Lack of support from Sync Pro Developer

Copernican, 4 months ago

It’s December. Give him a little bit of slack for the holiday month. A lot of people try to take a week or two off. He pushed an update right after Thanksgiving.

Personally, I recommend avoiding pushing releases during holidays if you know post launch support releases might be low, but it would probably lead to criticism of him not updating enough.

Whiskey_iicarus, 4 months ago

I did give him some slack. I emailed him dec 11 and he answered back immediately for several replies. I gave him a week for the troubleshooting with no reply, and then I gave him 5 days after I emailed for a refund with no reply before I ever posted on here. I don’t understand why people are so defensive. I wasn’t bashing the guy or anything, I’m more upset that I’m out $17 than not being able to use an app that is nothing special in a sea of apps.

Zess, 4 months ago

The dude is known to disappear from time to time. I think a couple times his app even got removed from the play store because he failed to renew something on time.

Copernican, 4 months ago

It’s december and he’s doing this solo. I’d give him some slack in the month of December where folks have a lot of holiday stuff going on and take vacation.

Whiskey_iicarus, 4 months ago

Good to know

calamitycastle, 4 months ago

That was due to Google IIRC. I think the thing a lot of people don’t really get, is that this app is made by a small team (believe just one person with some general adhoc help).

It’s a fantastic content browsing experience with a ton of features. It might not be sustainable still given the small user numbers on Lemmy. I don’t know.

This user seems to have an edge case that is probably a lower priority. Doesn’t seem to require the PSA really. Obviously no bugs would be great but that’s not really how software works unfortunately.

Whiskey_iicarus, 4 months ago

Again, not a troubleshooting thread. The “PSA” was that I spent $17 on an app and no longer have access to that service. I can’t access the features of sync pro. I contacted the developer to either fix my problem or when they couldn’t do that get a refund. I paid for a year and didn’t even get 6 months of use.

mp3, 4 months ago

I had this issue with that particular setting, and since it was part of my backup I couldn’t restore it as-is.

If you feel comfortable enough modifying the backup file, search for hide_username and set to false. You’ll be able to restore your backup until that feature is fixed.

Whiskey_iicarus, 4 months ago

Thanks for the troubleshooting

foo, 4 months ago

This is not my comment from the Play store, it’s from another Sync user having a similar issue:

If you have hide username set in the newest update, the app crashes immediately for whatever reason. I was able to edit my backup file to set that to “false”, clear app storage, sign back in, and restore the edited backup file.

Play store link: Sync for Lemmy

Whiskey_iicarus, 4 months ago

I appreciate the troubleshooting. Unless it was a pre selected option I wouldn’t have enabled that in any version.

the_q, 4 months ago

You picked the wrong app. Take the L and go grab Voyager or something else.

Whiskey_iicarus, 4 months ago

I am. I ended up using boost. The only thing I miss is swipe gestures, but otherwise very happy with it.

DAMunzy, 4 months ago

Welcome to Boost!

Whiskey_iicarus, 4 months ago

Thanks! I’m really enjoying it.

aodhsishaj, 4 months ago

Weird, I haven’t been able to replicate this with my account. I corrupted my local db and the app crashed. Then I cleared local app data and cache and reinstalled. When i logged in it recognized my paid status and I was able to import my corrupted db, then it crashed. I then restored to my uncorrupted backup and all was well again.

Have you exported your local backup to a desktop computer? BeaverDB is pretty good at repairing corrupted DBs.

Whiskey_iicarus, 4 months ago

I have not exported it. That also seems like a lot of extra work when I paid $16.99 for an app. I used RiF for years without an issue and I only paid $2.99 once

aodhsishaj, 4 months ago

It would help others if you did. Just because the main developer will not help you doesn’t mean the community cannot/will not.

Whiskey_iicarus, 4 months ago

I certainly don’t disagree that it might help someone else.

This post wasn’t meant to try and troubleshoot though. I attempted to go through the developer and Google to get something fixed and neither helped so I made a public post in the community to try and make others aware that they may not get what they paid for or support to fix issues.

grabyourmotherskeys, 4 months ago

The back up had the same data that caused the app to crash before.

Did you try just logging in to the fresh install?

Whiskey_iicarus, 4 months ago

Yes, but like I said it doesn’t see that I purchased sync pro without restoring the backup.

eggymachus, 4 months ago

Isn’t that an option when you reinstall? To reinstate purchases?

henrikx, 4 months ago

Settings > Restore Purchases

SinningStromgald, 4 months ago

Is that even necessary? I’ve never had to use restore purchase even after a clear data and cache plus reinstall. Once I was logged in it just…knew.

foo, 4 months ago

Settings shortcut: Settings > Restore purchases

Whiskey_iicarus, 4 months ago

Tried that, too. It says no purchases found. That’s when I attempted to contact the developer.

mp3, 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

Did you have more than one Google account on your phone? It could be that it’s trying to restore the purchase from another account than the one it was purchased from.

Whiskey_iicarus, 4 months ago

I made sure it was done under the right Google account.

mp3, 4 months ago

You should have a trace of the transaction somewhere in payments.google.com under either Activity or Subscriptions & Services.

Whiskey_iicarus, 4 months ago

I don’t have any problem showing proof I have purchased Sync Pro.

I attempted to request support first and received a quick initial reply about my problem. Never got an update so I requested a refund in the same email chain and still haven’t heard back. I then went through the Google Play refund process and they said they won’t refund me either.

So I’m just out my money. No big deal, and I moved on. I just posted so if someone was looking into paying what I think is a ridiculous price for a year of ad free and some features, there was some good feedback.

mp3, 4 months ago

Just saying that there could have been some kind of payment issue, it’s better to ensure everything is fine on that front first. Anyway I bought the lifetime adfree and I’m happy with it, although I don’t use it as often as the mobile web-UI since I can’t do most of the instance admin stuff through it.

Whiskey_iicarus, 4 months ago

I’m very glad that you’re happy with your purchase.