In addition to his words here, he also contacted Miss Blondie directly to apologize. His apology included not only a refund of the purchase price of the theme, but he also did more than that and trust me when I say he more than made up for the inconvenience and trouble Miss Blondie encountered.
Mr. Gardner had three options as I see it.
- Ignore this post.
- Defend StudioPress.
- Apologize.
He opted for number three and I have incredible respect for that decision. He did, however, go above and beyond the apology and for that I am very impressed.
I considered removing this post entirely because in the end, a wrong was made right, but I am not going to. Mistakes happen, and I think there is a lot of value to a potential customer to see how a company addresses those mistakes. The actions here were swift and certainly above and beyond anything we would have expected.
Some cynics will say it shouldn’t have happened to begin with so to pat Mr. Gardner on the back now is too little, too late. The StudioPress forum has over 14,000 members, with over 20 moderators overseeing the support. That is a decent size team to manage and in business and life in general, things don’t always go as planned.
Like I said, I really believe that how people respond to problems, not the problems themselves, are what define them. And in this case the response was top-notch.
You can read what Miss Blondie thinks about the response from StudioPress here: Kudos to StudioPress
As mom bloggers become entrenched in the blogosphere, there is a natural desire to stand out from the crowd. One of the first things we think about to help achieve that aim is simple in concept but not always easy in application – the theme or layout of our sites.
WordPress themes are a dime a dozen; the web is innundated with thousands of free WordPress themes, many of them even worthy of kudos. The theme I use here on What’s That Smell? was free and worked right out of the box, in fact I have never paid for a WordPress theme. That being said, I spent many hours editing code to get it to do exactly what I wanted and look and function in a specific way. In the last year and a half, I have developed the skills to pretty much take any WordPress theme and make it do what I want. I could probably create one from scratch if I wanted to.
But what about the majority of bloggers out there who don’t have my skills or don’t want to learn? What about those bloggers who need a theme that works right “out of the box” and if it doesn’t, has the support to back it up?
If you type “premium WordPress themes” into a search engine, you will get millions of results. Bloggers looking to take their site design to a new level, but who cannot afford fully custom designs costing thousands of dollars, have created a niche for theme designers to sell these “premium” themes.
But what exactly are the benefits of a premium theme? Most premium theme designers boast higher quality, more user friendly interface for customization, and support to help you get the theme up and running on your site.
But what does support actually mean?
I asked a few mom blogger friends some questions about their expectations regarding premium themes.
From Heather of Maternal Spark:
Q: Why would you buy a premium WordPress theme over using a free theme?
A: I paid for a premium theme because it had the function I was looking for in terms of a more complex layout. I knew I wanted a magazine style layout but none of the free ones had the features I wanted.
Q: If you bought a premium WordPress theme, what would you expect the benefits to be?
A: I expected to find it easy to use with integrated options like color changing, adsense fields, auto thumbnails etc. I purchased a theme from Woo and it did have all these options built in plus some…
Q: Premium themes generally offer “support” as a benefit for purchasing them. Would you expect that the support should at least help you make sure the theme functions as it was originally advertised? Or do hosting services and other external variables differ so much that the theme designer cannot provide specific support for each individual customer?
A: I knew I didn’t want to do a lot of customizing to the theme beyond colors and a few other ‘easy’ things. And I have a popular host so I didn’t expect to find any weird issues. Yes, I expect support to offer theme related troubleshooting (not wordpress help) included in the price and have been happy with the support I’ve received at the Woo forums.
Q: Do you believe that if the “support” from a premium theme designer cannot get the theme fully functional, that they should offer you a refund?
A: Yes, unless I did something silly like ignore ‘required specs’ before I purchased (ie ~ requires wp 2.8.4 when I only use 7 or requires a funky database addition etc) then I’d expect a refund if the theme wouldn’t function through no fault of my own.
From Cat of 3 Kids and Us:
Q: Why would you buy a premium WordPress theme over using a free theme?
A: I tend to favor premium themes because the developer has vested interest in selling his quality work and making sure customers are happy with it, which includes offering design and troubleshooting support.
Q: If you bought a premium WordPress theme, what would you expect the benefits to be?
A: I always expect support for basic customizations and help with issues and bugs the theme may have, including updates of the theme for compatibility with future WordPress releases.
Q: Premium themes generally offer “support” as a benefit for purchasing them. Would you expect that the support should at least help you make sure the theme functions as it was originally advertised? Or do hosting services and other external variables differ so much that the theme designer cannot provide specific support for each individual customer?
