Trillian Pro 1.0 a cash cow? (Trillian)

Member Name: MichelleMichelle

Product:	Trillian
Date:	18/06/03 (139 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: connect to 5 IM's, meta contacts

Disadvantages: lack of customer satisfaction, absolute no refund policy, No video/audio

While Trillian is the outcome of the development of a great idea, interoperability (to a certain extent), Trillian Pro 1.0 seems to be Cerulean Studios' cash cow...

With very few new major features that are visible to this end user Trillian Pro 1.0 offers a broken yahoo webcam feature and pretty much non existent member benefits in the way of their advertised "years worth of frequent updates and insider scoops"

In the face of accusations of false advertisement and many dissatisfied customers (as is demonstrated in the members forum for paid customers only) Cerulean Studios has remained quiet. The severly limited inconsequential "updates" that emerged only after the persistance of some vocal members (It is not known if the forth coming announcements had anything to do with the members persistance or if Cerulean Studios just needed months to prepare them) conveyed little of importance unless you consider being informed that the broken webcam issue will hopefully be fixed in the next release, date unknown... and that the beta may be released in 2-3 weeks (3 weeks being 12 days ago) which has failed to materialize and which they have not ammended with an apology or an update.

The good news is the pricey $25 pricetag that is paying for a years access to tech support and frequent updates and insider scoops (the actual program is yours to use forever including free bug fixes) WON'T need to be paid again as long as they release Pro 1.1 before your year runs out (assuming that you'd want 1.1)... For a lot of us that year up date is September 10th... So if released before that date we can enjoy (hopefully) Pro 1.1 which we've already paid for and skip the so called members benefits and not be bothered with updates that rarely come if at all... using Pro 1.1 for another year (or more) without paying anything more will effectively cut our initial purchase price in half and if at that time there is another version r
eleased we can then decide if it's worth what Cerulean Studios is asking for it based on what it actually does and how their customer relations policies have improved or not...

Experience has shown that the program may or may not do what it claims it will do and that staying true to it's absolute no refund policy, Cerulean Studios doesn't feel the need to fix or update the software regardless of the problem (in all fairness, there were two patches released soon after the original release of Pro 1.0 but it ended there and with the Yahoo webcam still useless to many users just days after the inital release)... and regardless of repeated acknowledgement of the problems by many dissatisfied paying customers... I prefer to deal with people and companies that keep their word and will be watching to see if Cerulean Studios can honor theirs the next time round...
Note: the above is just my honest opinion as a past user and as a witness to others frustrations with pro 1.0. I am not able to utilize 1.0 at present as it does NOT support yahoos webcam, still has issues with file transfers/routers and to date has no audio... I am thoroughly frustrated by the whole experience and by it's member forum representatives' lack of professionalism... Again, just my opinion...

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