Item Support Policy and Functionality Launched

It is pointless to post in this thread, no one from Envato will respond here any more, and one day it will just be closed and that’s it. Support policy is active as they wanted it, and authors and buyers have no say in it anymore. This is the way Envato operates now.

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That it’s definitely what it looks like @GDragoN. This is reminding me of the situation with Reddit’s old CEO.

@charlie4282 Envato asked for questions regarding the new changes in Support Policy and Functionality to be addressed in this page: Item Support Policy and Functionality Launched

Why aren’t they answering???

Unfortunately I do not know what goes on day to day in envato’s offices but I am aware that they are doing their best to manage all the different situations.

While with respect they have addressed your initial concern, I don’t know why they have not been able to reply here again recently; and can only suggest emailing support for official responses in the meantime until they are able to reply here soon.

Dear @charlie4282, please refresh mi mind, as far as I know they didn’t answer me any of my questions yet.

And about the support…

If I am lucky probably I will get an answer next week. So much for paid support, if one of my client’s websites is down I don’t have the luxury of making my clients wait for a week.

Envato used to work just fine, when something is working is better not to try to fix it.

Dear @kayapati, it looks like you are totally right:

The first concern was the period of support. This was Andrew’s reply explaining that this has not altered.

Regarding the period stated in your dashboard - I don’t know if there is an official response but I promise you this is because it refers to the new envato guaranteed support which is not the same as the lifetime mentioned in Andrew’s post.

It’s crucial to understand that the guaranteed /paid for/listed in dashboard support from envato is NOT the same as any support, lifetime or otherwise, offered by authors previously.

OLD (often LIFETIME) SUPPORT:

  • Not compulsory
  • Author could stop or even remove files completely as and when they wanted
  • Between authors and buyers (as it is today). Envato couldn’t enforce it (a reason to want to change it).

NEW POLICY ENVATO SUPPORT:

  • Envato officially guarantee initially 6 months (more if purchased) support

Previously buyers got an author promising support which was completely unenforceable and could be ignored at any time. The paid extensions now are for official protection - just like an extended warranty offline.

It may not seem like it the new policy is a buyer benefit because bottom line, nothing has changed except that now buyers get 6 months FREE and official assurance which never existed previously.

As I said I’m sure one of the envato staff will reply but hopefully this clears some of it up in the meantime.

The delay on tickets is frustrating but I know they are doing all they can to work through it.

In terms of what they can do, again I am certain they have thought this out but at the end of the day whatever they do e.g. freezing accounts, refunding buyers etc. it will be an improvement on the previous situation where buyers could potentially just be left high and dry with nothing at all.

Hope that makes sense.

Please don’t elude my question and give me a clear answer, please tell me how do I extend that item support notice to lifetime support or how to get my money back. Thank you.

Hi ULEDco,

As mentioned by @charlie4282, you should work with the authors of your purchased items to get the support you were promised. Authors have access to your purchase date and are based placed to know what exactly they were offering buyers at that point.

If you feel that you are entitled to a longer period of support (than the 6 months granted from September 1st) then contact the author to find out if they plan on honouring their promise. If they don’t plan on honouring their promises then you can contact Envato Help and they will work with you and the author to resolve the issue. If they do plan on honouring their promise then you can simply disregard the count down.

Cheers!

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@andrewfreeman Hi, any news about this issue? seeing that it’s been more than two months (9 weeks) since your post and we don’t have any updates or at least some response on how it’s going

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Yeah, this is still ridiculous!

You decrease the price for an item simple because free support is included and charge extra for that free support. If this isn’t just another “tax trick” why would you do that and why does it takes so long to fix that?

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So?..We left some days for someone to answer before posting again, but five days later we still don’t have a response…for the ones that work in teams, the division of the included support in the statement is an added headache…it has become really messy

Hi Odin_Design/All,

When we launched the new item support policy in September there was feedback from authors to suggest that separating a supported item sale into two parts (1. license; and 2. included 6 months support) was confusing statements and causing issues with rounding.

