grippo

Does this answer solve your problem, @Square Wheels

Thanks for trying though! :)

I just wanted to say thank you, regarding your latest announcement. Thanks for listening, and thanks for the action that you've taken. I can't speak for everyone (nor would I attempt to) but that's all I was after when I was posting the other week, so it's a thumbs up from me. I feel like I can look forward to any other products IPS works on in the future now too, instead of worrying that I'm going to be left out in the cold. So yeah, it's really appreciated. :)

I've not had much chance to play with 3.0.2 yet but I was wondering if this is possible with the software..... I would like to be able to set it up so that admins and moderators can PM any member (and any member can PM any admin member or moderator), regardless of their PM settings. To clarify a bit, I currently have two instances where people can't access the PM system at all: 1) I have members who have been caught breaking the rules of our PM system. Rather than install a admin-can-read-all-pms hack (which I don't agree with), I just ban them from the PM system altogether. 2) New members don't have PM access until they've made a set number of posts, as we were struck by PM spam earlier in the year and this seemed the most sensible way to counter such an attack. The problem I have is that sometimes I need to contact these members - particularly the newbies who've only got 2 or 3 posts and it's nice to speak to them in private. I know I can e-mail, but it would be handy if the PM system could be used - particularly for my moderators who are working when I'm offline and can't get the e-mail address out of the ACP instantly. So I want to keep some groups from PM-ing all of the other members, and are only able to use the PM system for contacting admins and moderators. Is this possible? Or is this something that could be added in the future? Or am I asking for flying cars and haven't got a chance? :P Cheers.

Yeah, I know it's in beta but for future releases, this would be very helpful. For instance, I have a moderator group and a site supporter group. My moderators are some of the people most likely to subscribe but because it throws them out of the moderator group, they don't use the subscription manager. When they send me money away from the site (via Paypal to my e-mail address) I have to do their subscription manually, and they get no indication of a renewal at all. I don't like asking for donations, but some of them have been shocked to find out that they've not subscribed in 2 or 3 years because they've just forgotten about it. So some sort of workaround where subscribing adds the permissions as a secondary group - and then takes them away again when their sub expires - would be extremely helpful. :)

I'm not quite sure what you're saying. :unsure: I have a perpetual so if I wish to have support, I have to pay. As my account shows, my support is currently active - so you're incorrect. I have paid - and if I want support when this expires, I will have to pay again. :)

I haven't said at all that I can't appreciate your point. I really do understand that you're a business. What I don't understand is why you're so against selling us things - and this is why I feel that you're trying to prise my licence out of my hands, which is in effect, what you're doing. There must be some sort of alternative that you could offer that would increase a revenue stream for you? I mean, at the moment, I'm sitting here and there's no way I'm giving up my perpetual. I appreciate the fact that you've responded to me, but the way you're selling the services reinforces the feelings that I've had for a long time - that we're not valued as customers and that we're actually a pain that you'd rather get rid of (which again, let me stress, isn't *our* fault. We bought what you offered). I'm not massively au fait with the standard licence, but it's $50 dollars to renew per year, whilst the perpetual is $30? Would it not help revenue if you charged us for the service? From my point of view, this is how it stands: 1) Lifetime + perpetual licence owners move to the standard licence = money for IPS. 2) Lifetime + perpetual licence owners don't move and just sit about grumbling all day = no money for IPS + potential bad press (as what happened with vB). 3) Lifetime + perpetual licence owners stop using the software and move to another company = no money for IPS + potential bad press. (I know IPS don't support the sale of licences and I don't know the full ins and outs of that, but maybe people would then sell their licences which actually results in a loss of a sale for IPS.) Why not sell us something instead of excluding us? As I've said, we're a captive market - and we've supported you in the past, so it makes sense that we're probably happy to support you in the future and/or that we're going to have a keen interest in what you're up to next. We're not evil people trying to disrupt your company. On the contrary, I want IPS to go on to bigger and better things. Please don't get me wrong - I really love IPS's products, but I could sit here and get upset about the fact that I renewed my support and yet still can't upgrade because you've not released the subscription manager (so my support is ticking away the days whilst I wait) but you have spent time developing an alternative product that I can't even buy. (I'm really not looking for an argument...I know Matt's been working on it and I know people were hammering on at you guys to set a release date and to get the software out.) ...but maybe you can see my point. We're all customers - why not sell to us? @ Arctic Monkeys UK. We got those benefits because we were early adopters. We showed faith in a company that could've disappeared off the market after a couple of months (and when lots of people were refusing to stick with Invision because it had gone paid) - in which case, we'd have paid a very hefty price for the software. This isn't a war between us as customers and I'm sorry that you feel that somehow I'm screwing you over by having a licence where I've already paid for my upgrades. Maybe the flip side is that if we hadn't bought more expensive lifetime and perpetual licences, IPS wouldn't have been able to build its software to the level that it's at now in the time that it's managed to do so. There's also the case that a lot of the lifetime and perpetual licence holders are the ones who modded in the early days, and showed everyone exactly what they could do with forum software, which in turn spurred IPS on to make their product even better. You're reaping the benefit of that in several ways. @ Tarun I have to admit, that's how I read it at first, because I've got active support and access to releases.

No, and I do appreciate that. I should've mentioned that in my post - I think everyone would have been more upset if there had been absolutely no avenue to move aside from purchasing a whole new licence! I like the security that my perpetual gives me. I know that's kind of ironic as I bought a perpetual instead of a yearly licence and IPS could've folded a year in and I'd have lost money (but thankfully, that didn't happen!), but I like the fact that I can log in at any time, no matter what my current financial state is (which is currently dire - thanks recession) and I am always able to upgrade my software so that my board is as secure as it can possibly be. I understand that the spam service is a subscription type service, so once your support ended, so would the service? So I understand that if my financial situation decreased further and I was unable to renew the service, it would leave me open to being unprotected by the service - but I do see the spam service as an added benefit and therefore, not quite as important as having access to the latest software. I'm not sure I'm saying it clearly (I've had a very long day, sorry) but if push came to shove, I would hold the software in higher regard than the extra services - so risking my access to the software in return for the services concerns me. I know I'm looking on the bleak side - as it shouldn't be a risk, and it'd be great if I could be completely sure that I could afford the service renewal year in, year out - but just in case I can't, it would worry me to move. From another slightly pessimistic point of view, what if I don't get on with the service? In that scenario, I will have given up my already-paid-for updates to the software for a few months with a service that I would no longer use. I will think on, but those are my knee-jerk concerns. :)

I know that 9 pages in, nearly everyone else will have covered the points I'm about to make, but I do wish to explain how this has come across to me. I am a perpetual licence holder, which I bought in 2005. What worries me is that I feel that there is an effort going on to force me out of my perpetual licence. The biggest issue in this is that we are not at all eligible to purchase the service - nor, it appears, any future service. It concerns me that there will be many other things released in the future which will be classed as a service, as a way of excluding perpetual and lifetime licence holders from useful extras to the software (thereby convincing people to relinquish their licences). I am also concerned that not being able to buy such services might somehow compromise my board. I know it's an extra to the software, but spam is a very serious issue and I find it worrying that I won't be able to have any sort of access at all to a module that could prevent a significant spam attack. I will stress that I don't think that IPS are unscrupulous at all, but I imagine some people might also be worrying that if a spam module provides enough robust protection against spam but there is a problem in the standard software and people are getting heavily attacked (like what happened in the later 2.3 series), IPS won't be as swift to respond to patching the software. I stress, I'm not saying that *will* happen, but you can understand how that might cross people's minds. After all, four years ago, it would've been unthinkable that IPS wouldd be launching extra services in the manner they are now. Overall, I feel that I'm being forced out of my perpetual licence. If we'd been able to pay an extra cost to obtain the service, then I understand that there might have been complaints but I can understand the difference between lifetime, perpetual and standard and if you wanted to make an offer to standard holders, that's understandable (honestly, I've been waiting for this for months because I could see where you were going with some of your forum posts last year). But the crux is that we can't get the spam service at all without relinquishing what we currently own and have paid for...and I find that slightly odd. It also concerns me that this won't be the first service released, nor the only effort to make us give up our licences. I bought the licence that was available to me at the time. I didn't buy a perpetual licence to screw IPS out of money or to upset IPS or to make IPS hate me. I also didn't force IPS to sell perpetual licences - I bought what IPS offered. I would be happy to pay additional costs for services - if I felt that they would be a benefit to my site - and it seems a shame that they're not available to purchase as add-on modules at all. I love IPS's software and I always have done, and I don't ever want to have to change from using Invision...but I am being increasingly upset at the way I'm being treated by the company - a company who I've never hassled via the support, who I've only ever said good things about and have always strongly recommended to people. Lifetime and perpetual owners are still your customers - we run your software (and probably have done for years, so our users are used to your product and we probably don't wish to switch), so we're the best people to try and sell things to because we're a captive market. Excluding us entirely just makes me feel unwanted and it feels like you're trying to trick us out of what we already own. I respect you guys more than that, and it's horrible that that's how it's coming across. You can't mean it to be like this, surely? :(