Support

Hello Ralph,

Regarding your issue. MONTH, DAY and YEAR are supposed to return these values as zero-padded integers (see https://www.akeebabackup.com/documentation/akeeba-backup-documentation/configuration.html#basic-configuration) Regarding WEEKDAY, it unfortunately depends on Joomla's translation system. I believe a recent change in Joomla! is causing that to return an integer instead of a name. I will take a look at it and try to provide a fix in the next version.

If it's an urgent issue let me know and I can try to provide you with a dev release within a day or two, per our Terms of Service.

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Regarding everything else you have written. Please let me address it point by point:

First of all, I pay you a lot of money for your products.

You are paying about $100 which indeed a significant amount of money. We do thank you for that and hope to have you as a client in the future.

When I have a question I'm met with the "significant delay..." message because you are on vacation.

I am in the USA too and I'm most definitely not on vacation. So is Dale. The thing is that we don't have anyone in Europe this week, so you're entirely off the mark.

Also, the one person on vacation is a developer, like me. We are the only two developers in the company. You would have known that we're a small business if you'd click on the Our Team link at the bottom of the page. I'm Nicholas, the guy on five-days vacation is Davide and the other support person –who was afraid to touch your ticket seeing your use of very strong language– is Dale.

Me and Davide not only develop the software but we also take on complicated tickets that Dale cannot take. That's about 50% of the total support workload. Since I have to do all of that by myself this week, while jet lagged from coming to the USA, I felt it is honest and fair to warn my clients that I may not be able to respond to their tickets fast enough. Luckily, this week we had half the support volume and I could.

I know you are in Europe where everyone works basically when they want to and don't work at all in August, but I don't give a damn.

This is a racist stereotype, pretty much like "all Americans are bozo rednecks who fire guns to each other, drink moonshine and don't know the first thing about geography". Do you understand the level of racist insult you have reached with that sentence?

For your information, people in the European Union are entitled between 2 and 21 days of vacation every year. In the country I come from you get 2 days of vacation the first year you work for the same employer and an additional 2 days every year afterwards to a maximum of 3 weeks. In the USA you get 2 weeks of vacation from the first year you work for any employer. Also note that in the EU if you're hired as a contractor you are not entitled to vacation time. I had a total of ONE WEEK of vacation in 12 years I've been working, so please don't give me crap about how everyone works whenever they want in Europe. Please come and join me down here in the real world, my good man.

I'm in the United States, where we don't have everyone in a company leave at the same time.

I don't know if you are aware, but Adam Smith was SCOTTISH and Karl Marx was GERMAN. That is to say that the two most influentials economists of all time were European. Europe invented business administration and the science of economics. Of course we don't let everyone go on vacation at the same time. We are not crazy. For the love of whatever deity you believe in, do you HONESTLY believe that people outside the USA are stupid? Have you even looked at the stats about which nation is the smartest?

I won't get into this being one of the reason why the European Union is in deep trouble and why you can't even go out for fear of terrorism

I almost choked on my coffee reading this :D You mean ISIS? Let me see... The conditions which led to radical Islam is five decades of problematic United States policy in the Middle East which resulted in:

– Iran turning into a theocracy run by lunatics when it was a progressive western-loving country in the 50s
– Osama bin Laden receiving training, money and arms from the CIA to fight USSR only to turn against the entire West when USSR got out of Afghanistan
– Destabilization of Iraq after a war on false pretext (no weapons of mass destruction existed) led to the majority of the splintered country run by jihadis
– Cozying up to UAE and ignoring their radical interpretation of Islam, not to mention directly and indirectly financing mosques which act as recruitment centers for jihadis worldwide
– Finally, sending money AND arms to the "Syrian opposition" who became ISIS as soon as they kicked Assad's army out of northern Syria

Yeah. I can see how radical islamic terrorism is EU's fault... NOT. (Actually, it's not just the USA's fault – it was a glorious international cock-up of mythical proportions).

Stop listening to Fox News and Trump. The reality is much more nuanced than a bunch of power-grabbing nationalists want you to believe. Everyone fucked up in grandiose ways to get us all here: USA (crap policies), EU (happily helping the USA), Russians (cocked up in Afghanistan and went downhill from there, destabilizing that part of the world), Israelis (too busy pointing fingers to the tiny problem Palestinians are) and I could go on and on. The thing is we're all to blame for the GLOBAL problem of radical islamist terrorism. Last time I checked I didn't quite feel safe from that in the USA either!!!

And since we're taking this on an entirely personal level, I am deeply worried about terrorism in the USA. I am not that much afraid in Greece or Cyprus. That's why me and my American fiancée can't decide where to live after we get married. USA has in theory better opportunities but we may end up dead in a terrorist attack OR a mass shooting (which is domestic terrorism, just not presented like that by the conservative media – read the definition on "crime" and "terrorism" to understand what we are talking about here). Greece and Cyprus don't have as good opportunities but we are far safer there than anywhere else in the world. So there.

but THIS IS BUSINESS. I expect to get what I pay for. I'd appreciate the courtesy of providing me what I paid for.

I agree it is business and I don't understand why you are making it something else than that. If you want to discuss the points that are outside the scope of business I'm more than happy to – over email. I do have a keen interest in economic policies and world politics but I don't think this is the right place to analyze any of that, my digression above notwithstanding.

Regarding what you should be receiving, kindly note that our Support Policy, to which you have agreed to, states:

Subscription at AkeebaBackup.com are not to be considered as a guarantee of response time or a service level agreement. All tickets are answered on a "best effort" basis. Private tickets and severe bug report are given top priority, public tickets are given medium priority. If you have not received any response within 72 hours, please use the Contact Us page to let us know of the issue. If we determine that there is an objective difficulty in providing support to you over our ticket system we will provide you with support over email, in exception of our support policy.

We don't give guarantees on response times in there because ToS is basically a contract. However, we are neither crooks nor idiots. We are operating on the assumption that clients expect a reply as soon as possible which is typically minutes to hours. Therefore we do consider it abnormal if you don't get a reply in 3 calendar days (if that happens it means that for some reason your ticket didn't come in or you accidentally closed it). So we state the following on the bottom of the support pages:

Depending on the complexity of your support issue it's usually between a few minutes and 24 hours. When we expect longer delays we will notify you when you file a ticket or reply.

And since I had reasons to believe that some users may have gotten a worse response time because of an abnormal situation (I had to travel earlier than I anticipated) I did publish a warning about it, exactly as I said I would do under such circumstances. So why are you upset when I am providing you with the EXACT service level we agreed to when you subscribed?! You do get what you paid for.

Thank you in advance for being more considerate and respectful in the future.

I enjoyed your reply which came by email:

Got it. It’s all my fault. I’m off the mark, etc. etc. etc. Those damn customers.



You answered this ticket within a couple of hours, which, of course, is excellent. If you are able to do that, why do you have this BIG warning about “massive delays?”



You spent way too much time editorializing. I didn’t even read most of it.

Bottom line: You didn’t solve my issue. I know it is a P5 (my company’s classification) – meaning a very minor problem, not affecting the operation of the product. Nevertheless, the issue remains unsolved and my main question went unanswered (I think – I got tired wading through all the bullshit in your response).



I can make the change from the numerical day of the week to the day name. I probably won’t bother taking the time, because it’s not that big a deal.



By the way, don’t tell me to stop doing anything. You are guilty of assuming many, many things in your response that you have no way of knowing if they are true or not. In fact, many of your assumptions are not true. I am not easily offended, but you managed to accomplish it. Bad judgement on your part. This is a business relationship and you were way out of line.



If you don’t think the world & our country is going down the tubes, that is your problem. Reality is reality whether it is noticed or not. It would be very much in your best interest to stay away from politics in responses to your customers, especially when you know absolutely nothing about me. All you accomplished was to piss me off and even make me wonder if I want to continue doing business with you. I am disappointed in your lack of professionalism. Any lack of professionalism on my part (BTW, I don’t think there was any) is irrelevant because I am the customer. BTW, I have no responsibility to you to be courteous. If you don’t like it, tough. Life is tough. Wear a cup.



I own a company and I learned about 30 years ago to stay away from that. Sooner or later, you’ll find that this is true for you too. In fact, if you think about this contact in the next few days, you’ll hate yourself for what you did. Your actions created a very real possibility of losing a customer.



Don’t respond. I’m done.



Ralph Rhoades



P.S. When I write something, I sign my name to it. That’s what adults do.

I am leaving it here so that anyone can read it, proudly signed with your name. And since I don't mind people reading my own reply:

Hello Ralph,



First of all, I do sign EVERYTHING I write with my name. It's in fact in my SIGNATURE at the TICKET SYSTEM. Let me paste a screenshot for you:



(screenshot to my signature in the ticket system)



Also remember that I linked you to our team page.



Moreover, I still don't understand why you complain about the support you received when I EXPLICITLY stated the following:



(screenshot to the first three paragraphs of my reply)



I did offer to assist you but you IGNORED me and assumed I don't want to. I am still going to fix this issue anyway. I guess you have decided I don't want to help you. So be it.



