Does anyone from MC ever respond to the threads here?

Questions about MultiCharts and user contributed studies.
tradinghumble
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Does anyone from MC ever respond to the threads here?

Postby tradinghumble » 09 Jan 2010

Just saw a number of different threads and nobody from MC seem to reply... :lol:

to be fair, TJ does but nobody from TS... could be wrong...

bowlesj3
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Postby bowlesj3 » 09 Jan 2010

Andrew does in a flurry of responses every so often (a catch up). No doubt he is very busy and one person can only do so much. They lost Marina who was fairly/very responsive and I guess they have not found an equivalent replacement yet because I don't see anyone other than Andrew, TJ and random outside responses now. I think they are still looking for a Marina replacement.

brodnicki steven
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Postby brodnicki steven » 10 Jan 2010

Christmas and New Years holidays, might have caused them to fall behind as well.
Usually Andrew (or other support staff) is quite prompt about answering questions.

tcat
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Postby tcat » 10 Jan 2010

One could wonder whether the decision to provide Multicharts upgrade for free is a good one, as it appears that a number of improvements could be brought to the service, among which:
1) Better organisation of the forum, so as to classify incidents by type and versions.
2) Allow for a proper tracking of defects.
3) Faster response time to valid inquiries from forum contributors.
4) Decrease lag time of beta releases.
5) A roadmap for the following release (at least). Release's scope and timeline always occure as a surprise. For example, I would still be interested to know if Windows 64 bits support, Dukascopy JForex API interface support are to be in the pipe for the upcoming release.

I understand there is no free lunch, reason for which I would be willing to pay for an upgrade fee if such services were to be provided in future.
Thierry

tradinghumble
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Postby tradinghumble » 10 Jan 2010

Thanks for the replies guys, very informative.

Thierry, regarding your reply:
"One could wonder whether the decision to provide Multicharts upgrade for free is a good one, "

I own lifetime licenses of both NT, AB and Metastock, they all provide free upgrades and 'also' provide great support via the forums (NT +9, AB +9, Metastock +5 rates)...

In my mind, support is not an IF, but an AND.

bowlesj3
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Postby bowlesj3 » 10 Jan 2010

You know the forum support is great and I just found out just how good it really is by doing something I have never done before. I did a google type search of the forum using this.

Search String: "add subtract time in seconds"
Check box: "Search for all terms"

Try it and you get rid of a the junk and get the exact posts you need.

So we don't need to overwork Andrew on a lot of issues if we use this technique first. Hah, Andrew will love me for this post :D

So when a new user asks a question someone thinks may be answered in an old forum post we tell them to try a google type search (as above) and the first example we give them is "Effective Use of the forum". Everyone dumps suggestions for using the forum effectively in this post. tradinghumble changes the subject to "Effective Use of the forum" and when we recommend this to a new user when we figure they have read our post we delete our suggestion so it does not show up in this search (They only get this post rather than having all the new user tips keep showing up).

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arnie
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Postby arnie » 10 Jan 2010

I own lifetime licenses of ... Metastock, they ... provide free upgrades and 'also' provide great support via the forums (... Metastock +5 rates)...
You need to tell me where and how did you get a lifetime license of Metastock.

If you bought one version you need always to pay for the upgrade if you want to have the new version.
I bought version 10.1 and if I wanted this new version I would need to pay $150 if I'm not mistaken.

But let's be honest, Reuters killed Metastock long time ago with their policy of selling indicators instead of preparing Metastock for the new trading necessities.

The only difference between version 10.1 and 11 is a couple of indicators, nothing else.

That's why I abandoned it and adopted Multicharts.
Multicharts is a all new world when compared to Metastock.

But you are right, it's a bit sad not seeing more replies from Support, but Andrew promissed that is taking care of that so let's wait...

marekj
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Postby marekj » 10 Jan 2010

Paying for upgrades with lifetime license...

I'm 100% against it. Long time ago Multicharts decided to have "lifetime" license (instead just "regular" license). Company suggested, that owner of "lifetime" license will not pay for updates/upgrades/new releases. Company priced that feature into product price. In my opinion attempt to trying change already established policy was a bad joke from Multicharts. If the price of "lifetime" license is too low, it can be raised. Also "lifetime" license can be discontinue and replaced with "regular" license (customer pays for upgrades/new releases and the total price is slightly lower then monthly/annual subscription). But policy for current owners of "lifetime" license SHOULD NOT CHANGE. Attempt to change this policy was the form of converting owner of "lifetime" license into some kind of subscribers. Disrespectful for "lifetime" license owners, against what company suggest with naming "lifetime license".

