Everest Software Misrepresented Product, Refused Refund Austin, Texas
Everest's Ecommerce system was advertised and sold to us as being out, available and ready to use shortly after we purchased Everest's software. Not only was it delayed by many, many months but it was misrepresented as being customizeable in a way that Everest's salespeople later admitted they did not realize it was not.
At every step of the way, we have indicated to Everest that we were interested in the core product and that we knew we would have to heavily augment the product to make it usable for us.
After Everest was purchased by Versata, Everest's policies constricted such that a maintenance plan was now required for any type of service. Refusal to pay the new maintenance plan fees meant that all of our previously purchased support was void and could not be refunded. Furthermore, the hosting we had planned to do with Everest had a contract that stated it included support and now that was rescinded and we were told we would have to pay the additional maintenance fees in order even to have basic hosting support (being able to call them when the website was down, etc.). This was a direct violation of the contract we had and we were not even made aware of it. Our contract effectively changed with no written notification whatsoever.
We approached Everest for a refund of the unused ECommerce system ($8500) and the unused and unuseable service/support hours for site implementation ($3840). They said they had a no refund policy. They said that since they had already received payment in full from the leasing company we were dealing with the leasing company now and there was nothing they could do for us.
I won't even get into the fact that it sometimes took their support staff days to answer questions and they routinely still could not answer our questions when they did finally get back to us. Our people had to do everything on their own re: set up and implementation and that was with the hours we did use from the so-called support contract.
We have been and continue to be willing to pay for the software components we did purchase and are using and apparently that is not good enough for Everest which is frustrating, disappointing and unethical. Be very careful in dealing with this company.