Home Forums Mac Software Mac Applications Filemaker grief

I couldn't be more upset and irritated with Filemaker dot com this weekend.

Firstly I found that my Filemaker Pro 9 will not run on OS10.6, despite my downloading their so-called fix, uninstalling and reinstalling Filemaker twice. It crashes after the splash screen. Around the web, there are many people complaining, but Filemaker are blasé about it and simply tell their own customers to buy the upgrade to FM Pro 11.

Filemaker (the s/w) is absolutely essential for our publishing business, because it prints the address labels for our weekly print-run. The ONLY reason I bought FM in the first place, is because Appleworks cannot print labels any more. As a database I dislike FM intensely (it is far too heavyweight), and only bought it because I had to. The original license was the most expensive I've ever bought - over £250, and now I have had to throw a further £170 at it/them just to be able to continue printing labels.

So I went ahead and ordered and paid for, my FM Pro 11 on-line yesterday. They immediately, instantaneously, sent me an email saying "Thank you for your order, unfortunately it has not been possible to automatically validate your VAT number. This means that your order is on hold until we perform a manual check. We will email you again as soon as your VAT number is validated." (Yes I did type my VAT number correctly.)

WHAT THE HECK DOES MY VAT number have to do with downloading a paid-for upgrade?????????

Since they only work Mon-Fri 0900-1700, why does it not say anywhere on their website "Do not order downloads outside of these hours because they will not be activated."

Secondly, unable to get on with my own work because Filemaker people's computers cannot cope with their own customers working outside routine hours, today I went back there and clicked on downloading a Bento free trial. The screen said "we will email you a link to the download area".

ONE HOUR LATER no such email has arrived. From Filemaker/Bento.
No, it has not been trapped anywhere in my email system, I have checked repeatedly.

They have to be the very worst software outfit I have ever had the misfortune to be obliged to deal with.

Please, is there ANY other database application for Mac 10.6? I have spent a further hour researching that simple question and the answer seems to be no. All I want it to do is print the bleeping labels - Appleworks does all the rest of the solid customer database management, and brilliantly.

Any helpful responses very much appreciated. Thanks.

You can print labels with Address Book. I can't say that this will suit your needs better than FM but you could give it a try. In addition, Avery DesignPro can do it for 10.4 through 10.5. One of the reviewers at that page was successfully using it in 10.6.

Thanks Jo I'm looking at that now.

Now that I've downloaded Adobe Flash Player, that is,

(why does a brand new iMac with current software have to have Adobe Flash Player downloaded?)

Needlesstosay, I still have not had the promised email from Filemaker more than an hour later.

Security.

Apple has taken a lot of grief in the security community in the past for shipping operating systems that include an outdated version of Flash. Adobe Flash is no one of the most-often-targeted attack vectors for malware and viruses, and even though the malware writers have not been terribly active in targeting Macs, there have been cases where Macs ship with a version of Flash that has a known vulnerability.

This can happen because there is an update for Flash that comes out between the time that Apple releases an OS disc for manufacture and when the disc starts shipping, or because Apple will start shipping a new computer model, Adobe will release a new Flash version, and the new Flash version won't get onto the computers before they go out the door.

Since Flash is not an Apple product, I am not surprised that Apple finally decided they didn't want the hassle and grief of trying to maintain a current version of Flash across all their computers and OS installers, and instead do what Windows does and make Flash the responsibility of the user.

And if none of those suggestions work for you, then try Labels & Addresses by Belight Software. It is very flexible and fairly intuitive.

Regarding Filemaker, which is now up to version 11. I understand the grief that comes when a critical piece of software no longer functions, but in all fairness, Filemaker gave its users plenty of notice regarding old versions, with numerous offers to upgrade at a discount at that time. That does not however, excuse poor customer relations.

If any of you paid a big reputable company (and you are already a customer of theirs) £171+ by credit card on their website for a software download, and they've got your money, how long would you reasonably expect to have to wait for an email with a link to your download area, to get the product which you have bought?

An hour? Couple of hours maybe? 24 Hours?

You know they've got your order because you have printed out a receipt.......so you know they've got your money too....

How about 36 hours?

48 hours?

How long would you expect to have to wait AFTER you'd phoned customer services and spoken with a human being who confirms that it's not customer services but 'finance' holding it up, but he agrees to expedite your order and does it while you are on the phone to him? Another hour? Two?

How's about a further EIGHT HOURS and still no email providing a download link yet?

Hear this: they have, however, emailed me a "Customer Satisfaction Survey". You couldn't make it up, could you?

It's a pretty annoying picture you're describing. Clearly something went wrong, and it's anybody's guess as to what's going on, but it's hard to believe your experience is normal. It also seems like FileMaker UK is only minimally or not at all staffed over the weekend. Perhaps their web store site or credit verification system is having problems as well. Whatever the problem, at this point in time your options are canceling the purchase (you can do that via the card issuing bank if FileMaker doesn't have an online or phone option), or hanging in there to get what you need ASAP.

If email and phone are slow to provide relief for the latter, you might want to consider that "Customer Satisfaction Survey" another opportunity to contact them and tell them about your experience. Assuming the survey includes an open text entry box and not just a bunch of multiple choice buttons to click, keep your cool and give them a succinct description of the issue. They'll understand you're mad without you having to make that explicit by blowing your top, but you can certainly mention that you're unhappy.

Good luck and let us know how you do.

I can't cancel now, Alt, I'm too far in. I have to have this s/w upgrade to make FM work on my new 10.6 iMac. Until it arrives, I've got another 10.4 iMac on the same desk so it's very cramped. The 10.4 was going to be taken out of production over the weekend, but now I still need it, just to work.



I filled in the survey. They wanted me to rank them on a scale of 1-10, 1 being totally unacceptable, 10 being brilliant, on all their questions.

Want to guess what I ranked them? And how much faith I have in their "your opinions are valuable to us"?

I also found an email link to customer services, where I gave my name and order number and a "succinct description of the issue." The automated response was "you may expect to hear from us in about 48 hours".

So here we go, into Tuesday and still no paid-for software from their website. It can not arrive now, Monday, because they all go home at 5pm.

I wonder if it (the email>download area) will arrive tomorrow? Ho hum.

did you pay for it by credit card? call your credit card provider and dispute the charge.

that'll get their attention.

that's a more potent thing than you might expect. credit card processors track disputes and will cancel service on someone that gets too high of a percentage. or can raise their rates for cc processing.

All sorted now Virtual1

please see this post in here

http://www.finetunedmac.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=16817#Post16817

Is FileMaker now working correctly? I don't know what stopped v9 installing correctly. I have very version from 6-11 running on Snow Leopard. I see in the other thread that you have Rosetta installed so that wasn't the problem. Did you migrate it from another Mac where some preference files were moved? Do you have any FileMaker plug-ins installed?

Yes, now that I've bought v11.



http://help.filemaker.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/7355/~/mac-os-x-v10.6-snow-leopard-compatibility-with-filemaker-9-and-earlier-versions

"The following are known issues when running FileMaker Pro 9 with Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard:

FileMaker Pro 9 and FileMaker Pro 9 Advanced

* Installing FileMaker Pro 9 on Mac OS v10.6 Snow Leopard
Product will not launch under new operating system"

Beginning of application quitting report:

Process: FileMaker Pro [2907]
Path: /Applications/FileMaker Pro 9/FileMaker Pro.app/Contents/MacOS/FileMaker Pro
Identifier: com.filemaker.pro
Version: 9.0.1 (9.0.1)
Code Type: X86 (Native)
Parent Process: launchd [88]

Date/Time: 2011-08-15 15:08:59.705 +0100
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.6.8 (10K549)
Report Version: 6

Interval Since Last Report: 84968 sec
Crashes Since Last Report: 1
Per-App Interval Since Last Report: 5 sec
Per-App Crashes Since Last Report: 1
Anonymous UUID: 1B89E6A6-0034-44D1-A42C-890E9585B0AF

Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGBUS)
Exception Codes: KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE at 0x0000000000000000
Crashed Thread: 0 Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread