Quote:
Originally Posted by Gerco
I'm taking Ananda up on her offer to fix my system. She has taken a look at the current issues and will be helping deal with them after Vegas. I look forward to finally getting this done.
|
Funny this thread came back up... MANSION never did fix any of the issues. Nothing has changed. They came into the thread all " Lets work things out and make it right" and yet got the same run around as normal. Wait, they installed the update to the latest version of the script and played around with the wowza server for a bit.
On March 21st I got this email from them....
Dear Gerco,
I'm writing to inform you we've made some changes to the fees assessed to maintain all active MAS installations.
As of 2009, each MAS license fee includes a one year subscription for free support and upgrades. After the first year Licensee shall pay Licensor an annual maintenance fee of US$750 to maintain the operability of the Software.
The annual maintenance fees will be required to extend your support & upgrades subscription.
If you decide not to pay it at this moment, you are of course still allowed to use the MAS program you've purchased; however you will not be eligible to receive program upgrades, and we would be handling only support tickets for issues which have been directly caused by defects in our software. For any other issues or how-to questions we may apply per-hour charges instead of the annual fee. If you prefer to go this route, please note that our billable hours will come with an hourly rate of US$175.
Our records indicate that your MAS installation has been operational since January 2004, i.e. longer than a year and as such - subject to these new maintenance fees. Please know that we are applying this measure towards both new and existing MAS customers.
Once payment is recorded, your support will remain as you've experienced. In addition, you will have some of our new features installed as part of the regular service, and you will get the upgrade to v. 2.0 release later this year.
The current features available with support are:
Favorites module - allows members to add arbitrary content sets to their "Favorites" list and view or remove them from there. Completely templateable.
Comments module - allows members to leave comments on any content set.
The site admin can then approve, delete and moderate the comments before publishing. Published comments can also be viewed by tour visitors (non-members) but they cannot add their own.
Watermarks module - batch stamps an arbitrary number of photo galleries with a custom site logo, with fine control of the position and transparency. Optionally downscales the images to a chosen web-ready resolution (in case that was not done manually prior to uploading). The original, non-resized, non-watermarked images are kept intact to be used as a source for further operations.
Attached is your invoice for the year to cover maintenance on your active MAS installation, with these and future upgrades included, for the year.
Please remit payment at your convenience and submit a work order ticket for the new modules once you've paid. Alternately, please do inform us if you do not intend to cover our support fees so we can mark that accordingly in our client files.
By check:
Our address is:
Mansion Productions LLC
PO Box 452254
Los Angeles, CA, 90045
USA
By Wire:
Our Wire info is:
Bank: Wells Fargo Bank
Bank Address: San Francisco, CA
USA
Account #: 2296151968
Routing #: 121000248
Swift#. WFBIUS6S (International)
By Credit Card:
A credit card form has been attached to this email.
Please fill out your card details and fax back to us.
You will find the fax details on the form.
ALWAYS include the invoice number in the wire and please add a $10 wire transfer fee.
We appreciate your business!
Sincerely,
Ananda at Mansion Productions LLC
--
Ananda Sisk
Client Relations Director
Mansion Productions
[email protected]
mobile: 1.916.342.4386 --- ICQ: 301253746 --- skype: ananda.sisk
To which I replied,
Seriously? You realize that the last thing you helped me work on was never completed correct? Even after the long GFY thread about the issues etc.
And got the answer,
Hi there,
Yes, I know your specific case and circumstances.
The letter with the optional fees was not singled out one way or another to our clientele. It was provided to every MAS client as an option. It remains an option that you are welcome to consider.
In my records, we left the work undone at your request because it came to a point where you would need to do a site redesign, to improve the use of the "wish list" items, and then determined you did not want to invest the funds in the quoted design. The 3 "wish list" items were still available for "free" to make it right at that point.
Indeed, Ross would still do this work for free, as we promised, if you're interested. I believe to make it work correctly the site design would have be required, however, so that would remain the issue.
Please let me know if I can assist you further in our care for your case.
We would still like to improve your view of the product.
Sincerely,
Ananda
TO which I replied....
Yes, but at the last communication I had told you guys to just get the setup working. using default setups "no design" and then I would have the design done at a later time once I knew it was working. There is no sense me spending more money on something that does not work, and no way for me to have someone design for something that does not exists. Since that time, ElevatedX put there software on the server, and it worked flawlessly, doing everything I have asked all these years from the MAS right out of the gate. So I know this is not only possiable but at least obtainable with someone else...
The ONLY reason that I still have MAS running the site at this point is because of (NAME EDITED OUT FOR CONFIDENTIALITY) wanting to incorporate my site into his new program, which of course is running MAS (Only because back when he bought it I talked him into it..) I don't really understand why it would be so difficult to take the current layout that you have done on (NAME EDITED OUT FOR CONFIDENTIALITY) sites, and copy that layout to mine. The members area graphics could then be added as needed later.
Also since that time I have acquired the fistingsex.com domain and all of it's content for the last 14 years... Of course, since there is no way for us to add the site to MAS we are again forced to look elsewhere for a solution to get the site up and running. And before you say, "It's simple to add multiple sites into MAS" BS. Even ross himself could not get my copy to run a second domain the last time he tried. (The domain was (NAME EDITED OUT FOR CONFIDENTIALITY), and I wanted MAS at that time to handle the gallery). I've sat on multiple domains for many years and done nothing with them for this very reason. Assfull.com, fucktrip.com,samscams.com, ect, all just sitting cause they could not be setup in mas.
I'm going to talk to (NAME EDITED OUT FOR CONFIDENTIALITY) about our deal a little bit more, and if he's still not ready I'm just going to go ahead and follow my original plan of scrapping mas for elevatedx. At least then I can get my sites running correctly.
Followed of course by crickets.....
Ross did do some work to the server, not sure exactly what. I saw that he had wowza server working, but not as part of the script. No instruction as to what to actually do with it, add to it or actually use it.
To try and make things simpler, I put Ross into direct contact with the server guys over at Mojohost. On the mojohost side, it was simple and things Ross asked them for where done immediately.
During this time, I had ElevatedX installed on the server. It work right out of the box, serving up video in FLV format from the get go. The default template was even light years nicer than my current mess. Due to possible integration with another company that uses MAS I much to my distaste, had to abandon it and again refocus on MAS. Now that that project has failed to come to fruition, I'm again stuck looking at this MAS of crap. Good thing I left the install of Elevatedx on the server so I have something to at least work with.
On the fistingsex domain, I have had to resort to setting it up in iweb cause it will not (from past experience) work in my MAS.
All in all this is a fucking soup opera. And way to much bullshit considering we are talking about a SINGLE FUCKING SITE. Not a program of 100+ sites etc. 1 stupid simple fucking website that wants nothing more than to be able to put content into a CMS and serve it out to a member. At this point I don't even care about bells and whistles. I just want 1 fucking format of video. No clips, no download options, no bullshit that's going to be the next excuse as to why this can't be finished. I don't care if the members area template is boxes of black and white as long as the fucking content actually worked and could be updated.
Christ, I need to stop typing now, this thread has by blood pressure up so high I'm actually getting a twinge in my fucking arm and if I talk anymore I'm going to have a fucking heart attack over it.