Don't Buy From Turnkeywebtools.com

[dalt]

So, cthisisme, you admit you are connected with turnkeywebfools. If this is the case, you should be banned for running duplicate memberships, attempting to mislead members and running a negative campaign.

I had finished with this thread but you brought me back into the fray. The way your company runs their business, I am sure the 100,000+ members here at Sitepoint won't touch your company with a barge pole.

And cthisisme (aka turnkeywebtools), before you lecture me on webmastering and advising me to slither back into the bowels of the internet, why don't you enlighten us as we are obviously to you an unintelligent lot. Using your broken english and dyslexic ramblings, please entertain us with your inspirational life todate, I am sure it will make for amusing reading.

Please highlight your comments with links to great websites, scripts and programming that you have no doubt been successful with.

Dax wanted to publicise his plight. I joined this forum for 1 reason,I have an opinion on this. Dalt just slither back into the bowels of the internet where you belong!

[spikeZ]

Well this is getting a little heated isnt it?!

Dax ~ Unfortunately if the company you bought the software from has a policy of no refunds after x days, then x days it is. End of. No discussion. You could try appealing to their 'softer' side and pleading with them but if they choose not to refund - that is that. It's something you have to deal with

Where as I can see it from your point of view, I can also see it from the companies POV - If you designed a website for someone and 6 months later they came back and said "Sorry, we havent had chance to promote the site so although it looks great and works fine it's useless to us"; would you give them their money back?!

Dalt ~ Other than cthisisme backing the company in question, there is no real evidence that this person is connected in any way. IP addresses don't match nor do any other details we can check. Please refrain from public flaming and attacks.

I will leave this thread open for now but if it carries on in the same vein, I will be forced to close it.

Keep it civil guys

Spike

[cthisisme]

Spike you are indeed a wise person.

Dalt I really do not know how you come to the conclusions you do!

The community can decide.

Who am I, I'm a retired business person.

Owned a company.

Been a company director and a company secretary.

Worked for a public hospital and an independant private school.Plus construction and other businesses.




I'm 49 years old! yes I said retired.

So I guess you could say I'm sucessful.


PS: I know your going to say it! NO, AGAIN! , I HAVE NO CONNECTION TO THE COMPANY IN QUESTION

There is no such word as "todate" in the english language!
As I said let the community decide.

[uberhost]

Turnkey Webtools, I doubt whether you have many customers at all based on the fact you won't refund the $99.

I wouldn't jump to that conclusion at all. A larger company has to protect itself by sticking to policies, otherwise they're establishing a precedent whereby any customer could demand a refund long after it is warranted.

[dalt]

I didn't jump to that conclusion and I didn't say they are a larger company.

Turnkeywebtools' handling of this matter gave other indicators. We all set policies and as you know, rules are only made to be broken. In this particular instance, one can witness the potential fallout from adhering to a regimented policy.

Running a web business is not that dissimilar to running a business with a shopfront where customers can scream at you and run to the media. Hiding behind the barriers of a domain name and in a lot of cases, anonymity due to the international nature of this business, upset customers can scream and procrastinate in other ways as Dax has done here at Sitepoint. The fallout can be just as devastating for the business and in some cases, worse.

A local client of mine ran foul of the Australian Consumer watchdog and the resulting incident is on google and has been there for years. My client holds the #1 position on google for his specialty. #2 spot is the google listing regarding their skirmish with the ACCC. And, if you don't think people read those listings...believe it!

I wouldn't jump to that conclusion at all. A larger company has to protect itself by sticking to policies, otherwise they're establishing a precedent whereby any customer could demand a refund long after it is warranted.

[tkwebtools]

Dalt, as I explained to you before I have no worries about people seeing this. Our products and support for those products speak for themselves as I said before. I am sure any rational person would not expect us to be giving refunds to those who request them 6 months down the line, regardless of the situation they are asking it for.

We still consider your friend Mike to be a customer of ours and we will honor his support contract as such. In fact, he can call in and talk to me personally and I will help him with his Joomla issue if need be. At any rate, thanks to all who chimed in with their opinions and feedback. I will leave my contact info for anyone who wishes to discuss things over the phone.

