Dear Logos, Thank you for an excellent product. I am truly grateful. With that said, I find it very valuable to transfer resources to other users at times. I have just found out that we are only allowed to do this one time. If I bought a print book, it could change hands multiple times and my money would be better stewarded. Many people complain that Logos is limited because you can't resale and you can fight this con that Bible software is known to have. I understand if this was a free service, but we do pay. We pay quite a bit. Since it doesn't hurt you financially, please consider changing it, in order to better serve your loyal members. Thank you for considering!
A loyal customer, Sam Choi
A hearty second to the motion.
The spirit of a pilgrim greatly facilitates praying. An earth-bound, earth-satisfied spirit cannot pray.--E. M. Bounds
I would love to see as part of either the program or perhaps a benefit of Logos Now an option to "loan" books with a pre-set time limit to other Logos users. That way you could share resources with friends who were writing papers or who needed guidance on one issue yet have the book be automatically returned to your library after a set time. The person loaning the work would lose access during that time just as if it were a paper book. I am sure it would be more complicated than this with publisher rights, etc.. (perhaps locking the resource into a "read only" mode or something of the sort if it were loaned out), but that would be a welcome addition.
Sam Choi: Since it doesn't hurt you financially, please consider changing it...
Since it doesn't hurt you financially, please consider changing it...
Sam, you raise an interesting point, however your above comment isn't entirely true. If people can buy resources freely from other Logos users on a secondary market, then it *might* harm Logos's ability to sell new resources to users...
While on topic, making a user's account "willable" seems only fair. If I buy a book, it is not cremated with me or buried six feet under, my grand-children can read it.
I've been directed by another helpful user to this message Bob Pritchett wrote back in August. It is very clarifying but I still appreciate a tweak in policy. Or at least an appeal process that is clear. I requested this morning but wasn't granted the option, but this could have been due to an uninformed employee. I think it would be helpful to have maybe a 30 day lock up period to avoid multiple handing over and time for refunds to settle.
It seems the biggest fear people have is that their large investment in Logos books won't be transferable in their estate. That's never a problem, and is the easiest possible scenario. Transferring a complete account is relatively easy for us, and there's no reason we wouldn't do it. if your heir dies, and wants to transfer it to their heir, that's fine, too. That's not a scenario that's difficult or that bothers us at all.
Individual license transfers of single titles are a mess. The scenario that started all this -- David's request to move licenses to his wife -- was the worst possible scenario. It involved five hours of manual work editing databases, because he wanted to move a list of specific titles (many already second-hand purchases) from one account to another.
Now you can say it's our fault that it takes five hours to move licenses -- that seems crazy, right? And in a way it is. In the old days I'd have just told the CS team to unlock the titles he wanted moved on the new account and be done with it. But in this new world where people want to transfer licenses years in the future, get refunds years later, etc. that creates a liability -- the original licenses are still on the first account, and could theoretically be transferred again and again. Not only would this open us to abuse scenarios, it would mess up royalty audits for publishers and more.
So to transfer a license we remove it from the original account and, because of how our systems work, remove it from the original order record, then add it to the recipient's account. When this is 'all licenses' or even all of a single order record, it's not too hard. When it's a line item in a multi-line order record, it's a bigger mess.
(Again, you can say 'build smarter systems!' -- but I don't have the back-end royalty / accounting / commerce system I'd design today -- I have the one we've grown over 15 years for our very specific needs. It's not easy to rework it structurally, and there's an 18 month backlog of projects on the team's list. And it already has a dev team about the same size as the one actually writing the desktop software. And do you really want us putting all our code into the commerce and accounting back end, rather than the product?)
I don't even know all the steps myself; what I know is that it's enormously time-consuming and that requests to automate the system return time estimates (and delays of other needed features) that are even more unacceptable (at this point).
With all that said, in the end we continue to do everything we can for our customers. We do the tedious license transfers. We override the policies.
Yes, we want to discourage excessive use of processes / habits which drain our resources or reduce our revenue. We are a business, and we have to make some money to stay in business. I know that all of you want to be good stewards of your dollars, but if (made up scenario) we made license transfer a self-serve web-based operation, and you all set up a book exchange forum, you could buy just a few copies and then request 'transfer it to me' in the forums, passing a single book around ten times a day. Like a digital lending library, without the friction of having to go to the library to return/retrieve the book.
I know that scenario sounds great for users, but it would kill us quickly. So the $20 license transfer fee, the advertised 'one transfer only per book', etc. are protection mechanisms to add friction to the process (and cover our not insignificant costs of manual transfers). The friction is to discourage abuse and give us a way to stop it when it happens. The friction and 'policies' are so we can stay in business, not so we can hurt or get in the way of you or any honest customer. If the friction gets in your way, ask for an exception or appeal to a manager or to me -- we will always do the right thing. We're just trying to draw some loose boundaries to offer protection against (and to discourage) the worst abuses
Perhaps the request should be for Faithlife to consider upgrading their systems to automate the process of transferring a resource. If they could support resource transfers with a more attractive fee - say, $5 a book - without losing money, it would be a feature they could advertise.
Thanks for the reply. I think it has been 10 years or so since I actually asked someone at Logos regarding willing my account. At that time I was told that it couldn't be done. So thankful that that is not the case now.
EastTN: Perhaps the request should be for Faithlife to consider upgrading their systems to automate the process of transferring a resource. If they could support resource transfers with a more attractive fee - say, $5 a book - without losing money, it would be a feature they could advertise.
Bob has a point, though. I am not sure whether most users would opt for upgrading the back end systems if that meant a sacrifice to the scope and speed of new material coming online...
Sam,
I am very sorry for the confusion. I am going to contact you offline so we can work on this transfer.
Don
Rayner: Bob has a point, though. I am not sure whether most users would opt for upgrading the back end systems if that meant a sacrifice to the scope and speed of new material coming online...
My guess is that it depends on the size of the sacrifice. My hope would be that this wouldn't require a huge development effort.
EastTN: Rayner: Bob has a point, though. I am not sure whether most users would opt for upgrading the back end systems if that meant a sacrifice to the scope and speed of new material coming online... My guess is that it depends on the size of the sacrifice. My hope would be that this wouldn't require a huge development effort.
From Bob's response above about the 18 month delays to the back end system, even if it's only a small effort, it's going to be some years away. I wonder if Faithlife has created a product that has become successful almost too quickly, meaning that they're playing catch up at the same time as attempting to win new customers with quite different needs to one another?
Rayner: EastTN: Rayner: Bob has a point, though. I am not sure whether most users would opt for upgrading the back end systems if that meant a sacrifice to the scope and speed of new material coming online... My guess is that it depends on the size of the sacrifice. My hope would be that this wouldn't require a huge development effort. From Bob's response above about the 18 month delays to the back end system, even if it's only a small effort, it's going to be some years away. I wonder if Faithlife has created a product that has become successful almost too quickly, meaning that they're playing catch up at the same time as attempting to win new customers with quite different needs to one another?
They wouldn't be the first organization to experience growth pains. I wouldn't expect them to make this the same sort of priority as they might a new program feature, but I do think they'd be wise to add it to the design specs for their next back-end update.
Sam Choi:this message Bob Pritchett wrote back in August
Sam: could you post the link to Bob's original post? (It seems more authoritative that way : )
Pete De Bonte: Sam: could you post the link to Bob's original post? (It seems more authoritative that way : )
https://community.logos.com/forums/p/88357/621852.aspx#621852