers then. can anybody give a good highlight here