[mike080]

Just a few days ago I emailed P/P ask what Updates I would get if I purchased P/P Max 5 and got no reply. I payed 44.95 pounds sterling for this program thinking updates would probably be free! not only was I wrong about that but you emailed me today asking for another 15 pounds for P/P Pro 6 when I only purchased this a few days ago I feel they should have told me. If 11 months down the line I was asked for more money for an upgrade I would have been fine about that as I know your always improving your software to better the product but not a few days thats WRONG

I have had this program a few days and this is what it tells me when I got to update product in p/p.

Updates Available

You are using Portrait Professional Max v5.2
The latest version available is Portrait Professional v6.0. You can download a trial of this here:
Download Portrait Professional v6.0 Trial

Buy an upgrade to the latest version at a substantial discount to the full price:
Buy upgrade to v6

I am furious someone needs to explain this to me I hope this is an error.
I hope I am entitled to a free upgrade and someone can resolve this for me I am not after a free product I pay my way in good faith I also dont expect my product to be out of date a few days down the road.

Thanks

Mike

[jgodfrey]

mike080 Wrote:Just a few days ago I emailed P/P ask what Updates I would get if I purchased P/P Max 5 and got no reply.

I too find Anthropics' upgrade policies a bit alarming. In fact, I authored a forum thread to that effect here, just last month:

http://www.portraitprofessional.com/Foru...hp?tid=139

In my case, I purchased version 4.2.5 in late April, only to find out that to upgrade to V5 in early June would require the purchase of a (discounted) license upgrade. After barely 6 weeks of ownership, I found that a bit off-putting. Ultimately though, I did upgrade to v5 on June 21, 2007.

Now, barely 4 weeks after my last paid upgrade, V6 is released - and wouldn't you know it - it's a paid upgrade also. Grrrrr...

So, I've owned the product for all of 3 months. The original cost was $39.95. My V5 upgrade cost was (discounted to) $19.95. Now, according to the upgrade page, the V6 upgrade is going to be an additional $29.95.

So, if I were to upgrade to V6, I'd have almost $90 in a package that was I purchased 3 months ago for less than $40.

Honestly, the current policies make things feel more like a subscription than a license.

I like the product, but unless the upgrade policies (and more specifically, the version incrementing policies) are made more clear and more customer friendly, I think I'll have to step off of this ride.

Jeff

[mike080]

I am at college at the moment on a photography course and many of the students there would love this program some are getting the money together to buy it I on the other hand went for this program with the money I was saved for a new monitor this cost me 44 pounds nearly 100 usa dollars. If I told them at college what has happend to me regarding this they would not touch it and would probably warn all colleges in my area, so what do I do ?. I see after nearly a week on here nobody from P/P has responded !

What annoys me more than anything here is some just download all these programs for free. I buy all my software but this is the first time I was ever mislead.

Can you fix this P/P ?

[Gary]

Hello Mike,

you raise a lot of different points but I'll try go go through them all:

Firstly, we have had a huge response to version 6 and I have spent most of my time handling customer support issues for the last few days, along with our new customer support person Leo. Sorry for the delays, but that is the reason you have had to wait.

We always reply to emails with an auto-responder email. If you don't get this email it has been blocked by your ISP, or is in your spam filter. This seems to be what has happened with your hotmail address. Some hotmail users get our emails, and other never do - its quite random it seems. I built our mailserver so I know that part is working.

Since about a week ago I implemented a support ticket system that does not require email to work in order for us to communicate. If you go to our support pages you will see how to contact us that way:

http://www.portraitprofessional.com/support/

Mike, you paid £44.95 for version 5 of Portrait Professional Max and about 2 weeks later we released version 6, which was the end result of a lot of time and money being spent on developing it by us so we had to increase the price to £49.95

we didn't want to overcharge recent customers so we offered this to you for £7.95 so the difference is only £2.50 - I know its not free but it is a very small amount.

regards,
Gary
Anthropics Technology

[scorpio_e]

When has Microsoft ever offered free upgrades? I will say you know way in advance when upgrades are coming out. I work for a company who developes software. Upgrades are NEVER free. Sometime timing is everything.