Hey let's all pay for pre-sales questions, Shall we? Do we really have to pay?

[tallship]

Here's a question that someone is bound to ask:

   
• Q:)Why should I pay for pre-sales questions?

   
• A:) I don't think you should. But if you insist, I'll only charge you a couple of beers and a few pretzels.

Or, you can pay $75.00 for a presale question. I think you're entitled to a guaranteed 18hr response too

There's an acronym that goes like this:

ROFLMAOPMP!

   
• Q:) Is this for realz?

   
• A:) a/o 11:21hrs PDT on 21 May 2013... Yes, it is for realz.

And if you pick up a copy of HostBill for yourself you can add this acronym to your vocabulary too:

AYBABTU!

These HostBill community forums here are staffed, manned, and supported by licensed owners of HostBill - we love the application and all the wonderful things it [mostly] does (There's an awful lot of bugs and trouble tickets often go without any response for days, weeks, even reportedly years sometimes).

But aside from how awesome HostBill looks, and how broken you really don't know it is in many places, you really deserve to know exactly what you're getting yourself into before you make that purchase decision. It's always all about caveat emptor, but sometimes there's just more caveats one should concern themselves with than others.

   
• Q:) Seriously dude, you're pulling my leg, yanking my chain, not telling me the way it really is, right?

   
• A:) No. I'm telling you the honest to God truth - see here: http://www.hostbillforums.com/index.php/topic,48.msg414.html#msg414

So If you're ready to buy me that beer now,  I'll be happy to chat you up all about HostBill

[Patrick]

I moved this over here because i want this to be discussed and it's really not a presales question, so i'd like to keep the presales category clean to presales related topics. 

On that note, i think he did this "Charge to ask CEO" thing since i contacted him yesterday about directing pre-sales here and i was turned down and bluntly told "If we needed presales, we'd have presales" -  I'm not kidding either.

I've never heard of a company anywhere world wide charging to ask a CEO a question.   This is one of the funniest things i've ever seen.  I honestly thought you made it up even with the screenshot.

[Lawrence]

"If we needed presales, we'd have presales"

That's painful. It's okay though, HostBill Forums comes up #3 in Google search for the keyword "hostbill presales" so it's all good...

[Patrick]

It'll be interesting to see how things turn out over the next year.  I mean, $75 to speak with a CEO seems like desperation to me.  lol, if he was a fortune 500 company, maybe.  Some of the most random decisions in the history of any developer i've ever met, seen, heard of. 

I took the "Thanks for the help" in his response to me this morning as a little small kind gesture.  lol

[tallship]

I moved this over here because i want this to be discussed and it's really not a presales question, so i'd like to keep the presales category clean to presales related topics.

No problem Patrick

I started off thinking I would set it up as sort of a presales thing, then the parody struck, then I thought, maybe I should contact a mod myself and see if it shouldn't actually go in the general section.

I think I've said all I set out to on this subject though. Basically, it was a vocalization of my astonishment, and I'm kind of at a loss for words beyond anything I've stated so far.

[Lawrence]

I'm sure everyone here agrees with me when I say we all provide free presales questions to our customers. We do after all want to make some sales.

Maybe he's setting up a presales department? I guess it's wishful thinking, but it's always possible. It says Ask CEO, so maybe he's hired someone? CEO of a company, he could be delegating tasks to other employees. We'll just have to wait and find out.

[Patrick]

I'm sure everyone here agrees with me when I say we all provide free presales questions to our customers. We do after all want to make some sales.

Maybe he's setting up a presales department? I guess it's wishful thinking, but it's always possible. It says Ask CEO, so maybe he's hired someone? CEO of a company, he could be delegating tasks to other employees. We'll just have to wait and find out.

I hate to admit it but the "ask CEO" thing i'd bet money is my fault because i contacted him about the presales thing as a direct contact and nothing relating to the software.  Basically saying "If you want to ask me a question like this again, pay up".  I think it's real cocky to even think of charging people to contact the owner of a business.  It says a lot that you think your customers aren't worth speaking to you unless they pay for your time.  After someone posted his online resume, i was surprised to see a normal guy, but with his behavior as of late, if i was an employer looking to hire as many do online research to prospective employees under consideration, i'd hate to have so many people hate me and have my potential employers see all of the hate. 

I don't think HB is his primary income at all.  It's a side project as his current line of work is some other company that his resume says he's still employed at.  Wish i had the link still

[tallship]

Leave it to Lawrence to mess me up.

I had a good thing goin' on and now I'm going to have to start buying my own beer again!

I know we've all been victims of the "pickup truck owner syndrome", where friends, and friends of friends, call upon you whenever they move from one place to another.

All my life people have been asking me to fix their computers, or just spend a "couple of minutes" taking a look at...

Sometimes you just gotta give things away - not always, not as a rule, but sometimes.

But the insults are when someone expects me to do something that takes me five minutes, after prolly a couple hundred thousand spent in three decades of constant education, not to mention the accumulated experience; and then they say, "Oh that's all it took? I could have done that."

And they offer you twenty bucks four a hour and a half spent. That won't buy my daughter a make up brush (those things are really expensive!).

So I came up with this saying, which offends some people but I just don't care:

"I'll do it for my hourly rate, or I'll do it for free, but I will never do it for cheap."

[Patrick]

Leave it to Lawrence to mess me up.

I had a good thing goin' on and now I'm going to have to start buying my own beer again!

