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Does this ever bug anyone?

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I rarely complain but I wonder if this bothers anyone also? I have probably now 15-17 add ons for FS-a considerable number and quite an investment.When scrolling around the internet today I found one of my products had issued an update-actually several since I bought it. It includes bug fixes and a whole new set of features. Now my simple question. Why was I not notified email about this? I paid as much for this product as I did fs-and when purchasing had to give my email address.If this was an isolated incident I would let it slip by-but already this year I have found that actually most products continue to update and patch most do not inform the end user of this.Now-it is great if you are obsessed with the product, and frequent their support boards, all the time waiting for such an update or patch.With the number I have and my time restraints this isn't really possible. Since I have paid good money for these products-is it really too much to ask that when an update or a patch is issued that an email is sent with the announcement and a link for the update/patch? I notice that many of these same companies seem able to email me when they have a new product they want me to buy!?Again-I wouldn't complain-except such a notification seems to be pretty much non existant for most of the products I own. Right now I don't even know if I have the most recent version of many of them.http://members.telocity.com/~geof43/Geofdog3.gif

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Guest Lindy

You're not alone in being upset about this "practice." The companies all want the purchaser to register their software and one of the reasons they give is to be able to keep informed of patches/fixes and the like (as well as new products). But I have NEVER, EVER been advised by ANY company of updates, patches, fixes for any software I have registered.I finally stopped registering. And the plight of users without Net access is even worse, but don't get me started on THAT! :-lol (Although I'm pretty sure there are fewer and fewer software users who do not have Net access, there must be some.) Guess it's way past time to band together and start complaining to these companies directly.-Lindy :-wave

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Guest Don_Eliot

Geofa, I certainly agree the situation you describe is a real pain. If it wasn't for some good folks that find the updates and alert us here on the forum I would be way behind. Actually I guess I am always behind on what is new lol.

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I can't say that I'm upset or annoyed by this. In fact it had never occurred to me before...until you pointed it out! You're absolutely right though. It's not just FS add-on companies either. Just about everything you buy asks for electronic registration. Why? There are one or two companies that send regular newsletters that will advise of updates to software or new releases, but not many. So what do they do with your email address? I don't know, but I suspect that some will sell it to direct marketing companies. I never use my main email address in any online form or electronic registration unless absolutely necessary. I always use my hotmail account which is set to filter out everything that doesn't come from someone in my address book. I get roughly 40 spam email messages a day. Makes you wonder doesn't it?OK, so I lied at the beginning - I am quite annoyed! :)

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Guest Edam

>Now that I got the patch for the 1 year old product I have >it wants me to re register-now I have to search through >mounds of old papers somewhere to find it-aaaggggggg! *That* is certainly a pain. I try to save all e-mails pertaining to registrations, etc. to one mailbox, but if you have to re-install the OS, and all that is lost, you need to dig through all of the printouts to find the info that you need. Being as disorganized as I am, especially if some time has passed, that could take some time. (I usually look in the place where the most dust has accumulated.)

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I see your point, it becomes a problem if you have a lot of items to keep track of.The problem is that not everyone wants to be notified about every little patch, fix, and update. When this practice was more commondistributers use to get complaints about them sending customers advertising and stuff (whch some did abuse). Many already get more email than they can handle and would prefer to just check the website periodically rather than get more email. And often the customer may have stopped using the product in favor of another, and yet they are still recieving notifications about this product they have no interest in anymore. Now they don't like having to go through some effort to stop the notifications.Of course there are ways to allow people to be automatically added or removed from mailing lists. But this doesn't always workperfectly. And if you only have a few updates the work of maintaining the email list is really not worth it.From the distributers standpoint they are going to get a lot less complaints about not being notified than they would complaints about unnecessary or unwanted emails.The emails are probably used more often now for security than support, as a way to tie a single user to a specific RegId.Regards.Ernie.


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Guest

>The problem is that not everyone wants to be notified about >every little patch, fix, and update. When this practice was >more common >distributers use to get complaints about them sending >customers advertising and stuff (whch some did abuse). Many >already get more email than they can handle and would prefer >to just check the website periodically rather than get more >email. And often the customer may have stopped using the >product in favor of another, and yet they are still >recieving notifications about this product they have no >interest in anymore. Now they don't like having to go >through some effort to stop the notifications. >tell me about it... Still get occasional emails from a company I ordered something from ages ago only to have them cancel the order because they couldn't get it from the manufacturer anymore...Repeated attempts to get off their mailing list all failed, I had to resort to adding them to my spamfilter instead (which did work).>Of course there are ways to allow people to be automatically >added or removed from mailing lists. But this doesn't always >work >perfectly. And if you only have a few updates the work of >maintaining the email list is really not worth it. >Not to mention that people forget to remove themselves from such lists and then start to complain in places like this about unwanted email.It would be nice if some website could offer a service of keeping track of updates and patches in an easily searchable way.

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It would be nice if some website could offer a service of keeping track of updates and patches in an easily searchable way.There was a company ;that did just that.BIGFIX.comAn excellent little program.I knew i had updates for Windows, Antivirus, MSNmessenger, ICQ,Kazaa.A bunch of others.This program would also remind me to do a maintenance run, or a virus scan. All kinds of neat stuff.You could download and install from any of these sites from the the bigfix program, do em all at once, no surfing.Then well it went by by.Or is going byby...off the air sometime in January i think.The companies that supplied it the updates, turned them off.You bought something, it would automatically include that products company on its list, and bingo, they send out an update, BIGFIX tells you, click and update downloading..bada bing, bada boom. DONE.Only the products you want, only the updates you want.FREE OF CHARGE, no advertising.And now you know...the rest of the story.

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