Regards,
Chris T.
Turnkey Web Tools, Inc.
800.673.4898 x 101

[dalt]

Your business acumen differs from mine. Obviously $99 is a lot of money to you as the amount of negative publicity you received is priceless.

Most of us would like to hear from you 'Great news Dax, I have found a solution for your Joomla integration. Ignore what Dalt says about it being a dog of a script. Let me assist you in making it happen' instead of meaningless tripe - '...your friend Mike to be a customer of ours and we will honor his support contract as such. In fact, he can call in and talk to me personally...'

Have a very good day.

Dalt, as I explained to you before I have no worries about people seeing this. Our products and support for those products speak for themselves as I said before. I am sure any rational person would not expect us to be giving refunds to those who request them 6 months down the line, regardless of the situation they are asking it for.

We still consider your friend Mike to be a customer of ours and we will honor his support contract as such. In fact, he can call in and talk to me personally and I will help him with his Joomla issue if need be. At any rate, thanks to all who chimed in with their opinions and feedback. I will leave my contact info for anyone who wishes to discuss things over the phone.

Regards,
Chris T.
Turnkey Web Tools, Inc.
800.673.4898 x 101

[tkwebtools]

Most of us would like to hear from you 'Great news Dax, I have found a solution for your Joomla integration.

If I had access to a Joomla installation that might have been possible. But since I do not, all that Mike has to do is call me up and I will guarantee I can get it working.

[Sagewing]

I don't see why a company should be obligated to violate their refund policy just because some webmaster was months late on their project. It sounds to me like the refund terms were clear, and the customer didn't test the code for a long, long, time.

After all this, if I were the company and a disgruntled customer were acting this way - I wouldn't try and resolve the situation. I'd probably just try to let it go. Every business will have some unreasonable and noise customers but it's not always worth bending over backwards for them.

[dalt]

Turnkeywebtools, it sounds as if you missed the boat. From memory, joomla is open source. This makes it FREE. So no problems in accessing the script if you were GENUINE about your last statement.

SAGEWING - Did you read my last couple of posts. Would you want these posts all over google because your script wouldn't work. TOS are to protect you legally. Turnkeywebtools can do what he likes, he doesn't have to violate himself or his TOS at the expense of good business sense.

Here we have him nearly a year later making an HONOURABLE statement (and I suspect just to make himself look good) that if he had access to the JOOMLA opensource script (probably the most freely available script on the planet) that he would have been able to resolve the situation.

Just not good enough.

If I had access to a Joomla installation that might have been possible. But since I do not, all that Mike has to do is call me up and I will guarantee I can get it working.

[spikeZ]

Well the simple solution is to close this thread and I delete the entire thing so it doesnt appear on any listings anywhere.

Which is the way it is going TBH.

[Berlin]

I'm a license owner ...never had problems with their script. Yes it's slow and bloated, but you get what you paid for.

[dax702]

OK, well oddly enough, I stopped getting notifications of new posts to this thread so here's what I have to say now. "Chris" is making it appear as if he is the most accessible nice guy at Turn Key Web Tools. Well I DO have to speak up here. When I asked for support with the Joomla issues I was having, I basically got nothing from them. If you go back to the beginning of the thread, I wrote that I had to solicit support from a former developer with Opera because Turn Key Web Tools were not very helpful AT ALL.. And yes, Joomla is fully open source.

As for this crap about terms of service, yes, all of us business owners have terms. I, and apparently Dalt too, however, value my/our customers FAR more than a company like Turn Key Web Tools. If there's any kind of problem at all, I take care of it instantly and then go even further and do something like comp the customer an item for the inconvenience.. Yes, there are times that a customer can be a pain in the butt, but we take the customer is always right attitude and this creates good will and that person will go and say good things about us.

So you want an example of good customer service? I had a customer send in a mail order the other day for Vol 3 of a book. We shipped it. few days later he writes in in all caps yelling at us that he didn't order this book, he wanted something else.. I told him that he made a mistake on the mail order form and "I will send you the product you meant to order free of charge, and keep the book too, happy holidays!" He said something along the lines of "I wasn't expecting that, thank you so much, I'm sorry I was so rude, you guys are top of the line."

