vBulletin Support Says Free Transfer, Then Changes Their Mind

[ForumsGroup]

So I thought this was a bit amusing, but also annoying for the person who is trying to buy this vBulletin 4 license from me.

I originally posted a thread here in the classifieds listing 7 vBulletin licenses for sale. 6 of which were vB4 and 1 vB5. I asked them which ones were transferable and which would cost me to transfer.



As you can see from the image above, all six of the vBulletin 4 licenses would be free to transfer with the vBulletin 5 costing $45 to transfer. I thought they didn't transfer second hand licenses without a fee, but I thought maybe vBulletin was doing better business and removed that fee from vB4. I mean, how difficult can it be to change a license into someone else's name...

Well, I sell 5 of my vB4 licenses. I had 1 vB5 and 1 vB4 left. A buyer and I made an agreement on the remaining vB4 license. I sent in the ticket to have it transferred, but was told that I needed to pay $45 to transfer this final vB4 license.



After replying a couple times with questioning D'Marco about his first response to my support ticket and 5 vB4 licenses transferred later, about why he is charging me for this one when he originally told me that all 6 of the vB4 licenses would be free to transfer. No response. So I replied with my details to pay for the transfer to try and get it transferred to my buyer before the weekend. Because vBulletin support doesn't work on weekends. No response yesterday.

He then replies to me today at 4:13PM CST saying I will get an invoice from the finance department. Knowing I did not receive a response after my 5PM response yesterday, I'm guessing I won't receive anything until Monday. So not only am I now paying for this transfer that was said to be free, but it took him all day to respond to my ticket and now we'll have to wait the weekend for it to be transferred.

 

[Danielx64]

What a load of crap. *think himself lucky for not needing to pay for that fee*

Seriously though I hope that someone wakes up to this and have a change of heart.

 

[BirdOPrey5]

To clarify- Sales staff does not work weekends. VB Support does work weekends, but a license transfer is not a support issue.

Sorry this happened and hope you get a reply about the mix-up.

However any transfer involving payments take around a week, at minimum, as it takes time for sales to confirm payments. Same day or even next day transfers don't happen when payments are involved. The license agreement actually advises to leave several weeks for a transfer to complete.

Making a safe transfer in fact takes considerable effort.

 

[ForumsGroup]

To clarify- Sales staff does not work weekends. VB Support does work weekends, but a license transfer is not a support issue.

Sorry this happened and hope you get a reply about the mix-up.

However any transfer involving payments take around a week, at minimum, as it takes time for sales to confirm payments. Same day or even next day transfers don't happen when payments are involved. The license agreement actually advises to leave several weeks for a transfer to complete.

Making a safe transfer in fact takes considerable effort.

Thanks, just made the whole situation that much better! Now, if he would have kept to his first comment where all 6 of the vB4 licenses would be free to transfer then it would have been over and done with in a single day like some of the past 5 license transfers I did in the past month of me selling them.

Well support tickets regarding license transfers are not handled on the weekend, I know for a fact because a couple of the 5 licenses transferred where between a Friday and Monday.

 

[ForumsGroup]

I had a couple responses to the ticket questioning the person telling me all 6 licenses would be free originally, with no response I agreed Friday to pay the $45 thinking I could get it transferred before the weekend. Only to find out here by BirdOPrey5 that it takes a week to transfer with the $45 fee. Which was true, just got confirmation today that the license was transferred.

Going to respond again and question the part where he said it would be free originally. See what they say about it now, if anything.

 

[geebee]

If you were told that originally, they should honour it.

 

[ForumsGroup]

A new support guy, or maybe just the finance team member, responded to my ticket that I had open with vBulletin for all 7 of my license transfers. I completed the 7th and final license transfer today and since it was a different member of vBulletin I asked about the fee that I was charged for one of the vBulletin 4 licenses that I had been originally told would be free to transfer and whether or not it could be refunded.

As you can see in the screenshot above, he said that he cannot undo anything that has done before and that D'marco was correct in saying vB4 licenses were transferable free of charge as they do not charge for the first transfer of that version of vBulletin licenses.

However, if you read my original ticket it states "I'd like to transfer one of my vbulletin 4 licenses to another person. I know I've had a few that I've had transferred to me over the past few years and I want to check and see how many are transferable." And I asked specifically, "Which ones exactly transferable, which are not?" but the guy must have been thinking of first time licenses and not second hand, even though my ticket said that I knew some of the licenses were second hand.

 

[Danielx64]

That stink, I know very well that I cant sell my license (not that I would want to for some time yet )

 

[zappaDPJ]

It is annoying but it could have been worse. I had multiple sites running on vBulletin licences, a couple as the owner but the majority on behalf of other owners. Those licences were administrated through multiple accounts and many were transferred to new owners when forums changed hands. Trying to maintain a large number of licences in this manner become an issue and after talking it through with my customers I decided to transfer all the licences to one account. This was the reply I received when attempted to transfer the first licence.



