Joomla Reviews, Xe-Media, censorships..

[egoncalves]

Hello fellow friends,

I'm reporting a truly weird situation... allow me to explain in detail:

I work in a company based in software development but does web design as well. We recently purchased Xe-SlideMambot from Xe-Media, a company that has a lot of commercial Joomla extensions. We included the extension in a client website, but detected some problems with version 6 of Internet Explorer. We sent an email reporting the issue and asking for their help - the receipt number was specified to confirm we bought the product. 3 working days later, we had no answer (and never had), so I posted the situation in their support forum to see if anyone had a similar problem and could help us - but reporting the lack of support from the company - , and sent another email. Upon returning to the forum, my post was missing and my account was blocked! I received no notification for that action.

This is completely unacceptable from a company which we bought a product from, so I wrote 3 reviews in 3 different extensions from this company: one in the extension we bought, explaining what happened and warning users of bad support from Xe-Media, another confirming bad support that another user had experienced, and a third review again warning users with what I experienced.

I received in my email the notification that 2 of my reviews were approved, which was strange as I published 3 reviews. When visiting Joomla extensions, none of my reviews were present! The product in question, Xe-SlideMambot was even removed! What is going on?

The review rules states: 'A review is a serious examination of a person's experience with an extension which is presented on the Joomla! Extensions Directory. Praise, difficulties, or comparisons with other extensions are all valid parts of a review, including the reasons why.'

So, why was I censored? I didn't insult anyone, just told my experience using only facts. I would like to ask Joomla board to justify this action.. shouldn't a community cooperate and share their experiences? doesn't the consumer have rights? is there a law that forces the consumers to praise all companies no matter how bad their products are?

[brian]

Firstly this forum is not the place to settle commercial disputes or to act as a wall of shame. (as outlined in the forum rules)

Secondly if I read you correctly you submitted reviews not about the product but about the company.

Thirdly if I read you correctly you submitted 2 reviews about products you have not used.

[egoncalves]

Hi,

I agree with some points you mentioned, but...

Firstly, is there a place to warn other users of this situations? And this is not a commercial dispute, it could (but will not) turn into a legal dispute, but that is not material for this forum. As for the post in the forum, it was about the deletion of my reviews, but I had to explain the whole story so the situation could be justified.

Secondly, a commercial product implies functionality and support, of which we had none. Again, the whole story was posted so that I could justify it. It's impossible to separate a specific product support from the company that should provide it.

Thirdly, I have to agree, I should only review the product I have used (and paid for), it was the urge to let people know about it that made me post more reviews, and I would perfectly accept that these were removed, but certainly not all. And why were the posts approved in first place?

I understand that the company in question gives a lot to Joomla, but that can't be a reason to censor bad experiences with them. You certainly have had bad experiences at some period in your life and you would certainly be grateful if you knew about it beforehand. I will gain nothing for giving Xe-Media a bad reputation, but the consumer always has the right to know what to expect from paid products, and I just want to share my experience.

And just take my place... your company buys a product that does not work as intended and simply refuses to give any support, even getting to the point of censoring your messages, blocking your account, and not giving one single reply... need I ask how would you feel about it?

[ot2sen]

Hi egoncalves - and welcome to Joomla! Community Forum 

Sounds like you have had more than one bad experience.
Just like stated above, neither the forums or the review system at Joomla! Extensions Directory will allow discussions of commercial disagreements.
Issues like that should be solved between the two parts involved.

For your reviews and missing review:
Correct, you are only allowed to submit a review for an extension that you have actually tested.

The reason that you cannot see any of your submitted reviews is that the developer actually deleted these extensions within the last 24 hours. Then the listing will disappear, and so will the connected reviews. 

[egoncalves]

I will try not to prolong the subject much more, I would just add that this indeed is not a way to try solving a commercial disagreement, this can only be done between the involved parts, even tough one of the parts refuses to. Again, my intention is only to let people know of my experience.

Thank you for giving me the chance to talk to the community and for the clarification on the missing reviews. And a even bigger Thank You for making Joomla.

[panter011]

Hello Guys, Everyone!

I also want to warning everyone about xe-media.ch
I am extremely disappointed by its support. Andreas, the owner is very prompt when you ask about the software that you are planning to buy. but later when you need suport because most of its softwares have some serious bugs that result on a useless sofware, a paid software!

Andreas just disappear! and if you go to his forum and ask with pertinents questions then your messages gets deleted and also you get banned of his forum.

I have posted several complain through paypal and I am currently fighting to get my money back.
This guy is horrible!

Be advised.

Javier Yep Garcia
skype: javieryep

[dax702]

Wow, had no idea they were so bad.  The demo of their components looks really nice; they could probably be selling a lot of stuff if they had better support.  Support for Joomla components is necessary because so many of us are using Joomla in the first place because we are not advanced programmers so if there is a problem we definitely need the support.  I'm glad I read this because I was considering buying their photo gallery component.

[panter011]

Yes it is what can be called "Scam".

If you want a nice and powerful gallery, then you can use the one from http://gallery.menalto.com

Good luck!

[dax702]

Thanks for the reply. Menalto was one of the ones I was evaluating.  I got it installed and the bridge for joomla as well.  The thing I didn't like about Menalto was that it had too many options.  For some people that is good.  But I just need the core options to get the gallery up and running.  As such, I chose the Datso gallery (also not listed in the extensions) but Datso I think is the best gallery I've seen so far.  I chose it over RSGallery2 because it has a captcha feature for comments as well as the ability to delete comments in the back end.  RS has neither so it's a spam trap!

[LorenzoG]

Have you checked the gallery extensions in the Extensions Directory?
http://extensions.joomla.org/index.php? ... &Itemid=35

[dax702]

I have.  I liked Expose but everything resides in a flash object, including photo descriptions so that is no good for search engines so that is out.  Zoom looked good but its future development is uncertain because the head developer left the project.  RSGallery2, no good for the reason above. Menalto, too many options for me to get lost in.. Easy Gallery, not enough functionality.  Datso seems to be the best, plus there are modules available for it too...

[dburck]

Thks dax702. Saw you remarks and tracked down the datsogallery component.. Like it. For anyone else who wants to try it you can download from here: http://www.joomladesign.info/download-t ... rtdown/54/