Now, I was not obligated to send him a free product. WE incur cost in doing that because it is a physical product, whereas TKWT loses nothing by refunding my money for software. I could have said, "send the book back and I will send you the DVD... Compare that with what Turn Key Web Tools has done to me. I bought the software, I had trouble with it but figured it was only minor, my project got tabled. I finally get back to it only to discover that I, nor the programmer I got to help me could not get their script to function correctly on my site.. I opened a ticket asking for a refund. The ticket wasn't even answered until I called and made a stink about it. They said to fill out there destruction of intellectual property form and fax it in. I did that. I also kept the FTP delete log proving I deleted all files associated with their script, and a screen shot of the deletion of the database.. The real kicker here is that I did not derive ANY use from the script from the time I bought, to the time I asked for a refund. So it's not as if I used it on my commercial site for months and then decided to return it. On top of that, it is licensed to one domain, so even if I were some type of thief, I wouldn't be able to use it somewhere else...

So in the end, for my $99, I had a script that I couldn't use, and lousy, unpassionate tech support. In the end, Turn Key Web Tools has my $99 which has functioned fine for them since they received it. Fair? nope!

terms of service no matter what the situation is? Come on, have you no conscience saying, "just give the guy his money back, he has been more than reasonable in providing all proof possible. It's not right to keep his money if he has derived no benefit from our product"

I would again like to plug Crafty Syntax Live Help (www.craftysyntax.com) It's not as pretty as Turn Key Web Tools PhpLiveHelper, but it works without a hitch in Joomla, and it's free (I have donated to Eric, the developer in anticipation of the version 3 release.)

SAGEWING - They don't always have to bend over backwards. Refunding money for something I've verifiably gotten zero usage from is not "bending over backwards" What I did for my customer was not even bending over backwards either. I'm not in the business of donating my money to Turn Key Web Tools, hence my request for refund

[catweasel]

This is probably getting a bit stale now but I've just come across this thread and couldn't help but notice a consistent assumption being made by many.
The assumption goes something like this -

Unfortunately if the company you bought the software from has a policy of no refunds after x days, then x days it is. End of. No discussion.

In fact a company's return policy comes second to the actual law of the jurisdiction. Dalt has already mentioned the ACCC (Australia) and it reminds me of a skirmish some years back between the ACCC and Apple Computer.

Apple's return policy was along the lines of 'no cash refunds, we'll replace any faulty equipment with a new one'.. There was a spate of faulty ipods at the time and a number of consumers were wanting their money back, since many ipods were christmas presents many were also bought months previously. Apple was applying their returns policy quite strictly until the ACCC pointed out that, under Australian law, if something doesn't work as claimed by the vendor then the vendor must supply a full refund if requested by the customer. I'd be very surprised if 6 months was considered too much water under the bridge.

I dunno what the law allows for in California or wherever TK is based but even if it was that slack I think for $99 I'd have fired off a cheque ages ago.

[dax702]

It's not even a matter of law, it's a matter of just giving someone back their money for something they have never, and will never get any benefit whatsoever from. Whether it was a day past their terms, or months past their terms, I'm not using the script - why should they keep my money? It's just dumb to even argue about.. Stale? Not for me, the person who was made into a donator to Turn Key Web Tools.

I'm not going to attempt to go after this excuse of a company for $99, my time is more valuable than that. But I will keep this thread alive so people can read about my experience. If that simply means that a reader of this thread chooses to buy something from them, that they can buy knowing that they will get no compassion whatsoever if God forbid something happens that is outside of their terms.

I don't believe the thread should be removed either. I bought from them, it didn't work out and I have a right to voice my complaint against the company in a public forum for the simple reason that they chose not to make the situation right for me.

[All4Data]

hey dalt stick to cricket you obviously having more luck there







ps. i dont work for tktools, actually i have only worked for 1 tool in my life and i said never again

[dax702]

As of course I haven't forgotten about Turn Key Web Tool's act of thievery, my company received a gracious letter of thanks for treating the customer right (outside of our policies) He will come back to us again, unlike the fact that I will never go back to TKWT and in addition have been telling anyone I come across in the online world not to buy from them for the reasons stated herein..

It seems to me that refunding MY $99 would have saved x number of lost potential customers for TKWT.

The customer isn't always right, but in certain cases, they are, and certainly in this case where an even exchange (product for compensation) did not occur.

[dalt]

Nah, sorry to disappoint you, I find cricket and your comment terribly boring. Sorry if I upset you in sticking up for another Sitepoint member that was badly done by. You obviously didn't understand the complexity of the discussion. Your signature only confirms my suspicions.

Dalt

hey dalt stick to cricket you obviously having more luck there







ps. i dont work for tktools, actually i have only worked for 1 tool in my life and i said never again

[Ravedesigns]

As of course I haven't forgotten about Turn Key Web Tool's act of thievery, my company received a gracious letter of thanks for treating the customer right (outside of our policies) He will come back to us again, unlike the fact that I will never go back to TKWT and in addition have been telling anyone I come across in the online world not to buy from them for the reasons stated herein..

It seems to me that refunding MY $99 would have saved x number of lost potential customers for TKWT.

The customer isn't always right, but in certain cases, they are, and certainly in this case where an even exchange (product for compensation) did not occur.

Ah...and just when I think Dax has gotten over this and moved on with his life he comes back to the horse agian....

[Sparkie]

FWIW, I have been using TKWT's Sunshop cart for several years now and it has been a blessing. That is after fighting it out with cart after cart with shoddy "codemanship" and poor support.

I know that Sunshop and Livehelper are two different things, but I do want to say that the experience I've had with them has always been pleasant and prompt. I'm sorry to hear that you're having such a problem and I do hope that you get your site working.

(FYI I dont work for TKWT - Just thought I'd chime in and share my experience here)

[dvduval]

I'm not sure a public forum can be the decider of a private dispute. I think both parties should spend more time looking for ways they can compromise to resolve the issue, or else move on to something more productive.

[dalt]

So true DVDuval, but in some cases, an open forum is the only way get redress.

I'm not sure a public forum can be the decider of a private dispute. I think both parties should spend more time looking for ways they can compromise to resolve the issue, or else move on to something more productive.

[bigalreturns]

It seems pretty clear to me that TKWT have absolutely no obligation to refund you anything - they provided a script that works in every sense they advertise it (they don't mention Joomla). They have no legal obligation to refund money for a working product at any stage, although they have a company policy of 14 days. If you fail to test adequately in this period, this is your fault not theirs.
You say that it would have been easier, and better for their reputation to simply refund you, and perhaps this is true. This is no reflection on whether they should refund you or not though, and to demand that they do in order that their good name is preserved is, in my opinion, tantamount to blackmail. Frankly I'm surprised this thread has been allowed to continue.
I look at it this way - if you bought some trousers, took them home and put them in your wardrobe, then got them out 6 months later only to find they didn't fit, would you expect a refund then? I certainly wouldn't - I've been supplied with a perfectly functioning product - it just happens they don't fit my exact situation (waistline!).

[dax702]

Well the bottom line is that this was not a pair of pants. It was software, not even a tangible product.. And it still stands that it was not an even exchange, they have my $99 and I have nothing in return.. That's the essence of the issue in my opinion. I could understand if I had derived SOME use out of the product and then perhaps changed my website to something where it was no longer compatible, but I did not even get a nanosecond of benefit from the product. I didn't help one customer with it.. I don't feel as though it's unreasonable to ask for a refund outside of the return policy, given the fact that I got zero usage from the software..

[bigalreturns]

Well unfortunately the reason you have nothing in return is because you deleted the installer. A reasonable request to make, once you realised a refund was out of the question, might have been to have another copy of the installer so you could use the software elsewhere.
Whether or not you've had benefit is inconsequential - it will still cost them money, as detailed by someone early in the thread, to refund you.
I understand you feel hard done by here - you've been unlucky. The key point is that delayed development was your bad luck, not tkwt's, so unfortunately you have to bear the costs, not them.