Jay
United States of America#2Author of original report
Fri, February 25, 2011
Just to add:
We opened 7 stores using Selbysoft software for which we payed approximately $5,500 a piece. This equals $38,500 just in upfront software costs and before any "support" charges.
List of locations:
Laskey Rd.
Alexis Rd.
Heatherdowns
Holland-Sylvania
Byrne
Navarre
Broadway
Please check your records before claiming that we spent ONLY $5,000 with your company. I would venture to say that at one time we were probably a pretty important customer to Selbysoft. When we began our relationship with Selbysoft, we worked with a gentleman named Ed Schneider who was very helpful and an asset to the company. He worked with us to add useful features to the software that benefited us and Selbysoft. It was only after Mike Spence took Ed's place that the company stopped working with us to add features and the software became stagnant. Mike Spence has failed to deliver on numerous promises.
Mike- Answer this for me:
If you knew that there was a glitch in the Sp1 utility program that prevented it from functioning after 1/1/11, why would you not seek out all of your customers and make sure that they were given the update? Did we not pay you enough to have a system that worked?
At the time of the update we WERE paying for a "support" plan. The fact of the matter is that the "fix"for the utility program was developed for systems using Win XP and Win 2000, but the Win 2000 fix was never sent out. Don't you think that your customers would want to know that their system was going to fail at some point after 1/1/11 without further action? Our system was down for 2 hours during a busy lunch and your only concern was to force us to pay for your glitch before you would agree to have a tech give us the fix. This is in fact the definition of extortion and you tried again a few days ago when you assumed our system was down again.
Jay
United States of America#3Author of original report
Fri, February 25, 2011
I’ll address these one by one:
This is a very unfortunate situation here. Mo purchased only
software through us back on the dates that he provides - the software totals
for this store were roughly $5,000 and that was purchased on 4/19/2002.
He purchased hardware through a third party company. I point this
out to show that this message is obviously written in anger and not fact. “
Mo
received no less than 7 major updates over the years, including the upgrade
from our older existing MS-DOS version to a Windows based version of our
software. These updates are included with the purchase of a support plan
and this is both documented and widely known about our company. We don't
operate outside the scope of what is typical for any POS company in our
industry.
The hardware we purchased was to spec for what you required for your software and we spent countless dollars on so-called “support” plans from Selbysoft. Yes this included an update from the MS-DOS version of Selbysoft to a Windows based system. Keep in mind that MS-DOS started getting phased out back in the Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 years, but here is a company that charges
$1,500 a year for support and was still using a DOS system 10 years after it died. If I come across as bitter to anyone, I apologize, but years of being misled by a snake oil salesman like Mike Spence of Selbysoft will do that to a person. I have a number of emails from people in my organization seeking support from Mike Spence and Selbysoft that we unresolved – this led us to ultimately make
the decision to switch software in the upcoming year. I will be sure to post record of these emails after Mr. Spence’s next response.
Mo changed the concept of his location from a Cottage Inn Pizza to his own
brand and then felt that we were not the right choice for him. At this
point he stopped paying for his Software Support Services. Keep in mind
that we have signed contracts that indicate he was aware that our support is
fee based and that we charge $1,500 for support. If the support is paid
on or before the due date, then there is a $750 discount. This was
not paid on 6/5/10.
I’d like to point out something here that as Mike would say “was written in anger and not
fact”, we did not leave Cottage Inn Pizza and even after expanding our product offering almost three years ago were still paying for Selbysoft “support”. We tried countless times to work with Selbysoft to upgrade their system and provide us with real reporting capabilities, but support either ignored these requests or didn’t have an answer. In fact, here is an excerpt from an email
exchange between one of our managers and Selbysoft “support”:
Manager – I saved as an xls file and was able to
then open it with excel 2007. Now that I’m able to view these files I
realize they are not what I thought them to be. Can you please tell me
where I can find a detailed ticket summary? I’m to generate reports of
predetermined information (such as the number of smoothies sold by employee xxx
on xxx date) for sales contests and to drive down our COGS. Please let me
know where I can retrieve this information.
Selbysoft Dan -
The XML Ticket does not give that information. The XML ticket
summary is similar to the Balance Till report and does not give specific
details. There is not a way to get X item(s) sold by a certain employee without
adding the tickets manually. There is a report that will show how much a
certain employee sold for the day combined but not for X item(s). If you have
any questions please feel free to e-mail or call and ask for me.
Manager - Dan, it is very important to
the future of our company that we get a handle on our bottom line and drive
sales of products with higher profit margins as well as better focus our
marketing and discounting efforts. The only way for us to do this to be able to
review and manipulate detailed data such as I mentioned in my last email. Some
of the other indicators we need to evaluate are our new customers and the
source of those customers such as coupons, ads, word of mouth etc. I'm sure
you'll agree that manually reciewing every ticket, customer file, coupon report
and more and then adding by hand simply is not a feasible option. SP1 obviously
stores this data in some format and, if you can simply make the raw data
available to me, I'm sure I'll be able to mine it the information I need.
I've spent quite a bit of time learning how SP1 works from pricing tables,
discounts, coupons, customer files, inventory, reports, and the POS side. I
would really hate to have to purchase, learn, and set up a whole new system
because SP1 lacks fundamental reporting capabilities. Food service is sales; we
need to be able to analyze our sales and focus our energies on the products,
customers, and marketing that create profit and not JUST revenue - something we
are lacking at the present.
Please help me to find a solution
Selbysoft Dan - I apologize if there was some
miscommunication on the reporting SP-1 can do. SP-1 does keep detailed track of
what you sell and what time you sell as well as the specific details of what
items are sold so you do not have to go back and manually add each individual
ticket. Though the system does not have specific report to track what specific
item was sold by specific employee. The business summary recap has a lot of
detail to it and can give some of the specific items you were wondering how it
was selling. I have attached to this e-mail a sample report document that
will show you this. Also, the daily sales recap does have a report that will
show you what the employee’s total sales were for a specific date range.