We took that feedback onboard and set about the task of reworking our financial plumbing to combine the two transactions into one. We initially thought this would be a straightforward fix but we’ve since learned it’s a lot more complex. This is in a large part due to how closely tied this work is to other financial initiatives that we are in the thick of i.e. US earnings tax, and purchasing item support after the license purchase.

For this reason I am sorry to say that these changes are going to take longer than expected. We don’t currently have an ETA, but as the other financial initiatives progress we will know more and will come back to you with an update as soon as possible.

Cheers,
Andrew

Can you give some answer on my thought too @andrewfreeman?

Thanks!

I am done with Envato as well. License for FormCraft2 was not limited to a year. I came to Envato because I could offer clients a selection of plugins that were covered by lifetime update license. Currently alerting all my client base that going forward, Envato has created a system that apparently allows developers to abandon a plugin, force an update to the new version and then require paid subscription to get updates.

In the case of a certain form plugin, license and pricing changes just made Gravity Forms a super bargain. In fact I have to thank Envato and that certain plugin for helping me understand the bargain, ease of management and income opportunity Gravity Forms Dev license provides over greedy Envato.

I’d suggest that all Envato purchases appear to be sliding in actual value due to the fact that if initial prices can go up, so will so-called support and updates.

Plus there is no guarantee something you buy will be supported for any period of time beyond the first year.

Not fair, not business friendly, but hey, I guess they do things different in Australia.

For what it’s worth:

  • If you bought files with lifetime support then you still have this. Envato explicitly said they were not altering this.

That is simply not true - authors have always been able to remove files, stop supporting them etc as and whenever they wanted. At least not with the new policy it protects buyers for at least 6 months (something which was not the case previously)

Again not true. If you check the support policy then all core updates etc. are free for the lifetime of the file to everyone.

Again everyone is entitled to their opinion but overall I think that these changes are actually massively in buyers benefits buyers.

En esta cuenta tengo comprado 2 productos y ambos productos son de mala calidad por ejemplo el tema envision para empezar no actualiza el producto seguido y por otro lado el soporte es muy lento.
Optimización del tema es muy malo tiene muchos javascript cuando no deberia tener mas de 7 esto genera muchas peticiones en el servidor, no es compatible con yoast desde que saco la version 3 deben estar buscando una solucion a paso lento.
El composer integrado que viene con el tema es muy pesado por los javascript que carga por lo cual hay que trabajar en modo incógnito para que no sea tan pesado al trabajar en una pagina por más de 30 minutos.
El otro producto es Wordpress auto spinner este plugin no funciona como se menciona en la descripción del producto y el soporte es muy malo.
A lo que voy está bien que la compra incluya solo 6 meses de soporte pero que el producto sea pre testeado y funcione bien y que el soporte sea razonable no que se demore 3 dias en responder un ticket o en una semana o que no respondan en el foro y si respondan en comentarios del producto de envato.
Otro tema es la política de reembolso de envato es muy mala,a veces responden a la semana o con suerte a los 4 días.

@andrewfreeman Hello Envato Team. Is there any progress regarding the item support of mobile applications? I spend a lot of time every day supporting my Android apps. I don’t see any reason why “Mobile” category should be excluded from the new item support policy. Mobile apps are complicated and customers need a help quite often. See my portfolio - I have 1134 sales and 836 comments. I have much higher sales/comments ratio than any other ThemeForest author so why mobile items cannot follow item support policy? Can you do something about it??? Thank you.

Any announcement date for Renewal Support?

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Hi kayapati,

At this stage we are hoping to launch Support Extensions next week i.e. the functionality to extend support after the item has been purchased. Support Renewals (i.e. purchasing support after it has expired) should come within a couple of weeks after that, in time for our first support grants to expire on March 2nd.

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Thanks andrew :slight_smile: