Threats and extortion

[stutteringp0et]

I've got a user who, within the course of an hour:

• Purchased an extension
  Told me that I misrepresented my extension
  Called me a fraud
  Demanded a refund
  Threatened to write a negative review

The funny thing is, the extension he's talking about and the misrepresentation he claims I made is actually the first sentence in my extension description. He claims that I advertised it as "login redirection" and the first sentence of the JED items is: "Nomad is not login redirection, it's homepage redirection!!!"

I just got a weird email from the JED that there was a new review, but the link doesn't go anywhere and the extension name is not present in the email, it simply says "{extension}". I suspect that this might be his review, because I told him that I would issue the refund when he shows me where I said the extension did login redirection.

If the guy hadn't made the threats to publish false statements, I would have given him a refund already.

I have, of course, all of the emails. I can produce archive.org historical copies of the extension pages in the JED as well as my own site showing that it never claimed to be login redirection.

Is there anything else I can or should do to try to mitigate this? I'm more concerned about lies being posted in a JED review and the process of proving they're lies that should be removed.

[brian]

dont waste your time and energy. refund and move on

[stutteringp0et]

I don't have a problem refunding, I have a problem with being threatened.

My goal here is to either:
1. convince him to not write lies in a JED review
2. figure out what it's going to take to prevent a false review from remaining

[brian]

dont waste your time or your emotional energy. refund and move on

[brian]

i have to say that i have read your jed entry and your documentation and i dont see how this is not a login redirection. even though you say it is not your description says it is #confused

[stutteringp0et]

If your login module redirects to the homepage, then it acts like login redirection.

Anytime a user clicks the homepage link, they will be redirected to a usergroup assigned homepage, if they're a member of a usergroup with an assignment.

I wrote it as a method to assign homepages per user group.

[stutteringp0et]

I'm going to have to spend energy to deal with a provably false JED review, and that's why I posted here.

[brian]

sounds like a login redirection to me then

[stutteringp0et]

If your login module;menuitem redirects anywhere other than the homepage, my plugin does no redirection. Login plays no part in how my plugin functions, other than it doesn't function for guests.

[fcoulter]

I read the description of your plugin, I think I understand the purpose of your plugin. It sets a home page for a particular user or group. Then if they click a home page link, or are redirected to the home page upon login, they are sent to their personal home page rather than the generic one.

But the problem is that you have this in your plugin description:

An administrator can make global homepage setting and when a user logs in, they are sent to the homepage defined in the plugin settings.

I can understand why someone would read that and be confused into thinking that the plugin does login redirection. If it were me I would work on the plugin description so that it is clearer, bearing in mind that not everyone reading it will be a Joomla expert.

It seems to me that, under normal circumstances, you would give him his money back since it does sound like an honest mistake, you just object to his behaviour towards you. Unfortunately it is part of the life of the developer to occasionally have to deal with people like that. I answered the phone one morning to have someone shouting abuse at me about one of my extensions, not a pleasant experience and one that I didn't handle very well.

I have also had someone tell me, we liked your extension, but we want to have it for free or we will post negative reviews. In that case I told them that I don't respond to threats and never heard anything more.

If it is any help, I don't think that the JED will publish reviews that are related to a commercial dispute, so his threat is probably empty.

Still I agree with Brian, give him the refund, it doesn't sound like he is doing anything dishonest, just made an honest mistake and has terrible social skills so doesn't know how to handle making a complaint in a civilised manner.

[fcoulter]

And, if this is a mistake people often make, it is clearly something that people are looking for, so why not add it as an optional feature?

If this is a system plugin or a user plugin it would just be a matter of adding a handler for the onUserAfterLogin event so I would think reasonably simple to implement. I know the problems with "feature creep" but actually this seems to me to be a feature that would fit very naturally into your plugin.

Then maybe everyone could be happy.

I do try to take the view with customer complaints, however annoying and unreasonable they may seem, that there may be something that I can learn from them. Of course sometimes that is easier said than done, some people are just difficult.

[brian]

If people are regularly misunderstanding what the code does then as Fiona says that is indicating a problem somewhere in your description

[stutteringp0et]

I changed the confusing sentence. My main concern was the review. He already got his refund.

It's possible (even easy) to achieve login redirection with my plugin, but he didn't ask for support - his first action was a threat.

[fcoulter]

Yes it is bad behaviour and not pleasant to be on the receiving end.

But still it sounds like someone who is inexperienced and has poor communication skills, rather than someone who really means ill towards you. So hopefully that is the last you will hear of it.