Just my 2 cents in this discussion.

tcat
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Postby tcat » 10 Jan 2010

I understand everyone's feedback as I share most of the appreciations. Being familiar with Metastock (for which I haven't seen free updates though) and AB (which definitely does), the question of the upgrade fee is, as far as I am concerned, only a matter of defining if support, time to market and visibility on the near term future is of upmost concern to most users (as it is for me), or if most users would comply with the feedback that MC team (namely Andrew at this point) is currently providing.
The forum surely benefits from a number of very active contributors (who would definitely deserve the best best forum contributor of the year award), which is of real benefit for all.
There are however situations where MC team could provide better service. My experience in software dev let me to believe that, unless dedication and manpower is added to the core team, there are limited improvement that can be brought to the situation.
Thierry

marekj
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Postby marekj » 10 Jan 2010

Tcat,

1) Are you a "lifetime" license holder? If not, please stop suggesting how to charge "lifetime" license owners.

2) If you are a "lifetime" license owner, please send $10,000 USD check to Multicharts for any purpouse, and DO NOT TRY INVOLE ME in you "ventures". Again, company has many different methods to raise additional capital (like make product much better then competition, raise current prices for monthly/annual subscription, replace "lifetime" license with "regular" one (customer will pay for upgrades).

In business is HIGHLY UNETHICAL to promise one thing ("lifetime" license) and later without acceptance of all "lifetime" license owners make them paying for upgrades.

bowlesj3
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Postby bowlesj3 » 10 Jan 2010

When I first came in at just before MC 2.1.999.999 the promise was free upgrades to the gold release and MC 6.0 was after the gold release (a promise which they kept). The Christmas gift was an extension of this it seems (maybe they wanted lots of feedback on the new playback feature and felt it was a good investment - there is one serious bug to fix too). The main point is I was never led to believe (in any way shape or form) it was an actual life time but rather it was a specific cut off release. I actually emailed to ask for clarification and I think I still have the response. The Christmas extension I need to reread.

I personally am very appreciative of MC and respectfully helping with feedback, ideas and testing is the least I could do. We can really only help with the features we use and MC is now very close to having covered off everything for me (feature wise that is). Bugs are different of course.

TSS is a great group. Maybe a bit understaffed at the moment but I am not complaining. It could happen at any time for that matter for many reasons. Positive feedback should always be mentioned when we see good work because nasty, overly harsh feedback could indirectly contribute to a further reduction in that workforce (I am always trying to rid my posts of any negativity when I sense I have slipped up here). Unfortunately some do not understand this but this forum seems to have lots that do understand this. In fact negativity seems to be very rare here so I want to thank pretty much everyone for being positive that way since ultimately it really does help MC be a better product for all of us. It could be the reality that traders have to be very positive people to survive (just keep it up long enough to learn it) and there are a lot of great traders and high potential traders on this forum.

Everyone knows money is reality. If TSS has to change policy for new comers so TSS can survive I think that most understand this. Keeping old promises to old customers who helped them create a great product makes good money sense too. I suggested once that they include their policy statement in the help of each release so we can easily go back and review it release by release (actually it would also need to be included in the .exe install file somehow so we could go back to review it without having to install an old release to see it - maybe an option on the install itself to read it - that option would not disturb our existing release level).

marekj
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Postby marekj » 10 Jan 2010

bowlesj3,

Thank you for a post. I agree with your comments. To make clear, I'm not trying to bring negativity to this forum, etc. I'm a loyal Multicharts customer from release 2.x. I do appreciate Multicharts technical support (on Friday they fix in few hours Zen-Fire issue reported by me few day ago). My comments are based on my personal business believes and what is the best for Multicharts as company.
Last edited by marekj on 11 Jan 2010, edited 1 time in total.

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RobotMan
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Postby RobotMan » 11 Jan 2010

I have a lifetime license to Windows 98. :lol:
I have received every update to it, too.


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