Regarding the warning of BIG delays I already explained it to you. Let me paste YET ANOTHER screenshot from my reply to you.



(screenshot to the last paragraphs of my reply)



You are still not apologising for your racist slur and stream of abuse. Instead you try to tell me that it's my fault that YOU attacked me with a stream of racist abuse out of the blue. I'm afraid, sir, that this is a violation of our Terms of Service which explicitly state that we can permanently terminate the accounts of abusive customers without a refund. For this reason your account is terminated.



PS: The email to which you replied to clearly stated to NOT file a reply by email. Yet you did.



PS2: Don't try to ever contact me again. Your email is blocked. Our company does not serve bigots.

Oh, for whoever's reading. As I said upfront, even though that's a minor bug I still consider it a bug and will fix it. I can fix code, but I can't fix stupid.

Reply to the ticket, again by email, Friday on 12:31 pm eastern time

This wasn’t read, Ace. You wasted your time responding, especially when I said “don’t respond.” You have mental illness. Seriously.

Reply to the email notifying him that his subscription is canceled, Friday on 12:28 pm eastern time

I guess you showed me. If you think that has any negative effect on my life or my company you are wrong.



You must be part of the “find the safe spot” generation. A perfect example of the disintegration of our society.



If you continue to treat customers like this, Ace, you won’t have any customers.



When can I expect to receive my full refund?



Ralph Rhoades

Incoming contact form, today at 12:10 pm eastern time.

I have a paid JOOMLADELUXE subscription.



When using AdminTools this morning, I was notified that an update was available and it had to be downloaded manually.



I went to your web site to find that my subscription did not appear. I then noticed an e-mail from yesterday from you saying:



My Akeeba Subscription has been cancelled. I did not cancel it.



Putting two and two together, I determined that one of your developers, Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos, who had a hissy fit in response to a technical support question I asked had canceled my paid subscription. I don't know this for sure, but there is no other logical explanation.



In response to my support request, this Nicholas wrote about 1000 words that were totally irrelevant to the thread, focusing on United States politics and telling me what my political positions should be. I did not read most of it because I am busy, but this was extremely unprofessional. He must have taken exception to this and cancelled my PAID FOR subscription.

Now, I am wasting time writing to you to get the subscription that I PAID FOR available to me.



Please make it so. I am not even requesting an apology from your unprofessional developer who, in addition to being off-topic and not answering my questions, was wasting my time with off-topic comments.



Please make my PAID subscription available to me or refund the $100 I paid for it.



Thank you.



Ralph Rhoades



Burleson, TX

My response, dame day, 1:20 pm eastern time

Mr. Rhoades,



As it is evident from my signature in the ticket system and my emails, the ones you kept declining to read, I am the Director of the company. I am not just a developer. I made it clear to you and asked you to view our team page which you apparently ignored.



I told you in my first reply on the ticket system, that you refused to read, that you were insulting and asked for an apology. Not only you refused to provide one, you continued being contentious and abusive, stated that you do not read my reply and wasted more of my time with more abusive content. This is HARDLY professional. Per the Terms of Service we reserve the right to close tickets of such nature and terminate the offenders' accounts without a refund.



This is exactly what happened in your case, as I told you in my follow up email. This is the email to which you responded with even more abuse and mockery, twice.



Seeing that you are continuing to be contentious and abusive I will stand behind by my decision to apply the provisions of our Terms of Service which is very well within our rights as a company. I will remind you that when you subscribed you indicated you agreed unreservedly to the Terms of Service.



I advise you to refrain from contacting me again.



Nicholas Dionysopoulos

Director, Akeeba Ltd

His reply, same day, 2:05 pm eastern time

I asked you two simple questions and lodged a complaint. And you went ballistic. Everybody in my office thinks that not only are you committing professional suicide, you are mentally unstable.



Saying I was abusive is typical of a section of today's society. I lodged a complaint. That is not abusive. You deserve no apology. I do.



The fact remains, I paid for a service and have not received it. If that is the way you want to run your company, I guess there's nothing I can do about it.



Continuing to be "contentious & abusive?" Those are key words frequently used by those who don't like what they're being told, no matter how truthful it is.



There is nothing I can do to keep you from acting like a child, but, if you want to make this some sort of personal battle, it is recommended that you cease and desist immediately.



You can do whatever you want because you are "A Director" but not providing services a customer paid for is not only unprofessional, it is immoral.



We are legitimately concerned about your mental well-being and have made our local police department aware of this situation. They agree that you are unstable and have created a file in case something bad happens to me, my family, my property or my company.



We are taking this very seriously. It is the general attitude here that you are unbalanced and capable of anything.



Ralph Rhoades