As virtually all the licences I wanted to transfer had been transferred once before, I thought that was the end of it. I've found out subsequently EU legislation entitles software licence holders to do just what I wanted to do, regardless of whether or not a licence had been transferred before. UsedSoft GmbH v Oracle International Corp for anyone that has an interest in these matters.

The majority of those licences now sit dormant as I've migrated almost all the forums to different platforms. I'm quite convinced that they are transferable but I'll probably just leave them to rot.

 

[geebee]

Mine are eligible for transfer, but by the time the $45 is taken off, they're just not worth selling. I wouldn't think a vb 4 licence is worth more than $70 to $80 so I'd end up with $25 in my pocket. Nah. Like you zappaDPJ I have licences rotting in an account. You never know, things may change in the future (wow! a pig just flew past my window!)

 

[we_are_borg]

It is annoying but it could have been worse. I had multiple sites running on vBulletin licences, a couple as the owner but the majority on behalf of other owners. Those licences were administrated through multiple accounts and many were transferred to new owners when forums changed hands. Trying to maintain a large number of licences in this manner become an issue and after talking it through with my customers I decided to transfer all the licences to one account. This was the reply I received when attempted to transfer the first licence.

View attachment 34571

As virtually all the licences I wanted to transfer had been transferred once before, I thought that was the end of it. I've found out subsequently EU legislation entitles software licence holders to do just what I wanted to do, regardless of whether or not a licence had been transferred before. UsedSoft GmbH v Oracle International Corp for anyone that has an interest in these matters.

The majority of those licences now sit dormant as I've migrated almost all the forums to different platforms. I'm quite convinced that they are transferable but I'll probably just leave them to rot.

Mine are eligible for transfer, but by the time the $45 is taken off, they're just not worth selling. I wouldn't think a vb 4 licence is worth more than $70 to $80 so I'd end up with $25 in my pocket. Nah. Like you zappaDPJ I have licences rotting in an account. You never know, things may change in the future (wow! a pig just flew past my window!)

Then why not make the license invalid if your not interested in the money.

 

[geebee]

Then why not make the license invalid if your not interested in the money.

Because I own it?

 

[Danielx64]

Then why not make the license invalid if your not interested in the money.

Why would anyone do that?

 

[we_are_borg]

Why would anyone do that?

Because they did not want the license any more and made the license invalid, if you have access to the hidden forum their people there that did just that.

 

[BirdOPrey5]

Because they did not want the license any more and made the license invalid, if you have access to the hidden forum their people there that did just that.

Seems short-sighted. It costs you nothing to maintain the license in perpetuity. You never know what the future holds. It is possible VB decides something crazy and resumes development of old versions and/or a future version comes out that has all the features you want and a generous discount for previous license holders. Throwing away your license would throw away your chance at such a discount.

Basically the definition of the phrase "Cutting off your nose to spite your face" no matter how small you think that nose is.

My opinion anyway.

 

[zappaDPJ]

Then why not make the license invalid if your not interested in the money.

In my case I would probably have to pay the transfer fee on each licence (assuming vBulletin were in error when they denied the transfer) because the licences are not on my account. As I've already lost a huge amount of time and money because of the way things went when Internet Brands bought vBulletin I'd rather just draw a line under it and have nothing more to do with them.

 

[ForumsGroup]

It is annoying but it could have been worse. I had multiple sites running on vBulletin licences, a couple as the owner but the majority on behalf of other owners. Those licences were administrated through multiple accounts and many were transferred to new owners when forums changed hands. Trying to maintain a large number of licences in this manner become an issue and after talking it through with my customers I decided to transfer all the licences to one account. This was the reply I received when attempted to transfer the first licence.

View attachment 34571

As virtually all the licences I wanted to transfer had been transferred once before, I thought that was the end of it. I've found out subsequently EU legislation entitles software licence holders to do just what I wanted to do, regardless of whether or not a licence had been transferred before. UsedSoft GmbH v Oracle International Corp for anyone that has an interest in these matters.

The majority of those licences now sit dormant as I've migrated almost all the forums to different platforms. I'm quite convinced that they are transferable but I'll probably just leave them to rot.

I guess it could have been worse. I could have been stuck with them for ever and not been able to transfer them at all. However, I figured since I was able to transfer them that I'd sell them, get what I could out of them and be done with worrying about them sitting around doing nothing. The longer you wait to get rid of them, the fewer chances of someone coming along willing to pay anything for them.

 

[Knocks]

I have already converted about 8 of my forums to XenForo. I am almost ready to pay $45 to never have to deal with vBulletin again.

 

[ozzy47]

Sounds like you are about to finally put them to rest.

 

[VICE]

Sorry this happened and hope you get a reply about the mix-up.

I missed this thread!
I have one that was confirmed as free transfer and I did remember that was the license agreement while Steve was around.
I'll be literally piss beyond words if this would happen to me in the future.


Edit:
Oops, sorry.
So the license was transferred once before?
So it's just sales dept. mistake (a simple case of human error).