Purchased book not being added + empty promises from customer support

Martin YK Lee
Martin YK Lee Member Posts: 10 ✭✭
edited November 20 in English Forum

I purchased "A Short History of the Georgian Church" and received an email on 24th June indicating that the book was ready to be downloaded. I attempted to download it, but it did not show up in my library. I was using Logos 4 at the time.

I contacted Logos Customer Support on 27 June, and was asked to try the "Update Resources" command, which did not solve the problem. I was also asked to submit a log file, which I did. The subsequent response from Customer Support was that I should try upgrading to Logos 5, and to "Keep in mind, that if you don’t already own a Logos 5 base package, you will be missing many new features of Logos 5. To add these features, as well as more books to your library, please consider upgrading with custom discount, based on what you already own."

I expressed my dissatisfaction with this reply. The response that came back was "By updating your program all of your resources from Logo (sic) 4 will be transferred to Logos 5. Once that is complete I guarantee your recent purchased (sic) will be in your library."

Well, I've now updated to the Logos 5 engine, and the purchased book is still not being added to my library.

Which leads me to my questions:

1. Has anyone else had a similar problem with this book? I believe it is book-specific since other books I've purchased have been added to my library without problems.

2. Is Logos now producing books that are not supported by earlier program engines? That's the logical conclusion, since Customer Support is touting an engine upgrade to solve this problem... =(

3. Customer Support made a "guarantee" that this issue would be fixed by upgrading to Logos 5. Well, that didn't solve the problem. What next, Logos?

4. I also made a request for my query to be escalated to someone more senior. This was not done, and I have not heard from Customer Support for over a week. I have been a Logos customer for over a decade, and I must say that this recent episode has left me rather disappointed with Logos' customer support.

Comments

  • SteveF
    SteveF Member Posts: 1,866 ✭✭✭

    The next time, customer Service wants you to spend money to fix a problem--come here to the forums and post your "log files."

    If the skilled "stars" on the Forum cannot help they will then be quick to refer you back to Customer Service.

    It may be the a Logos "tech guru" will also step in to help.

    What you have experienced is not unknown. It used to happen fairly often [to me]--I've just not seen it reported as much lately.

    Each time I had to delete some of the Databases in order for the resource to download. In a couple of extreme situations I even had to force a re-download of my entire Library. But before doing anything like that, at least give the folks here a chance to help.

    Logos is a wonderful tool,  but it is not "perfect." As another long-time user, I am sorry for your troubles.

    Regards, SteveF

  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 53,169

    Has anyone else had a similar problem with this book?

    Occasionally this problem is resource specific but it is more often the result of a failed transmission that left your databases in an unexpected state. You need to talk to technical services for resolution.

    I guarantee your recent purchased

    Never trust a customer service rep who says "I guarantee" regardless of what company they work for unless it is to say "I guarantee we will make it right"[:)]

    I also made a request for my query to be escalated to someone more senior.

    I've never had this problem fortunately.

    Try calling tech services rather than customer services which from some recent complaints I suspect has some new employees still learning the ropes.

    Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."

  • Graham Criddle
    Graham Criddle MVP Posts: 32,509

    Hi Martin

    Sorry to hear you are having problems.

    1. Has anyone else had a similar problem with this book? I believe it is book-specific since other books I've purchased have been added to my library without problems.

    I'm sorry but I didn't purchase that resource so can't answer personally and don't believe I have seen any reports in the forums about people having issues with that particular resource

    2. Is Logos now producing books that are not supported by earlier program engines? That's the logical conclusion, since Customer Support is touting an engine upgrade to solve this problem... =(

    This does happen from time to time with new resources introducing new datatypes (for example) or which need particular functionality in order for them to work. I don't know whether this is true for this particular resource.

    Some questions:

    • if you go to biblia.com and log in using your logos credentials can you see the resource in the library there?
    • Can you ensure diagnostic logging is enabled - http://wiki.logos.com/Diagnostic_Logging - and post logs after starting Logos, leaving it to run for a couple of minutes and stopping it?
    • Have you purchased / obtained any other resources since 24th June and - if so - did they download successfully?

    Thanks, Graham 

  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 53,169

    I'm sorry but I didn't purchase that resource
    I have it and had nothing unusual in downloading it.

    Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."

  • Bradley Grainger (Logos)
    Bradley Grainger (Logos) Administrator, Logos Employee Posts: 11,958

    I apologise for the inconvenience you've experienced with this product and your poor experience with Customer Service.

    We are actively working on fixing this problem and will be shipping a 5.2a Service Release very soon that will allow your purchase to download.

    The following details are for those interested in the technical nature of the problem; I'm not trying to make excuses for the problem, but just want to provide some background for interested parties.

    We recently noticed a problem that was causing some resources to not be updated correctly; the software would incorrectly download an older version of the resource, not the latest version published by our content production team. In order to fix the problem, we have to change some of the metadata about available resource versions on our server and ship an SR that makes the desktop software compatible with that change. This server-side change was made last night, and had the inadvertent side-effect of stopping some resource downloads that were working for customers running 5.2a SR-6, including the download of A Short History of the Georgian Church.

