Well, I guess I'm not on support any more...
Yes, this post is long, boring and tedious. Much like the maintenance renewal process, is the point that I am making.
I got an e-mail from Techsmith:
"Your subscription payment for Snagit® 2019 Upgrade Maintenance will be
automatically processed on 20/4/20 ($18.98 AUD).
Please verify your payment details to ensure successful transaction and uninterrupted delivery. "
"Oh yeah", I think, "that stupid credit card expiry date thing happened this month. I'd better go in and fix it." There is a link: Manage Your Payment Details . I click on it. I land on a web page which asks me to enter the e-mail address associated with the account, because that's so much easier than oh, I dunno, taking me to the account management page, maybe? I'm just spit-balling here because I don't do this for a living unlike Techsmith's thoroughly professional partner FastSpring.
I enter the e-mail address. I click continue. It tells me that I'll be sent an e-mail telling me how to access my account management because again, this is so much more efficient than, oh, I dunno again, taking me to my account management page.
No e-mail arrives.
I decide "stuff it", and log in manually.
I spend a couple of minutes faffing around to try to find my payment method page (it's under My Products, not My Account) and go to make the change.
Can you edit your payment method to update the expiry date? No, that would be too easy. You have to create a completely new payment method.
So I do. And I make one typo. One.
The response?
"We regret that your order could not be accepted. We value your business and would like to help you complete this order. Please contact us for assistance."
OK, let's do that again without the typo.
"We regret that your order could not be accepted. We value your business and would like to help you complete this order. Please contact us for assistance."
OK, let's try updating the Camtasia one which isn't due until June.
"We regret that your order could not be accepted. We value your business and would like to help you complete this order. Please contact us for assistance."
The issue? There is no indication who "us" or "we" is (Techsmith or Fastspring), oh, and there is no link through which to do the said contacting. Mind you, I shouldn't have expected any better from a site that uses Norton for validation.
Still, if you go back to the Maintenance Agreements page (which you can't get to directly from the updates page) there is "Contact Support", which brings us to this page. There is a link titled "Buying And Licensing".
Oh look, that e-mail that I mentioned a few paragraphs ago just arrived.
Does this lead to contact with... whoever it is that is maintaining the maintenance payments? No, it's just a link of FAQ questions.
I can phone... a company which is on the other side of the planet. There's this whole thing with a planetary spin and time zones at play. Can I e-mail? No. Can I chat? No.
OK, you don't want my money, that's fine.
I'll be interstate for the next few days. I assure you that trying to find a way around this oh so smooth as silk system will not be foremost in my mind. When the maintenance expires, it expires.
I may consider reupping. One day. Maybe.
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PS: I just opened the e-mail that I received from TechSmith Corporation <mailer@fastspring.com>. The one that took over half an hour to come through.
I got an e-mail from Techsmith:
"Your subscription payment for Snagit® 2019 Upgrade Maintenance will be
automatically processed on 20/4/20 ($18.98 AUD).
Please verify your payment details to ensure successful transaction and uninterrupted delivery. "
"Oh yeah", I think, "that stupid credit card expiry date thing happened this month. I'd better go in and fix it." There is a link: Manage Your Payment Details . I click on it. I land on a web page which asks me to enter the e-mail address associated with the account, because that's so much easier than oh, I dunno, taking me to the account management page, maybe? I'm just spit-balling here because I don't do this for a living unlike Techsmith's thoroughly professional partner FastSpring.
I enter the e-mail address. I click continue. It tells me that I'll be sent an e-mail telling me how to access my account management because again, this is so much more efficient than, oh, I dunno again, taking me to my account management page.
No e-mail arrives.
I decide "stuff it", and log in manually.
I spend a couple of minutes faffing around to try to find my payment method page (it's under My Products, not My Account) and go to make the change.
Can you edit your payment method to update the expiry date? No, that would be too easy. You have to create a completely new payment method.
So I do. And I make one typo. One.
The response?
"We regret that your order could not be accepted. We value your business and would like to help you complete this order. Please contact us for assistance."
OK, let's do that again without the typo.
"We regret that your order could not be accepted. We value your business and would like to help you complete this order. Please contact us for assistance."
OK, let's try updating the Camtasia one which isn't due until June.
"We regret that your order could not be accepted. We value your business and would like to help you complete this order. Please contact us for assistance."
The issue? There is no indication who "us" or "we" is (Techsmith or Fastspring), oh, and there is no link through which to do the said contacting. Mind you, I shouldn't have expected any better from a site that uses Norton for validation.
