The Mac app store has made a splash this week for lots of good reasons, unfortunately one developer has dropped the ball in the transition and caused a huge problem both for herself and for her customers.
Sophie of Sophiestication took the reasonable view that if she was going to move Coversutra over to the Mac App Store (MAS) she did not have the time and resources to maintain two separate code branches and would go exclusively to the MAS, She posted to her company blog at the start of this week that this was going to be the case and this is when the backlash started.
In the MAS, Cover Sutra costs $5 for version 2.5 therefore if anyone with an earlier version wants an upgrade, they have to buy the version from the MAS.
Unfortunately, what sophie forgot (and I genuinely believe that she forgot) was that in the coversutra license agreement between Sophiestication and any customer who bought version 2, it promises free upgrades up until version 3.0 is released. So by releasing 2.5 as a paid for upgrade, Sophie had broken her own agreement.
On the comments of Sophie's blog post, customers made their feelings known that they felt disappointed that they'd have to pay again, but most felt let down that the promise made had been broken. Some customers resorted to name calling or worse in a gross overexageration
this is where Sophie went wrong though, she attacked her customers for pointing out her error and tried to justify her decision. at no point did she say sorry.
the lesson to learn here is not how to handle a move to a new platform, it's how to handle making a mistake
what Sophie should have done was
1) Admitted that a mistake had been made
2) apologised
3) Explained how she would move forward on this, hopefully in a way that her customers like.
instead Sophiestication have lost a lot of current and future customers and Sophie has personally and professionally suffered a massive amount of damage to her and her company's reputation
If you want to see what I'm talking about you can read the exchanges here.
http://www.sophiestication.com/blog/coversutra-2-5/
Sophie of Sophiestication took the reasonable view that if she was going to move Coversutra over to the Mac App Store (MAS) she did not have the time and resources to maintain two separate code branches and would go exclusively to the MAS, She posted to her company blog at the start of this week that this was going to be the case and this is when the backlash started.
In the MAS, Cover Sutra costs $5 for version 2.5 therefore if anyone with an earlier version wants an upgrade, they have to buy the version from the MAS.
Unfortunately, what sophie forgot (and I genuinely believe that she forgot) was that in the coversutra license agreement between Sophiestication and any customer who bought version 2, it promises free upgrades up until version 3.0 is released. So by releasing 2.5 as a paid for upgrade, Sophie had broken her own agreement.
On the comments of Sophie's blog post, customers made their feelings known that they felt disappointed that they'd have to pay again, but most felt let down that the promise made had been broken. Some customers resorted to name calling or worse in a gross overexageration
this is where Sophie went wrong though, she attacked her customers for pointing out her error and tried to justify her decision. at no point did she say sorry.
the lesson to learn here is not how to handle a move to a new platform, it's how to handle making a mistake
what Sophie should have done was
1) Admitted that a mistake had been made
2) apologised
3) Explained how she would move forward on this, hopefully in a way that her customers like.
instead Sophiestication have lost a lot of current and future customers and Sophie has personally and professionally suffered a massive amount of damage to her and her company's reputation
If you want to see what I'm talking about you can read the exchanges here.
http://www.sophiestication.com/blog/coversutra-2-5/
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