I know we've all been victims of the "pickup truck owner syndrome", where friends, and friends of friends, call upon you whenever they move from one place to another.

All my life people have been asking me to fix their computers, or just spend a "couple of minutes" taking a look at...

Sometimes you just gotta give things away - not always, not as a rule, but sometimes.

But the insults are when someone expects me to do something that takes me five minutes, after prolly a couple hundred thousand spent in three decades of constant education, not to mention the accumulated experience; and then they say, "Oh that's all it took? I could have done that."

And they offer you twenty bucks four a hour and a half spent. That won't buy my daughter a make up brush (those things are really expensive!).

So I came up with this saying, which offends some people but I just don't care:

"I'll do it for my hourly rate, or I'll do it for free, but I will never do it for cheap."

A little off topic here but i have to comment on your post lol...  I was recently talking to my wife about exact what you just said, word for word..  I have almost 25 years under my belt of constant learning in the IT field.  People from family or friends all think "Hey, Pat should know... give him a call".  I know because i spent most of my life educating myself.  I can instantly diagnose because of the education i've had during the almost 25 years.  So, i helped family and friends several times over.  Gone as far as believe it or not family members shunning my wife and I because we dared to ask for some $$ to fix a computer after doing it 16 times in the last year.  Got so fed up, i said if they want it fixed, pay me, otherwise i really don't care to sit in front of their computer for 4-6 hours for free.  I pride myself in what i've learned since i was 8 years old.  Still as a CEO i wouldn't charge my customers to speak with me, then again a friend of mine charges per 30 minutes talk time (minimum 1 hour even if the call is under 15 minutes)

So i like what you said

I'll do it for my hourly rate, or I'll do it for free, but I will never do it for cheap.

[Lawrence]

But the insults are when someone expects me to do something that takes me five minutes, after prolly a couple hundred thousand spent in three decades of constant education, not to mention the accumulated experience; and then they say, "Oh that's all it took? I could have done that."

I know this all too well. Client of mine wanted to update their nameservers to convert to a different name. As easy as this is to any web host, it's something that required prior experience and a few hours of reading. Created the A records, updated the IPs of the original nameservers, did the rest of that good ol' stuff, and took less than a few minutes. This was all done through RDP (Which alone took a half hour to explain to setup). Client said why I couldn't do this for free, I said because it would've taken you several hours to do the read up on it, and a few minutes to apply the changes.

Needless to say, I didn't charge him for the Presales question, but the actual labor. Would've been more than happy to give him a brief explanation on how to do this. our time is valuable.  Kris should have the same logic. Not presales, but the aftersales that brings home the bacon.

[Patrick]

I know this all too well. Client of mine wanted to update their nameservers to convert to a different name. As easy as this is to any web host, it's something that required prior experience and a few hours of reading. Created the A records, updated the IPs of the original nameservers, did the rest of that good ol' stuff, and took less than a few minutes. This was all done through RDP (Which alone took a half hour to explain to setup). Client said why I couldn't do this for free, I said because it would've taken you several hours to do the read up on it, and a few minutes to apply the changes.

Needless to say, I didn't charge him for the Presales question, but the actual labor. Would've been more than happy to give him a brief explanation on how to do this. our time is valuable.  Kris should have the same logic. Not presales, but the aftersales that brings home the bacon.

I think for the sake of all that is good in this world, they need to remove the "Contact the CEO" under pricing section.  That just seems like a bad joke told by a drunk dude at a cheap bar

[Cloudrck]

I feel like an idiot for buying into this software. I should be working on developing my own billing system with the abundance of open source libraries available. Instead I'm making workarounds for a buggy, closed-source software that has a gazilion modules I don't need, and the ones I do are buggy.

Now I have to pay to get support for this software, or even talk to a person at this company. It's as if he doesn't want more customers, and isn't doing much to keep his current customers. Must be nice to provide services, than never ever talk to my clients again.

[Patrick]

I feel like an idiot for buying into this software. I should be working on developing my own billing system with the abundance of open source libraries available. Instead I'm making workarounds for a buggy, closed-source software that has a gazilion modules I don't need, and the ones I do are buggy.

Now I have to pay to get support for this software, or even talk to a person at this company. It's as if he doesn't want more customers, and isn't doing much to keep his current customers. Must be nice to provide services, than never ever talk to my clients again.

After a little research i found some info on them.  The info here is from their national court registry for registered businesses.  The information provided was last updated May 5th, 2013

http://www.krs-online.com.pl/kbkp-software-s-c-krs-812838.html

ul. Common 2, Rzeszów
35-205 Rzeszów

kbkp@hushmail.com

They aren't brothers or anything working there.  The two working are: (they are business partners)

Christopher Bieszczady - https://plus.google.com/110625360068856050212/posts <-- unconfirmed if this is his google+ but i'm pretty sure it is after some research
Christopher Spider

They are hiring massively, so how they can continue growth without an OUNCE of customer interaction is beyond me. http://www.careerjet.pl/oferty_pracy/k/kbkp_software_s_c.html
I believe this is a video of him after going through his possible google+ which was found through links and info under KBKP software. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ro6tU0mtgi0

The company info i provided above is the real deal as that's through the polish business registry, so we know there is two of them registered as partners. 

[Cloudrck]

I've heard Kris is hiring, and I don't doubt it. But like you said, no customer interaction? How long should I wait for Hostbill to get it's act together

[Patrick]

I forgot a link for some of the info i found.  http://www.krs-online.com.pl/kbkp-software-s-c-krs-812838.html