We were simply looking for a way to see how many smoothies each employee sold during a
given period of time. Certainly any competent POS or support company could provide that in 2009, right? Not Selbysoft, they provide only total sales and to paraphrase Selbysoft “does not have specific reports to track specific items sold by employees”. This email was from September of 2009, a full year before we decided to switch POS software. We were very clear in what our needs were and I have other emails I can post if needed.
The problem that is brought up in the message here is patently untrue and,
aside from this, the store was not on a support plan at all. I went out
of my way to still offer the $750 support in order to help resolve this issue
on January 5th after Mo called to get help with his issue. This was after
a phone call that was not very friendly. At that time he informed me that
he was buying a new software system because he felt we could not handle what he
needed. Again, our support is always paid up front. In order to
help resolve this, I told Mo that I would have support take care of this even
though I knew there was a risk of not getting paid. He told me he would
"send a check".
You told me to pay the $750 when I got back in town and that is what I tried to do. You never once said that this was a "January Special". In fact, you didn't even note the account so that your customer service people were aware of the discount. You also failed to send me a copy of
our original contract and licensing agreement, which was a part of the deal and something that you promised to do.
48 days later - no check and now he has another issue. This issue is
because he replaced the computer(s) that the software was installed on.
The installation of our software does require specific knowledge of how
to use POS and there are items that are unique to us. Mo did not call us
to check anything before doing this. He then called and again called me a
liar, told me that he did not know he needed to send the check right away etc.
I told him that we would not be extending him that courtesy again and he
needed to pay the full amount. Mo told me again that he would be switching
software and hung up.
The problem in January was caused by a glitch in your software (this was told to us by your support tech). Your software was essentially designed to stop working on 1/1/11 without a support contract. The fix for this glitch was done a year ago, but we were never given the update,
even though we were on a “support” plan. The fact of the matter is that we have people who have proven to be more knowledgeable about POS software than the “support” that you provide, so of course we didn’t want to subscribe to your “support” while we were in the middle of purchasing a new POS system. However, we didn’t foresee a Y2k type glitch occurring with Selbysoft on 1/1/11. Unfortunately, faulty software from the software developers is not something that our in house IT
people can remedy. We were not asking for support for a problem we created or even for one of the countless updates that Selbysoft and Mike Spence failed to deliver, we just wanted our software to operate as intended for the final 6 months that we needed it. Basic functionality of the software is NOT something that we should need to purchase a support plan for.
Obviously not extortion as we were never even paid for the first issue. If Mo does
not want to pay, he does not have to! We charge a fee for our technical
services - it is optional. Since the service is pay before you use it,
there is no way to extort!
When my manager called the other day to talk to “support” it was because we intended to upgrade a few of the systems in the store and we wanted to set Sp1 up on a couple of Windows 7 machines (something I personally asked you about months ago). We intended to use the “support” that we were forced to buy. My manager was under the impression that the check for the $750 had gone out, and it was set aside and forgotten about because Mike failed to send the documents that I requested. After realizing this, I decided to just forget about waiting for the documents and allow my manager to make the payment over the phone – so that he could accomplish what he wanted to do.
Then after we called to pay the $750, you pulled the rug out from under us and said it was now $1,500. You made up some story about it being a “January only deal” and made comments insinuating that our system must be down again, and that our people were not capable of fixing it. This was no doubt an attempt to extort an additional $1,500 out of us. Luckily for us the system was not down this time and Mike Spence from Selbysoft was unable to extort us this time.
Save time and money -- Stay far away from Selbysoft!
#4UPDATE Employee
Thu, February 24, 2011
This is a very unfortunate situation here. Mo Dari purchased only software through us back on the dates that he provides - the software totals for this store were roughly $5,000 and that was purchased on 4/19/2002. He purchased hardware through a third party company. I point this out to show that this message is obviously written in anger and not fact.
Mo received no less than 7 major updates over the years, including the upgrade from our older existing MS-DOS version to a Windows based version of our software. These updates are included with the purchase of a support plan and this is both documented and widely known about our company. We don't operate outside the scope of what is typical for any POS company in our industry.
Mo changed the concept of his location from a Cottage Inn Pizza to his own brand and then felt that we were not the right choice for him. At this point he stopped paying for his Software Support Services. Keep in mind that we have signed contracts that indicate he was aware that our support is fee based and that we charge $1,500 for support. If the support is paid on or before the due date, then there is a $750 discount. This was not paid on 6/5/10.
The problem that is brought up in the message here is patently untrue and, aside from this, the store was not on a support plan at all. I went out of my way to still offer the $750 support in order to help resolve this issue on January 5th after Mo called to get help with his issue. This was after a phone call that was not very friendly. At that time he informed me that he was buying a new software system because he felt we could not handle what he needed. Again, our support is always paid up front. In order to help resolve this, I told Mo that I would have support take care of this even though I knew there was a risk of not getting paid. He told me he would "send a check".
48 days later - no check and now he has another issue. This issue is because he replaced the computer(s) that the software was installed on. The installation of our software does require specific knowledge of how to use POS and there are items that are unique to us. Mo did not call us to check anything before doing this. He then called and again called me a liar, told me that he did not know he needed to send the check right away etc. I told him that we would not be extending him that courtesy again and he needed to pay the full amount. Mo told me again that he would be switching software and hung up.
Obviously not extortion as we were never even paid for the first issue. If Mo does not want to pay, he does not have to! We charge a fee for our technical services - it is optional. Since the service is pay before you use it, there is no way to extort!
Mike Spence
800-454-4434
[email protected]