Helpdesk Support is super slow!

That’s his own opinion and NOT CS-Cart’s.

[quote name=‘Unregistered’]… sounds like when you paying for a product and not getting the appropriate level of support means you have to take a stand and not hide behind the curtain Noman.[/quote]

What would be for you an appropriate level of support for $285 (software + 1 year free upgrades + 30-days free support)? I mean response times, not the duration of the fix.

[quote name=‘Unregistered’]Sorry, what attitude you talking about. I am just making a statement based on the experience of this poor user which I find that the support can get this low.



I am sorry if I offended you, but surely you have to be brave enough to take critism where it’s due and perhaps the support might get better and you can defend your alliance for the right reasons.



I find your comments and attitude very disappointing, rather than targetting the issue here you are having a go at me…disgusting?



CS Cart is a good product but sounds like when you paying for a product and not getting the appropriate level of support means you have to take a stand and not hide behind the curtain Noman.[/QUOTE]



Let me tell you something [unregistered!]



Are you judging CS support after reading a few comments? Try to put some effort and see how many people are happy with it. The ratio will be much better than you think. That’s one.



I’m not taking your criticism at all. I’m not one of the CS guys. For me so far, they’re great and much better than the X competitor and a few others. They’re not perfect and never will be. You can always buy extra support points and then start complaining if not happy.



Yes, the product is good, even very good and I think, for what it offers, it should be twice more expensive. And they do not hide nor I, they did say “sorry”. What, not enough? Let’s chop their heads off.



I believe, even you pay 50$ for CS, you will be still unhappy because of someone’s comment. Some people are just like that.



I’m not going down to meet your level as you seem to be more experienced. For me the subject is closed.

[quote name=‘Tool Outfitters’]Yep, Nomans reply is very ironic considering he is so adament about webhosting having phone support so that he can get a hold of them as quick as possible.



If your deciding factor on CSC is quick support, then you might as well move on.[/QUOTE]



Well said, if comes to hosting, tel support is the most important, but how many carts with all the features we get in the range of 250-300USD have a free tel. support? Can you mention one or two please?

[quote name=‘Unregistered’]Shocking trail of super slow slow response for a product you have paid for…



Is this normal for other users of this product or a one off!



I am thinking of investing(long term, that is…) in this product, but now I think twice after reading this.



What is going on with support. Is this what you pay to get this kind of support.?[/QUOTE]



The comments you have made are based purley on this ONE persons experience so I can see why some people would find you using expressions such as shocking and trail of super slow slow as a little OTT to be honest.



I’ve already added my positive experience with support to this thread and so have many others.



Everyone has diffrent expectations so you really can’t base your decision about a product on one persons experience and to be honest with you, how often do you think you are going to contact support once you have your store set up?

I have to comment here as I purchased CS-Cart in October and have a very long relationship with their support department. For me they have been “First Class”. Not that they respond immediately but the fact that they do respond and fix my problem.



I may also add that even an experienced software person like myself created some of my own issues. I have years of experience with various technologies but did not know CS-Cart and I am not one for reading manuals when it comes to software. I plug it in and see how it works. Even when I blew it up the support team helped me; they either fixed it for me or gave me the code to fix it myself. "They always answer my questions. "



I know what the time difference is and I can live with that. It does not mean that support is slow, it simply means they are not awake when you are.



For the cost of the software and also the reasonable cost of support I have no complaints. I love “CS-Cart”. and I give their support team an A+.



CS-Cart is a sophisticated product which is something I think is often over looked. I have a testing site set-up just to play with changes as I like to tinker with things. If you like to tinker with your site perhaps you should look at doing something along those lines before making changes to a live site.



If you have no experience with website/ecommerce design/solutions, perhaps you should hire someone as do-it-yourself with CS-Cart may not be the way to go.



These comments are my own based on my experiences and may not be the same as others.





I do hope the user with site issues get them resolved soon, I know how upsetting site problems can be.

Author: Martin Hansen Staff time: Mar 5, 2010, 16:31 Client time: Mar 5, 2010, 14:31, ID: #100194320



Author: Kate Lazarevskaya Staff time: Mar 5, 2010, 15:57 Client time: Mar 5, 2010, 13:57, ID: #255963



Author: Martin Hansen Staff time: Mar 5, 2010, 15:25 Client time: Mar 5, 2010, 13:25, ID: #100194301



Author: Kate Lazarevskaya Staff time: Mar 5, 2010, 15:11 Client time: Mar 5, 2010, 13:11, ID: #255936



Martin Hansen is me.



Kate Lazarevskaya is the supporter.



This is just a note how long time they take withme.

Sooo.

they are okey.

The only problem is tbh there time :slight_smile:



As 6p.m. is now (15:00) and you need help

so you will have to wait for 3 days untell they ones again are ready.

I have to be honest. A response in 20 hours is pretty darn good! I’ve contacted places like Storefront.net, Quickbooks, MS, Google, Yahoo and many others on the internet. If I get “support” in 2 business days from most of the places that is good. CS usually answers my questions or helps within 24 business hours. Sometimes it may be messed up because they have a different holiday than we do, but I would give them 2 thumbs up on basic support.



In regards to custom upgrades to one of my sites, I have had a couple of simple ones done and they seem to have done fine there too.



I would probably have to question the timing on some current mods being done. For example, the help desk that snorocket is working on is WAY over due.



I would still have to vote their support as very good.

My request for help in converting US to UK account in Google Merchant → 57h and still counting.



My request to Paypal to upgrade my private account to business one - 61h, still no answer.



Question about my car insurance premium for 2010 sent to the biggest UK online insurer - Tuesday morning.



Question about re-booking my flight with FinnAir not answered since Wednesday morning.



…and my cat the beast doesn’t want to eat anything since yesterday. More than 24h.



CS is still good.

[quote name=‘Noman’]My request for help in converting US to UK account in Google Merchant → 57h and still counting.



My request to Paypal to upgrade my private account to business one - 61h, still no answer.



Question about my car insurance premium for 2010 sent to the biggest UK online insurer - Tuesday morning.



Question about re-booking my flight with FinnAir not answered since Wednesday morning.



…and my cat the beast doesn’t want to eat anything since yesterday. More than 24h.



CS is still good.[/quote]

… and what’s about your wife? :rolleyes:

She’s always waiting for me … for looooong hours :wink:

Do I like CS cart overall - yes.



Better than the competition overall - yes.



Is CS cart support OK for the money - perhaps…



Is CS cart support world class = no. Note I am old fashioned and work weekends and late nights to take care of customer issues in my business and this type of work/service style seems to be vanishing in our modern world. Whenever I do find businesses with great support I try to use them even when they cost more.



Now the issue becomes how do we get great CS cart support?



For modifications and upgrades I have recently started to use 3rd parties and the results have been faster, less expensive and better in terms of quality and much friendlier.



For basic cart issues we really do not have much in the way of choices we simply need to spend a lot of time preparing really clear support requests and wait…



As someone mentioned most of the time once your cart is setup we are OK

I think you are right. If you use the cart as it is… then you are basically OK… any problem or bugs, just wait for the upgrade.



But if you did customizations (even by them, CS-Cart), you will have a hard time upgrading and most probably will just remain at the version which the customizations were developed on.



:slight_smile:


[quote name=‘Traveler’]Do I like CS cart overall - yes.



Better than the competition overall - yes.



Is CS cart support OK for the money - perhaps…



Is CS cart support world class = no. Note I am old fashioned and work weekends and late nights to take care of customer issues in my business and this type of work/service style seems to be vanishing in our modern world. Whenever I do find businesses with great support I try to use them even when they cost more.



Now the issue becomes how do we get great CS cart support?



For modifications and upgrades I have recently started to use 3rd parties and the results have been faster, less expensive and better in terms of quality and much friendlier.



For basic cart issues we really do not have much in the way of choices we simply need to spend a lot of time preparing really clear support requests and wait…



As someone mentioned most of the time once your cart is setup we are OK[/QUOTE]

I have dealt with overseas software companies before. One way some companies deal with American customers is to have some contract tech support people here in the U.S…



Maybe something for CSC to think about if their client base is large enough here and it makes financial sense.

[quote name=‘American’]I have dealt with overseas software companies before. One way some companies deal with American customers is to have some contract tech support people here in the U.S…



Maybe something for CSC to think about if their client base is large enough here and it makes financial sense.[/QUOTE]

I agree this should be a long-term goal. In the short term, they could consider staggering employee start times so that they could get coverage from 6am - 7pm their time. While not ideal, this would improve support availabilty to over one-half day.



Bob

Why not simply have a night shift just like all mission critical operations.



It can be a skeleton operation with just one support person.



And for many of us our shopping carts are very important

Thank you all for sharing your opinions about our support service and making suggestions. We appreciate them and will give them careful consideration.



Yes, we agree that due to the time difference and busy schedule sometimes there might be a delay in our answers. We sincerely apologize for it. But we are working on this problem and we are considering to increase our working hours and provide support on weekends. We have already started to provide support on Saturday in a test mode (with a limited staff available on this day), they deal with all the urgent requests sent on Friday evening and Saturday. So we are making progress!



Thank you for your support!

I take Nomans point on the telephone support as it is very handy, but just wanted to add that I have submitted a number of tickets and had some same day and some next day replies, at all times i got an answer that was acceptable and would rate ethe support from my experience as good, compared to others.



John

I have to rate the support as good. I’ve always had timely responses to inquiries and problem. If people want better response times perhaps CS should look at doing what other vendors do and offer priority support at a premium on a per incident and/or subscription basis. If the immediate response is that critical than pay for it. That would be inline with what software vendors such as MS and Symantec do for enterprise software. If one feels that CS needs that level of response than one shouldn’t be surprised if they were to offer it at the same kind of premium that other software companies do for “mission critical” software and it’s up to the end user to determine what “mission critical” is and whether the added cost of the incident/premium subscription is worth it to have support outside of the vendors normal business hours.

[quote name=‘tletourneau’]I have to rate the support as good. I’ve always had timely responses to inquiries and problem. If people want better response times perhaps CS should look at doing what other vendors do and offer priority support at a premium on a per incident and/or subscription basis. If the immediate response is that critical than pay for it. That would be inline with what software vendors such as MS and Symantec do for enterprise software. If one feels that CS needs that level of response than one shouldn’t be surprised if they were to offer it at the same kind of premium that other software companies do for “mission critical” software and it’s up to the end user to determine what “mission critical” is and whether the added cost of the incident/premium subscription is worth it to have support outside of the vendors normal business hours.[/QUOTE]



An interesting idea - of course on the flip side there are businesses out there such as web hosts that provide wonderful service 24/7/365 for no extra charge.



And when you consider that much of what we need help with is CS cart bugs or problems resulting from poor documentation then I do not agree with you.



Two wrongs do not make a right if some large corporations cannot provide fast service that does not apply to a tiny startup like CS cart that is trying to create a niche in the market for itself.



It costs very little except hard work to provide great service.



For questions about new modifications your thoughts are fair enough.