A: I expect a reasonable amount of support that would cover ever aspect of the theme including any plugins that it comes packaged with.
Q: Do you believe that if the “support” from a premium theme designer cannot get the theme fully functional, that they should offer you a refund?
A: Absolutely. I wouldn’t go to the store and buy a bike with one wheel that was suppose to have to and expect to just live with it, I would get a refund.
From Tiffany of Babes and Kids:
Q: Why would you buy a premium WordPress theme over using a free theme?
A: I didn’t really know at the time when I got a premium theme, I just really liked the layout and liked the fact that it had more capabilities and support.
Q: Premium themes generally offer “support” as a benefit for purchasing them. Would you expect that the support should at least help you make sure the theme functions as it was originally advertised? Or do hosting services and other external variables differ so much that the theme designer cannot provide specific support for each individual customer?
A: Yes, support should get it fully functioning. If you are going to pay money for a premium theme, it should work, right? Premium themes cost a lot, I think you should have support for each customer.
Q: Do you believe that if the “support” from a premium theme designer cannot get the theme fully functional, that they should offer you a refund?
A: Definitely. I’ve posted a couple of times in my premium theme’s forum and never got a response. I don’t know if I need to contact them directly, but I stopped going to the forum and finally figured it out on my own when I realized that no one was going to answer.
It’s pretty clear from the responses that bloggers expect premium themes to come with at least enough support to get them running properly and possibly even some help for minor customizations.
At the same time I asked the questions above, I also asked for some links to some of the popular places to buy premium themes. I know there must be thousands more, but the list below encompasses some popular ones among the mom bloggers I talked to. I was curious to see what each of the sites said about the support they offer for their themes.
What do premium theme designers say about their support?
Incredible support: You get access to theme documentation, tutorials, knowledgebase and probably the best support forum anywhere! Our Woo Ninjas deliver outstanding technical support and guidance on basic customization issues that you might have.
A focus on support and community
We have an automated purchasing system, in-depth online theme documentation, and an ever-growing theme support forum. Maintaining its compatibility, themes are updated regularly and provided all free, just for you.
Every Thesis purchase option comes with killer benefits, including:
Lifetime theme upgrades
Complete access to the Thesis forums
Downloadable “stuff” that you can use to customize and enhance your theme (like background images and styles)
Lifetime Support
Need help fixing a problem or making a minor modification to your theme? Let’s face it; technology doesn’t always work as smoothly as we all want. So, if you need help, our support is world-class and our team consists of over 20 moderators from all over the world, who provide solutions and help to our 12,000+ members, many of which help other members.
After reading all of that, what would YOU expect from a premium theme?
I would say that the average cost for a single premium theme is $50 or $60. Would you expect the support on these themes to include any and all assistance required to make the theme function like the demo (unless it was explicitly stated otherwise)? Would you expect that the theme designer, or their support forum would provide you with whatever necessary help is required to get all the basic advertised features working on your site? Would you expect assistance in making minor customizations? Would you expect all this as a part of the $60 you paid for the theme?
Of course you do. Those are the advertised benefits of BUYING a “premium” theme. If you have to ask your friends or pay someone simply to get the basic functions of the theme installed on your site, what is the point of buying a premium theme to begin with?
Now, I don’t know about most of the sites I listed above, but I do have an opinion about one of them, and it is not good. Their “support” is basically a bait-and-switch tactic where they offer you support but then bill you for it afterwards.
StudioPress does not follow through with the world-class support they boast about.
My friend Miss Blondie recently switched from the Blogger platform to WordPress. Because she had no experience with WordPress or themes, she opted for a premium theme because she liked the idea of having the support from the experts if she needed it. She also liked the way it looked. She paid $59.99 for the Allure WordPress Theme from StudioPress.
This is what they advertise are the “benefits” that go along with it:
Allure Theme Package
Benefits include the Allure theme, unlimited theme support answered by our experts, customization techniques with our detailed theme tutorials and professional design services available by our list of recommended designers.
The Allure theme comes packaged with a plugin called Feature Content Gallery. It is a prominent feature of the theme and likely one of the deciding factors in purchasing it; the fact that the theme is already designed for it. When Miss Blondie installed her new theme into her brand new WordPress site (with no other plugins installed except the ones packaged with the theme) it would not work. She followed the tutorial repeatedly to make sure it was setup correctly, but the Gallery would not show up.
So she started a thread in the support forum asking for help.
Her initial question:
Featured Content Gallery
I’m literally at my wits end, I installed and activated the plugin, checked to make sure the correct code was in the home.php file, set 3 posts to be shown, each have an uploaded image with the articleimg custom field and the gallery will still not show. Not even the empty black box.
http://goodgollymissblondie.com
Any ideas?
The response from a “senior moderator”:
Not really….all we can do is tell you that if you set it up right it’ll work… We can’t tell where the mishap has occurred though unfortunately. Take the steps through again and just go slow and careful and make sure you’ve done them all and it’ll work. If you get too frustrated contact a recommended designer and one of us can do it for you in less than half an hour I’m sure. Good luck…
“All we can do is tell you that if you set it up right it’ll work”
What happened to unlimited theme support answered by our experts?
She was not asking how to install something that was not packaged with the theme. She was not asking for customization beyond the scope of simply getting the theme setup like the demo.
During the course of this, the same senior moderator who gave the “helpful” response above contacted Miss Blondie by PM (forum personal message) and offered to help her. He did not indicate in his PM that there would be a charge, in fact, this is what his message said:
Let me know if you want me to go in and fix this for you. I imagine it’s a pretty quick and easy fix.
J
So, Miss Blondie obliged and thanked him for helping. She assumed this senior moderator was fulfilling the unlimited theme support promised to her when she bought.
And she didn’t hear back.
So in the meantime, she asked another blogger who works with WordPress themes and myself if we could figure out the problem. We couldn’t.
I did however discover that the problem was a Javascript issue, particularly with one of the Javascript files for the Gallery plugin. For some reason her site was not recognizing it. I know very little about Javascript so Miss Blondie posted the following in the support forum:
The error console in Firefox is returning this error:
Error: gallery is not defined
Source File: http://goodgollymissblondie.com/wp-cont … sitions.js
Line: 4Does that shed some light on the problem at all?
Thanks!
I knew what the problem was, just not how to fix it, and in doing a search on the forum, there appeared to be other people having a similar issue with other StudioPress themes, only Miss Blondie did not have access to the support forums for the other themes, just the particular one she had purchased.
A day and a half went by and she received this via PM from the same Senior Moderator I mentioned previously:
Hey-
I fixed everything for you. It was really annoying me and I just couldn’t quit working on it until I got it done. I finally figured out all your problems late last night. So, here they are:
1. Your hosting set-up was causing the plugin to not read the js scripts from your server so I changed the plugin to read the scripts form the FCG plugin website itself instead of your server and now it’s working. Also, I encountered some other problems while figuring this all out…
2. Your website is also producing a non-related error due to an unzipping error for the WP update. Sometimes if you update via the auto-updater option, there can be an unzipping error-
to fix this, you have to replace the http.php file in the wp-includes folder. I did not fix this, just found it.
3. You might want to reconsider using the Juicebox Jungle widget in the sidebar – it causes A LOT of problems in IE and therefore either takes forever to load or doesn’t load at all and produces errors – the FCG loads AFTER the juicebox thing and so will have a big delay – I would get rid of it.I told you 30 minutes ($60) so that’s what I’ll stick with… say good things about me and send me the business and we’ll call the rest of it even
You can make a payment here: removed
Thanks!
John
At this point Miss Blondie asked me what I thought about the moderator for the support forum trying to charge her money simply to make the theme work properly. I told her that what he did should be included as a part of the “unlimited theme support” and to ask him why he charged her when the theme was supposed to come with support.
Also, the only thing affecting the theme of the 3 items he listed was the Javascript issue which I identified for him.
This was his response:
There was nothing wrong with the theme. The hosting and the way you had it set up were the problem. Also, when you go through private message and not the forum that is customization not support. My initial message to you in the forum said you should consider using a customizer and that it would probably be done in 30 minutes or so. That is also what i said to you in my initial private message. If you didn’t know then I’m sorry. Consider it a freebie. Just so you know I put about 5 hours of work into this and I charge $120 an hour. You would have honestly been lucky to even get anyone else to figure this problem out….
Also, FYI, as recommended customizers/designers we don’t make a dime off answering your questions in the forum. We answer them out of goodwill and because people will then hire us for things they can’t do themselves.
Once again, I like grateful clients who them say, “Wow, this guy did an amazing job and went above and beyond.” Obviously, this is not the case here and there was some sort of a miscommunication so again, just consider it a freebie (a very big one…)
J
I’m sorry but their promises of support do not say “we only support our themes if there is something wrong with the theme itself.” THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG IF IT DOESN”T WORK! When you purchase something you expect it to have all the functionality that it promises “on the packaging” in this case, on their theme demo. Plus he never tried to help her fix it via the support forum, the first thing he did was suggest she utilize a designer and pay for it. There was also nothing wrong with the way she set it up. The problem was a conflict with her hosting, that obviously had a work-around, and while StudioPress is not responsible for the plugin itself, they should be responsible to their customers when they package a third-party plugin with their theme and make it a central feature.
And to boast that the moderators at StudioPress are unpaid and provide support out of “goodwill” could probably be considered false advertising on their part. They promise WORLD CLASS support from a team of experts upon purchase of one of their theme packages, and it is THEIR problem if they don’t get paid, not the end customer.
As for the freebie…well, no sir. She paid $60 for a theme package and SUPPORT.
It appears that StudioPress‘ promises of “world class” support lure you in to purchase their themes, then leave you high and dry or bait-and-switch you into paying extra money for support. The theme was not fully functioning on Miss Blondie’s site. No matter WHY, StudioPress has a responsibility to their customers to help figure it out AND provide the resources for other people with similar problems to come to the support forum and find solutions their problems. Or issue a refund. Instead of offering solutions publically in the forum for all of their customer’s benefit, a moderator from StudioPress approached her privately, was not clear about his intentions and now, every time another one of their customers have this problem he will make $60 a pop or more. How is this community support if the solutions to problems are not put out there for the community to benefit from, AND on top of it they rip people off by trying to charge for something that should have been included in the price of the theme?
Miss Blondie is not the only one who has had problems with StudioPress
Remember the question and answer sections above? Well below are the same questions asked to a previous StudioPress customer.
From Jen of Mommy’s Hangout:
Q: Why would you buy a premium WordPress theme over using a free theme?
A: To Be honest I bought the Lifestyle and the Magazine theme because i liked the layouts and thought I would get great support Which I find was not the case!! I refuse to even ask for help on there because all i see is them telling you to search the board or pay one of their approved designers. I am not looking for a redesign I just need a code and the instructions so I can do it myself!!
Q: Premium themes generally offer “support” as a benefit for purchasing them. Would you expect that the support should at least help you make sure the theme functions as it was originally advertised? Or do hosting services and other external variables differ so much that the theme designer cannot provide specific support for each individual customer?
A: I Expected it but didn’t get it lol.
Q: Do you believe that if the “support” from a premium theme designer cannot get the theme fully functional, that they should offer you a refund?
A: Yes Because if you can’t get it fully Functional then it’s going to cost more money to pay someone who can so you are out of even more money.
Ok let me add Studiopress is the only one I have used so I am not sure how others are but I have got more help from the girls on here than I would there so that tells you something. They can be so rude there Its so bad that I am actually scared to post!! I just lurk and hope someone ask the same question LOL
Some other general quotes from former customers:
No she is not the first have you not read their msg Board LOL if anyone ask for anything its always check the approved designers to help you But they don’t tell you have to pay till after the fact you contact them!!
Oh I can’t stand them either. I couldn’t get Gregs comments to work. I asked for help over there and their answering was “Install the Greg’s threaded comment plugin.” Well no shit. I did that and it didn’t work. So thankful that Kim had a tutorial about fixing it on her site.
Let me remind you what StudioPress advertises as benefits of using their themes
From their Theme Features page:
Lifetime Support
Need help fixing a problem or making a minor modification to your theme? Let’s face it; technology doesn’t always work as smoothly as we all want. So, if you need help, our support is world-class and our team consists of over 20 moderators from all over the world, who provide solutions and help to our 12,000+ members, many of which help other members.
And from their Terms and Conditions page:
Warranty
Our themes are guaranteed to function on a clean installation of WordPress or when activated without any changes. Once you modify any of the theme files or include third party applications, then we cannot guarantee that the themes will work. It is our policy to support our themes as best we can, and we will provide support to modified themes or instances of third party applications at our discretion or as time allows.
Theme support
The theme packages that are purchased on this site include support. All support inquiries and questions shall be addressed in the support forum. This is the quickest and most efficient way for anyone who has purchased a theme package to receive support. Moreover, the support that we offer shall include common issues and bugs that might occur, and not necessarily customization of any themes. Theme support will only be given to those who purchase a theme package from this website.
So what does this mean to you?
Not everyone who buys a premium WordPress theme is a novice at coding. Some, I’m sure, buy a premium theme as a way to have a great springboard to make a kick-butt custom theme for themselves. But many people, if not most, who buy these themes are novices, that is one of the things that makes a premium theme so appealing and worth the $60 or more.