    Is Logos now producing books that are not supported by earlier program engines?

    Yes, we are. We announced in January that Logos 4.6c would be unable to read some new purchases from logos.com: http://community.logos.com/forums/t/80475.aspx

    There are now about 300 resources that require 5.2a or later; some of these are updates to existing resources (and Logos 4.6c can still download and read the older version), but some of them are new resources and can't be read by 4.6c at all. (I don't have a breakdown of how many are in each category, sorry.) A Short History of the Georgian Church falls into the latter category.

    Customer Support made a "guarantee" that this issue would be fixed by upgrading to Logos 5. Well, that didn't solve the problem. What next, Logos?

    While the advice you received from Customer Service is normally correct, as described above there are now a handful of resources that will not download until we ship 5.2a SR-7. I assume you updated to Logos 5 within the last 18 hours (which is about when the problem started happening)?

    I will make sure that Customer Service is aware of the problem so they can advise customers to wait for 5.2a SR-7.

    I also made a request for my query to be escalated to someone more senior. This was not done, and I have not heard from Customer Support for over a week. I have been a Logos customer for over a decade, and I must say that this recent episode has left me rather disappointed with Logos' customer support.

    I will pass your feedback on to the CS manager.

  • Graham Criddle
    Graham Criddle MVP Posts: 32,509

    The following details are for those interested in the technical nature of the problem; I'm not trying to make excuses for the problem, but just want to provide some background for interested parties.

    Thanks Bradley[Y]

  • Evan Boardman
    Evan Boardman Member Posts: 738 ✭✭

    Does this explain why all the books from the classic studies on John the Baptist didn't download?

  • Don Awalt
    Don Awalt Member Posts: 3,521 ✭✭✭

    Does this explain why all the books from the classic studies on John the Baptist didn't download?

    I am seeing this as well!

  • Ronald Quick
    Ronald Quick Member Posts: 2,965 ✭✭✭

    Only half of the John the Baptist volumes downloaded.  I'm not sure what happened to the other three.

  • Don Awalt
    Don Awalt Member Posts: 3,521 ✭✭✭

    I just got the other three to download - I did Update Resources a second time and they came down. Try that.

  • Bradley Grainger (Logos)
    Bradley Grainger (Logos) Administrator, Logos Employee Posts: 11,958

    Does this explain why all the books from the classic studies on John the Baptist didn't download?

    Yes, the following resources in that series are affected:

    • John the Baptist: The Congregational Union Lecture for 1874
    • John the Loyal: Studies in the Ministry of the Baptist
    • The Ministry of St. John Baptist
  • Bradley Grainger (Logos)
    Bradley Grainger (Logos) Administrator, Logos Employee Posts: 11,958

    I just got the other three to download - I did Update Resources a second time and they came down. Try that.

    This would have worked if you ran "update resources" between 1:00pm and (approximately) 1:20pm PDT. (We were investigating an alternate means to solve the problem, but it would have required forcing everyone to manually run "update resources" and was also incompatible with SR-7. Instead, shipping SR-7 will resolve the problem automatically, so we reverted this change and are focussing on shipping the updated desktop software.)

  • Don Awalt
    Don Awalt Member Posts: 3,521 ✭✭✭

    Thanks Bradley. Will there be a quick update for those on the beta?

  • Graham Criddle
    Graham Criddle MVP Posts: 32,509

    Thanks Bradley. Will there be a quick update for those on the beta?

    At http://community.logos.com/forums/t/86637.aspx, Bradley says he hopes beta 5 will be ready tomorrow morning

  • Naveen Balakrishnan
    Naveen Balakrishnan Member Posts: 55

    I just realized that prior to the software update, I had 14 resources that did not update to their corresponding recent versions.  Thanks Logos for doing a wonderful job when the problem is made known to you and addressing it quickly.  I am grateful to the LORD for this software and its incredible aid in my preparation and study.

    In Christ Alone and for His Glory

    Naveen B.

    2 Timothy 2:15

  • Angela Murashov
    Angela Murashov Member Posts: 1,532

    Thanks Bradley. Will there be a quick update for those on the beta?

    At http://community.logos.com/forums/t/86637.aspx, Bradley says he hopes beta 5 will be ready tomorrow morning

    5.2b Beta 5 is now available [:)]

  • Martin YK Lee
    Martin YK Lee Member Posts: 10 ✭✭

    Thanks everyone for your thoughts and comments! 5.2a Service Release 7 (5.2.1.0171) fixed the problem. [:)] It also updated five other books in my library that apparently weren't updating previously.

    Kudos to the Tech Support people for identifying and fixing this issue, and for your clear and thoughtful responses. The folk in Customer Support could stand to learn a few things from you regarding how to respond to customer queries of this nature! [Y]

    Shalom.

    5.2a Service Release 7 (5.2.1.0171)