Geodesic Solutions GeoCore Software - What's Going On?

[JDJ]

Hi all,

I subscribed to this forum because I found this blog post:

https://industrydev.com/is-geodesic-solutions-out-of-business/

I run a site based on the GeoCore software. I've paid for support recently, put in support tickets and they've not been answered. I've also tried the contact forms, again with no response. I've got a current license and I find that sometimes I can post on the support forum at Geodesicsolutions.com and sometimes I can't. Does anybody have any idea what's going on? They're still taking money via Paypal but communication seems absent.

 

[JGaulard]

Hi JDJ,

I used to run five websites on GeoCore software by GeoDesic Solutions. The last time I updated the software was at the end of 2017 (17.12.0). They put out an update in early 2018 (18.2.0). Towards the end of 2018, I began getting suspicious about them not offering updates anymore so I checked into the situation on their forum. I began reading posts from other members about how GeoDesic Solutions was out of business. I was horrified by this news because I had never even considered that this would happen. I contact GeoDesic directly by email through [email protected] and did receive a return email.

Here's what I wrote to them on September 20, 2018:

ME: I was reading through the forum and noticed a few posts regarding support and updates, so I wanted to check in for myself. Is there an update on the horizon?

This is what I got back on September 20, 2018:

THEM: Sorry for the tardiness of our response as our spbas (support crm) was not working due to an odd issue....read at bottom if you like.

We are building a release to go out in the next few weeks. We have had a time recreating the Facebook login feature. We are rewriting to use the latest version of their api. There will a couple other features and a few "php v7 fixes" included.

We have an odd situation we never envisioned having. Let me explain...We have used a business automation software called SPBAS for over a decade for our shopping cart and support CRM needs. That software is licensed and whenever we as an admin log into the admin tool for it (to do various shopping cart manipulations and manage our support email queue) that software checks our license key against the main license management software/site for that software. That software is at spbas.com. Unfortunately, at the moment that site is down. We've never had issues with the software at all over our decade of using it but suddenly our license can't validate...and consequently, we cannot get into the admin tool for that software to process our support queue or make manual changes within our shopping cart. We've been forced to investigate why their site is down. Come to find out they are based in Wilmington, North Carolina who have seen over 30 inches of rain in the last several days. By many reports, Wilmington has had no power for several days and cutoff from the outside world literally for a few of those days which is coincidentally the same time we've had issues with our SPBAS software. SPBAS is a smaller private company like ours and hope nothing has permanently affected SPBAS or it's employees but understandably cannot get ahold of anyone to handle our licensing issues.

I have no idea why they decided to write this response to me. Apparently, their last programmer was laid off because the company ran out of money to pay him. You can read about this on their forum. As far as I know, there's no one at the company to do any programming right now and that's why there have been no updates. Someone on the forum also claimed that one of the owners is in jail or has been deployed in the military. I have no idea what's true. All I know is that I abandoned the software in early 2019 and switched over to something new. I highly recommend XenForo. Yes, even for classifieds. I write about that a lot here in this forum and their support and community are excellent. Very vibrant life over there.

How long have you been running GeoCore? Have you tried emailing [email protected] directly? I hate to say this, but I think support is non-existent. If I were you, I wouldn't expect to get any. They haven't emailed people back in years.

I hope this helps.

Jay

 

[JDJ]

Hi JDJ,

I used to run five websites on GeoCore software by GeoDesic Solutions. The last time I updated the software was at the end of 2017 (17.12.0). They put out an update in early 2018 (18.2.0). Towards the end of 2018, I began getting suspicious about them not offering updates anymore so I checked into the situation on their forum. I began reading posts from other members about how GeoDesic Solutions was out of business. I was horrified by this news because I had never even considered that this would happen. I contact GeoDesic directly by email through [email protected] and did receive a return email.

Here's what I wrote to them on September 20, 2018:

ME: I was reading through the forum and noticed a few posts regarding support and updates, so I wanted to check in for myself. Is there an update on the horizon?

This is what I got back on September 20, 2018:

THEM: Sorry for the tardiness of our response as our spbas (support crm) was not working due to an odd issue....read at bottom if you like.

We are building a release to go out in the next few weeks. We have had a time recreating the Facebook login feature. We are rewriting to use the latest version of their api. There will a couple other features and a few "php v7 fixes" included.

We have an odd situation we never envisioned having. Let me explain...We have used a business automation software called SPBAS for over a decade for our shopping cart and support CRM needs. That software is licensed and whenever we as an admin log into the admin tool for it (to do various shopping cart manipulations and manage our support email queue) that software checks our license key against the main license management software/site for that software. That software is at spbas.com. Unfortunately, at the moment that site is down. We've never had issues with the software at all over our decade of using it but suddenly our license can't validate...and consequently, we cannot get into the admin tool for that software to process our support queue or make manual changes within our shopping cart. We've been forced to investigate why their site is down. Come to find out they are based in Wilmington, North Carolina who have seen over 30 inches of rain in the last several days. By many reports, Wilmington has had no power for several days and cutoff from the outside world literally for a few of those days which is coincidentally the same time we've had issues with our SPBAS software. SPBAS is a smaller private company like ours and hope nothing has permanently affected SPBAS or it's employees but understandably cannot get ahold of anyone to handle our licensing issues.

I have no idea why they decided to write this response to me. Apparently, their last programmer was laid off because the company ran out of money to pay him. You can read about this on their forum. As far as I know, there's no one at the company to do any programming right now and that's why there have been no updates. Someone on the forum also claimed that one of the owners is in jail or has been deployed in the military. I have no idea what's true. All I know is that I abandoned the software in early 2019 and switched over to something new. I highly recommend XenForo. Yes, even for classifieds. I write about that a lot here in this forum and their support and community are excellent. Very vibrant life over there.

How long have you been running GeoCore? Have you tried emailing [email protected] directly? I hate to say this, but I think support is non-existent. If I were you, I wouldn't expect to get any. They haven't emailed people back in years.

I hope this helps.

Jay

I've been running Geocore software since 2002 and yes, I've tried emailing [email protected] directly. What's very odd is that the geodesicsolutions.com site is still up and running (and using the SPBAS software), you can still pay for downloads or pay for support via Paypal and Paypal will take the money from your account. Somebody has posted on the forum recently to say that he purchased downloads, downloaded the software and got it to work. However, I've had a licence for years and nobody is answering any support tickets, even if you pay for support. I can only post on the forum some of the time for some reason, I've no idea why; some of the time I get a response from the forum saying I'm not a licensed customer but I've got a purchased licence, I've paid for support and I've recently paid to extend download access to see if that makes any difference. Nothing seems to make any difference.

 

[JGaulard]

Okay, gotcha. I was under the impression that you were a brand new buyer of the software. You've actually been a customer longer than I have. I've been with them since 2004.

A while ago, I read on their forum that they were hacked or something or had some hard drive problems which were screwing with their payment processing systems. That's all been taken care of and now they can take people's money again, obviously. I guess that doesn't mean that anyone is there to answer support tickets.

I was just reading this message from Matt, their previous programmer:

Hey Guys,

There's not much of a delicate way to put this, so I'll just toss it out there: owning to a lack of funds with which to pay my salary, my position as Lead Developer of Geodesic Solutions no longer exists, effective immediately.

It's been a great 10+ years with the company, over which time it has been my honor to serve you all as best I could, but it's now time for me to move on.

I've pushed out a maintenance release (18.02.0) that closes up a couple of outstanding issues, and left James and Rob with the tools they need to continue making adjustments as they can.

Thanks for a good run -- best of luck in wherever life takes you all!

What a shame. Such good software while it was supported. I'm not sure what to tell you. I think they gave up on support and are merely selling the software itself as well as upgrades (up until 18.2.0). I honestly don't think anyone is going to answer.

 

[JDJ]

Okay, gotcha. I was under the impression that you were a brand new buyer of the software. You've actually been a customer longer than I have. I've been with them since 2004.

A while ago, I read on their forum that they were hacked or something or had some hard drive problems which were screwing with their payment processing systems. That's all been taken care of and now they can take people's money again, obviously. I guess that doesn't mean that anyone is there to answer support tickets.

I was just reading this message from Matt, their previous programmer:



What a shame. Such good software while it was supported. I'm not sure what to tell you. I think they gave up on support and are merely selling the software itself as well as upgrades (up until 18.2.0). I honestly don't think anyone is going to answer.