Still, if you go back to the Maintenance Agreements page (which you can't get to directly from the updates page) there is "Contact Support", which brings us to this page. There is a link titled "Buying And Licensing".
Oh look, that e-mail that I mentioned a few paragraphs ago just arrived.
Does this lead to contact with... whoever it is that is maintaining the maintenance payments? No, it's just a link of FAQ questions.
I can phone... a company which is on the other side of the planet. There's this whole thing with a planetary spin and time zones at play. Can I e-mail? No. Can I chat? No.
OK, you don't want my money, that's fine.
I'll be interstate for the next few days. I assure you that trying to find a way around this oh so smooth as silk system will not be foremost in my mind. When the maintenance expires, it expires.
I may consider reupping. One day. Maybe.
--------------
PS: I just opened the e-mail that I received from TechSmith Corporation <mailer@fastspring.com>. The one that took over half an hour to come through.
Click here to manage your ordersAnd where does the link send me to? The very same page that asked me to enter my e-mail address above. The page which generated the e-mail. {Eyeroll} Good gods. Fastspring. Professionalism in action.
To protect your account this login link is only valid for 24 hours from the time this message was sent.
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John 11:35. :|
I really hope:
1) a TechSmith employee can come in and speak to this.
2) Wendy H. reads this, because...good grief.0 -
Bumping this. This happened me this week, and it would have endlessly looped me back and forth as Mal described.
This was a god-awful experience.0 -
Hi,
Sorry for the poor experience here, clearly not what we're going for. We're taking a look into this workflow to make it better. In the meantime, if anyone else runs into this and your timezone doesn't allow you to call or chat, you can always open a support ticket at https://support.techsmith.com.
Sorry again,
Glenn0 -
OK, I suppose that I should round this one out. The conclusion was not so much irritating as just bizarre.
20 April, 23:42 my time, probably about 08:42 of the same day in the U.S.A.: I get an e-mail.Your subscription payment for Snagit® 2019 Upgrade Maintenance ($xx.xx AUD) was successful.
I'm sorry, you what? Yes, you could guess the new expiry date on the card but you'd never be able to guess the CVV, so how in the living Hades could you have processed that?
Also 20 April, 23:42:Maintenance Agreement #12345678
{Eyes squinting at screen, upturned half snarl...}You have enrolled in an auto-renewing maintenance subscription. Your agreement will be automatically renewed on the expiration date shown above. Please save this message as the agreement number will be needed when contacting our Support Team.
You CAN'T have processed that. Your brilliant MindUnsprung service kept rejecting the credit card details.
I have more pressing stuff to deal with, so I set it aside.
22 April, 14:20 my time, so probably late in the evening of the 21st US time, I receive this:Your subscription payment for Camtasia® 2019 Upgrade Maintenance will be automatically processed on 21/6/20 ($xx.xx AUD).
Seriously???
Please verify your payment details to ensure successful transaction and uninterrupted delivery.
There's a link to "Manage Your Payment Details". I click on it despite my imaginary blood pressure medication telling me that I shouldn't.
Where does it take me?I land on a web page which asks me to enter the e-mail address associated with the account, because that's so much easier than oh, I dunno, taking me to the account management page, maybe?
Woah, deja vu!
What does my face look like at that time? Imagine the Hound of the Baskervilles having a really, really bad day.
Still, I go into my account (directly, not by wasting my time with the page above) to see whether anything has changed.
It's a miracle! I can actually create a new pay method!
Thankfully it automatically sets itself as the default method. I say thankfully because this is the button that you use to work with the payment methods:
Yes, it says "Manage". In black text on a dark blue background.
At least now we know where the legibility problems in Camtasia's interface came from. I'd ask Joe to check what the contrast ratio on these buttons is, but I fear that he'd never see again.
22 April 18:08 my time:Welcome to TechSmith Snagit!
I do a quick check of the authorised transactions on my credit card and the payment to Techsmith for the Snagit maintenance is there, having gone through after I made the change today, obviously, not when yesterday's e-mails said it did.We're so excited for you!
You now own the perfect tool for quickly creating visuals to help you share information. We'll give you a number of helpful resources along the way so you can get the most out of Snagit. Let's start with a short tutorial video:
Soooo.... I... {tilts head and scrunches up one eye} guess it... worked? Kinda?
I should bookmark this thread. I have a feeling that I may need it in a few years.0 -
I tried canceling my subscription and removing my credit card in FastSpring and the button won’t let me remove my credit card
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