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Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Parallels Upgrade - version 4.0 released - sort of

Relying so heavily on being multi-platform, I was pleased to find a spam from Nova Development announcing that Parallels had been upgraded. I use Parallels to run XP virtually on my Mac. 

I read about the promised improvements with a keen interest, and found the purchase price for the upgrade quite worth the effort of installing more software. But that's where the good part of the story ends.

I paid the fee and was re-directed to an empty shopping cart. I later figured out how to log-in to the software developer's site to view my purchases. I was greeted with more trouble.

Notice the italics - I've reloaded the page for hours ... 
still no software.

It seems that their server is getting swamped with requests, or some other sort of trouble. Either way, I've paid for a piece of software that I can't get to. An e-mail of concern to the sales address got first an auto-reply, then a kind note from "Kimberly C," restating the download instructions from the invoice (that only arrived after I found a link on the download page to have one sent).

If you are a Parallels 3 user, I'd say hold off on accepting the upgrade offer - or pay the extra fee for ground shipping. As for me, I'm waiting for them to sort out their servers ... or waiting for the 48 hours necessary for them not to before I can reverse the charges (with my chosen method of payment) for non-delivery of goods.

Stay tuned.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

If it's any small comfort, you're not alone. I've tried different browsers and different routes and even over my VPN, where I got about 85% done before it quit. Hope the install works halfway well once it finally downloads...

Jim Hoerricks, PhD said...

You would think ...

" Unfortunately due to the popularity of this program our download servers are under a tremendous amount of strain. We recommend retrying your download tomorrow when there may not be quite as many customers downloading this program. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

Thank you,

Kimberly
Customer Service Representative"

How exactly am I to know when there might not be as many customers (trying to get the product that they paid their hard earned money for) attempting to download from these overworked servers?

Jim Hoerricks, PhD said...

They're up the road in Calabasas. I could have picked up a copy from their offices, driven back, installed the program, and been enjoying the supposed benefits of version 4 in less time than it took for "Kimberly" to tell me to wait until tomorrow.

Here's hoping someone in their marketing dept has a Google alert set to pick up news of Parallels on the web ... and has the sense to invite me over for a chat. :-)

Jim Hoerricks, PhD said...

It's 5am - and the download link has been removed from the site. It's time to request a refund.

Jim Hoerricks, PhD said...

Sad to say, I tried and tried to get in touch with a live person and to get their download servers to work. I even received a piece of spam saying that they didn't anticipate the response and that I should try again. I did try again ... and try again ... and again.

I eventually filed a claim with PayPal to have the money refunded for non-delivery of goods. Today, the refund was posted to my account.

So, what started out as an attempt to review an update to the product that I use every day ... ended up in a refund.