144 replies to this topic

[bt4ajt]

I've personally bought 5 skins from this place would like the Skinbox logo removed from all my current 4.05 versions
I feel that is the least you guys could do since the support is no longer

I'm a little disappointed but I know shit happens

[nightrider]

What a total bummer ...
I purchased the Underground skin on October 22nd
Specifically because it stated FREE update to 4.1

Crap!
Any chance you can refund my purchase?
Transaction ID: 2HN44476XL419460T

[Grolley]

I think this is absolutely ridiculous. You say we had the ability to use our skins? I have not been able to use my skin since 4.0.5, and even then it was for a very VERY short time. I have been patiently awaiting an update so I could GET MY MONEY'S WORTH, but big surprise you don't deliver AGAIN. You kept saying you would update, then you delayed it to 4.1! I said, OK fine a major release, I can understand. I PURCHASED TWO SKINS in expectation I would be able to use them WITHOUT having to be locked down to a certain version of vBulletin or having to switch to ANOTHER forum software... really ... is this a serious comment?

You should find someone else to code and provide your customers with the service you claimed you would provide, or you should be refunding those who have made a commitment to something you have chosen to give up on.

[Gumble]

Not much to say, sad to have wasted my time and money on the skin and branding free...

We are not interested at all in change anything to IPB we decided long time to abandon it (our own reasons), will not even think in a regression...


Good luck!

[Sebastien Penet]

@Grolley: "You should find someone else" do you seriously think we have not tried? Is there any interest at all in letting our customers go unsatisfied? Is there any interest in refunding one month worth in vB sales? Is there any interest in converting all our current vB customers to IPB since we believe most of you, if not all, will end up converting their forums anyway, and then buying new skins? By the way, a lot of our vB customers convert to IPB (and that goes back from the moment when vB 4 was released). We make a big loss here by refunding customers and converting everyone to IPB. Believe me, we cannot do better. We cannot refund everyone, we did our best to satisfy at least some of you. If you are still unsatisfied, you can tell us how much you hate us, but I am sorry I will not have anything else to answer apart from what I have just written there.

@Gumble: Sorry to hear you had a bad experience with IPB. I don't know about your situation, but IPB improved a lot in the last few months

[kaos2055º]

Thank you for your support received during these months.

Particularly, I had no complications to update the theme purchased since released. My theme warrior is updated to vb4.1 now, its just merged and compared.

Sometimes you have to make decisions that support will be optimal, in this case for IPB and respect your decision.

Regards.

[Olivier Turbis]

kaos2055º, on 01 December 2010 - 09:06 PM, said:

Thank you for your support received during these months.

Particularly, I had no complications to update the theme purchased since released. My theme warrior is updated to vb4.1 now, its just merged and compared.

Sometimes you have to make decisions that support will be optimal, in this case for IPB and respect your decision.

Regards.

Thank you kaos, means a lot.

[nightrider]

No reply to my previous post?
and just out of the 30 day warranty.

sad face.

[Sedition]

I had Vbulletin skins with them. I was a little disappointed with their move to IPB, but me being the person I am decided to do a little research. I read a lot of views, comparisons, and looked at IPB myself. In the end, I purchased a license with them and I must say; they are much better than Vbulletin so far. The look and feel is someone similar, but I love admin panel, the plug-ins, and the little features that just ass so much more.

You guys should really consider IPB.

As for their move, it's a business move here. You knew very well the risks. As they said, they can't do both Vbulletin and IPB at the same time, so they have to make a move and the logical move to them was to go with IPB. Rather you like it or not, you have to accept it.

Just waiting for my Brave skin to be switched to IPB! It looks sweeter in IPB judging by the demo!

[nightrider]

While I do understand business decisions and limited resources impact a company's decisions.
This decision tarnishes Skinbox and it's management both for previous vBulletin skin customers
that have been been left at best unsupported and worst deceived.
It should be a warning for future and current IPB skin customers.

For me personally it's the loss of a $15 vBulletin skin purchase
and in the grand scheme of things not a big deal monetarily.

At the time of my purchase (October 22nd 2010) issues were presented regarding the vBulletin product
and Skinbox claimed FREE updates on it's website when Vbulletin 4.1 was released.
Also support replies regarding issues placed customers in the position of holding hope
that many long standing issues would be addressed in a future release of the skins.

It's just the principle.
Respectfully your former customer.

[mib-89]

Hey sebastian,

I've written you a PM about a refund, please answer it asap, thank you.

[Sebastien Penet]

Hello,

Sorry for not having answered earlier I receive a lot of messages these times.

Thanks for your patience.

[Big-Pete]

WTF.. You've gotta be kidding right!! In your last pm to me you said and I quote "The blood skin will be fixed in vb4.0.9", Well we're now in vb4.1PL2 and the Blood skin is a still a mess, This is an utter discrace and very unprofessional of skinbox, especially only offering a refund to those who purchased within the last 30 days, You should at least offer a refund to anyone who hasn't "enjoyed your skin for quite a long time" due to it being broken as of vb4.0.8. For ages now you have said that as of vb4.1 we'll see new features, and now you just drop vBulletin..

I will be seaking legal advice on this, because you sold a product which has been broken for several months now, and have now decided to make it obsolete. I bought your skin because you stated that you offered free updates and that you supported these skins.. The least you could have done was to fix the skins upto vb4.1 as you had openly promised all vb skin purchasers, deciding to drop your products when they are still broken is just an appalling decision!!

NOT Happy at all with SkinBox, we've all waited months for you to update and now you discontinue vb products!

As for converting to IPB, You've gotta be kidding, We've used IPB in the past on other projects, and now you expect people to pay out for another licence because you cannot be bothered to support or fix your own products that you had been more than happy to take payment for..! Also there's nowhere near the amount of functionality in IPB compared to vB, not to mention the lack of decent plugins and comparable plugins...

As you have a reputation for closing / deleting posts and threads you disagree with i have made a copy of all your threads and post's where you state that vb will be better supported as of vb 4.1 (which is now the latest version)

[shooterdfl]

I understand Olivier's frustration with the development path vB has taken. 4.1 was released without the promised completion of stylevar re-coding, new editor, and other "features" that promised to stabilize the product for coders and admins alike. We've seen bug-fix release after bug-fix release from vB this past year most of which broke existing custom skins necessitating repeated time-consuming updates from the skin coders. It's obvious that this situation will continue for some time and understandable that Olivier would want to get off this cycle of frequent skin updates.

But here's my issue with your decision. Warrior is, without a doubt, the finest gaming site skin on the market. It is the centerpiece of our site and we have received many compliments on it. I'm still running 4.0.5 in order to use Warrior. I like IPB and am tempted to move to it but I simply can't afford the $300 needed to duplicate my vB site in IPB. We're not a commercial site and live on the donations of the members. Likewise my users would not be happy with changing their "world" by migrating to a new IPB interface.

A good man keeps his promises. We're all taught that as children. It's often not easy to do but is a matter of self-respect and honor. Olivier is clearly capable, technically, of updating these skins but has chosen to invest his time elsewhere. Understandable, given the circumstances, but I urge you to reconsider and update the skins to be 4.1 compatible as you repeated said you would. BUT, at the same time, announce that skinbox will drop support for vB skins as of the promised 4.1 updates. I, for one, would be happy to pay for the update in order to keep Warrior on my site.

[ørret]

Rage will die in a month or two.

[Sebastien Penet]

Hello,

@Big-Pete: I agree with the fact we said we would be converting our skins to vB 4.1. As I told earlier in this thread, we tried to find someone to do all the vB work because it was not possible for us to do this job. We do not have the skills required to get it done in a short time. By the time we would convert the skins, another version would be out. And what about IPB? Most of our customers use IPB. We know it better. A lot of people are switching to IPB. No one is switching to vB. We had to make a choice. Would you have chosen to maintain vB and stop IPB? I doubt you would have decided that. That would be non-sense.

Do you really think you would have been satisfied if we stopped after upgrading to vB 4.1.0? I cannot believe that. You would feel cheated anyway.

We promised. I admit. However, we have no way to update these skins. Time is not extensible. And no one wants to work on vB. What would you want us to do? We do not have the money to refund everyone as well. But I suppose you guessed it. vB development costs have been higher and higher in the past few months. We had to hire a support operator. We went as far as we could as for the refunds. Money does not grow on trees. It is not the first time I say this, but believe me or not, stopping supporting vB is very expensive for us. That means no income from vB skins. That means refunding the last 30 days worth of sales. That means zero income from previous vB customers switching to IPB. We make a big loss here. Stop pretending we ran away with your money.

@shooterdfl: I understand that IPB is quite expensive. I would love to find out a way to help you, but I cannot seem to find anything I would do that would help you in any way. Olivier is capable of upgrading the skins to vB even if this would take him a lot of time compared to a vB skinner. He does not have the time. We already have too much work to maintain IPB skins. And we must release new skins if we do not want to lose our customer base. So really, we have considered all the solutions. We cannot keep our promise. And I feel sorry for that, really. Even with your money, we would not be able to upgrade vB skins: no one wanted to work with us on vB. Believe me, we proposed a lot of money. That did not change anything.

I hope everyone understand we did our best.

Thank you,
S. Penet.

[DUI]

I'm glad I waited forever for nothing. Complete BS and awful support.

[nightrider]

I agree with Big-Pete

The least you could have done was to fix the skins up to vb4.1
as you had openly promised all vb skin purchasers.

Skinbox could have then cleanly terminated development after that and drop the vb products.

[d33j4y]

Just throwing my 2 cents in but I have bought skins for other forum softwares as well as one for IPB and on the other occasion, they creator of the other skin purchased would never offer a refund as it was already downloaded.. for all we know you could turn around and use the same skin style on another forum software since you now have all of the graphics, psd's or what have ya from the skin you purchased! Skinbox as well as other skin creators put in alot of time im sure into these skins and time is valuable!

As for the discontinuation of support for VB skins, what Sebastian and Olivier had explained, im sure it was an unfavorable decision on their part as when a member of their team backs out, it makes things really bad so perhaps all the grievances people are having should be directed towards the team member who was responsible for the VB skin updates!! Also the team at skinbox should not be confined by a particular forum software's updates that greatly reduces the quality or function of skins! I think someone should step up and offer their help in updating the skins for VB rather than just rant and rave about lack of support!?!

Maybe the fact of offering ipb compatible skins to those purchased for VB is not the right path to take as yeah, it requires most of these VBulletin users to have to dish out 150 bucks for a license which is I think is crazy but I think the better option is to find a new skin updater for VB and use the money to be used for refunds, to fund the support for updating the Vbulletin skins, customers have purchased!?! Just my thought, and I apologize if my remarks upset anyone but I speak neutrally!!!

[Olivier Turbis]

nightrider, on 04 December 2010 - 09:26 PM, said:

I agree with Big-Pete

The least you could have done was to fix the skins up to vb4.1
as you had openly promised all vb skin purchasers.

Skinbox could have then cleanly terminated development after that and drop the vb products.

And what happens when VB 4.2 comes out? The same thing. Skins just have to be updated forever. It would have made NO difference if we'd have updated them to 4.1.