It can be very overwhelming and intimidating to spend that much money for a FILE that you download and then you still have to figure out what to do with it, especially for those who haven’t done much more than open up their WordPress dashboard and look around.
Premium theme designers should be held accountable to their support promises. Yes, there are external variables that may affect the functionality of the theme, but they did not identify prior to the theme purchase that there may be Javascript issues and to “purchase at your own risk” (who’d buy it if they did that – they are supposed to offer support). They do not list minimum server requirements or have a disclaimer that I could find that says the support forum will not provide any support for packaged theme features based upon third party plugins. They indicate that they are not responsible when YOU make modfications or when YOU include third-party plugins, but they do not address the plugins packaged with the theme. They do not indicate this will cost extra. Again, the Featured Content Gallery is one of the reasons people buy StudioPress themes, because they are designed around it, so to indicate that they do not provide support for it would certainly cause people to look elsewhere.
So why the bait-and-switch?
Why do they not simply back up their support, provide answers in the forum for all of their customers to benefit from, and stand behind their own promises of “world-class” support?
I guess that is the million-dollar question about any business that has dissatisfied customers.
What do you do about it?
Don’t buy their themes.
End of story.
And do your homework before buying a premium theme. Just like looking at houses, don’t fall in love with it until you are sure there are no cracks in the foundation.
The really sad part is that those of you who spent the $60 already, satisfied or not, are likely to continue to use the theme, continue to provide a link BACK the StudioPress in your footer, help their search engine rankings and likely inadvertently refer other people to them to buy their themes.
All sales are final with StudioPress but that doesn’t mean that you don’t have any power.
You are a blogger.
Feel free to roar.
For additional information and advice about premium WordPress themes, check out this post:
Mom Blog Guide – Premium WordPress Themes
About Kim
Wow, what a tough audience. I would hate to be whoever created your next theme. One bad expierience and you trash eveyour next
I trashed no one. I stated the facts and gave my opinion on those facts. If people don’t speak up, then problems like these will continue to exist and more people will get taken advantage of.
You may have an unlimited bank account and enjoy being walked all over and taken advantage of. We don’t.
oh geesh matthew! I wasn’t talking about you! I was talking about the “designers” that are the mods in the studio press forums silly!
duh sorry i wasn’t thinking lol
very sorry :)
I’ve updated my post as well, small note in the footer. http://3kidsandus.com/2009/mom-blog-guide-premium-wordpress-themes/
WTG Brian! I think your response shows that you really do care about your product and customers. Too bad one seed had to ruin the apple.
Thanks for writing this Kim. I will stay away from StudioPress if I change my theme anytime in the near future. Like you quoted in your post though, I had some problem with support with my theme and ended up figuring it out on my own.
I feel so bad that Miss Blondie had this kind of experience. Off to tweet this post…VERY VERY well written.
Thanks Tiffany!
Make sure you come back and read the update.
i hope ur not referring to me because for one im not a designer.
and two its the point about how premium never have been worth it to me.
so thanks rude :)
great post kim.
looks like some designers are lurking the forums ready to pounce fresh meat so they can make a few bucks. very very sad.
I love my thesis theme. free too.
and very sad, as the studio themes are really nice.
btw, can I plug a USB into your head and copy the info on coding? i will pay a nominal fee? and it would just be a copy.
Karissa,
Thanks! If I could plug myself in and share some of my knowledge for $$ I’d gladly do it LOL!
Make sure you come back and read the update!
wow thats really bad. premium themes are overrated, i’ve always used “free” ones.
for $50 i’d gladly help someone set up a WP blog, install some plugins, a free theme and SEO customization, on top of future support, definitely not at a blind charge of $60.
poor poor.
dropping my url: matthewhenrickson.com ;)
Yet another reason I will never switch to WordPress. If this is the kind of support you get from paying for a theme that doesn’t even come with custom graphics or installation, I will stay with Blogger, TYVM.
LOL
Shan you know WordPress is still the only way to go!
Read the update I added to this post!
You CAN read even with a bee sting right?
Good update, Felipe. I am glad to hear he wanted to make it right. So many others just say “That is company policy” and care nothing about the customer, without whom they would have no company.
One other thing I want to say to Miss Blondie – if in fact you were charged for the time it took to resolve the issue with the FCG plugin, please let me know. I will personally reimburse you for any amount of money you spent on the theme or for getting it fixed.