"....merely selling the software itself"?....perhaps they are. But the website advertises support with the software. And if you purchase support and don't get it, that's breach of contract. I'm UK based and if you did that in the UK you'd probably be prosecuted.

 

[JGaulard]

"....merely selling the software itself"?....perhaps they are. But the website advertises support with the software. And if you purchase support and don't get it, that's breach of contract. I'm UK based and if you did that in the UK you'd probably be prosecuted.

I 100% agree with you. They are taking money from people and are not giving the people the product they paid for. I suspect most long-time customers have abandoned GeoDesic for this reason. There is no use in continuing to contribute to a company that doesn't give you what you pay for. Plus, they may decide to turn the lights out one day. What then? A bunch of people are going to have licenses they can do nothing with.

 

[JDJ]

Sorry, that was a mistake earlier...I've been with them since 2012. I have a purchased licence.

I'm not obsessed with software being free. But if you pay for support you expect to get it; it's explicit on the website you buy Premium Support. It's even listed on the Paypal invoice.

I've just submitted a charge-back request to the Paypal Resolution centre to get back the money for the support I didn't get. I've also sent an email to the [email protected] email address (which is the one the Paypal funds go to). We'll see if the request for a chargeback gets any kind of response. If they're still taking money then there must be a human being on the end of the Paypal account.

I wouldn't really mind if somebody came back and said "...sorry, we are having a problem but we're doing our best". But no communication at all is bizarre.

 

[JGaulard]

I completely agree with you. I think you made the right decision. If you're not going to get what you paid for, then try to get the money back. And we know someone is at the other end of these emails, so I'm guessing you won't get much of an argument. That's pretty bad that they took your money and then offer no support.

 

[JGaulard]

I've just submitted a charge-back request to the Paypal Resolution centre to get back the money for the support I didn't get. I've also sent an email to the [email protected] email address (which is the one the Paypal funds go to). We'll see if the request for a chargeback gets any kind of response. If they're still taking money then there must be a human being on the end of the Paypal account.

Have you heard anything back yet? I'm wondering if they gave you a hassle about giving your money back or at least replied to your email.

 

[JDJ]

Have you heard anything back yet? I'm wondering if they gave you a hassle about giving your money back or at least replied to your email.

I've heard nothing at all. You have to wait a certain amount of time before you can escalate things to Paypal so I don't know whether I'll get my money back yet but I've heard nothing at all from Geodesic. No answer to the support tickets, no answer from the Geodesic Paypal email address, no answers from any of the Geodesic contact forms. The reason I paid for (1) support and then (2) downloads was because I asssumed that there might be some kind of automated block preventing my support tickets from being flagged up if I didn't have a current subscription (not that I should have to pay for downloads because I'm already on the latest version and have a lifetime license). However, renewing both made no difference and not only that, often when I logged in and put in a ticket I would get an automated message flag up saying "failed to validate" even though the site was telling me that my subscription was current. So it's really bizarre. It's like they've left the site there running but with no people behind it...it's like the Marie Celeste.

 

[JGaulard]

I feel for you. This type of situation is maddening. There's got to be someone receiving those emails because they've had the site fixed when it was hacked a little while ago. They also hired back one of their previous programmers (Jonyo) to do some work a few months ago. So they really are getting the emails, but choosing to ignore them. What a horrible experience. I honestly have no idea why anyone would continue to take money from people like this. That's pretty gutsy.

 

[JDJ]

I feel for you. This type of situation is maddening. There's got to be someone receiving those emails because they've had the site fixed when it was hacked a little while ago. They also hired back one of their previous programmers (Jonyo) to do some work a few months ago. So they really are getting the emails, but choosing to ignore them. What a horrible experience. I honestly have no idea why anyone would continue to take money from people like this. That's pretty gutsy.

I totally understand why Geodesic don't answer emails; I get way too many. What I don't get is that they don't answer emails, support tickets or their contact form from people that have actually bought and given them *money*. And I also don't get why when you have updated your subscriptions, checked that the system recognises that you are a paying customer and has updated that field, but your support tickets fail to validate. And they don't reply to any form of contact.

I'll see what happens with Paypal.

 

[JGaulard]

I totally understand why Geodesic don't answer emails; I get way too many. What I don't get is that they don't answer emails, support tickets or their contact form from people that have actually bought and given them *money*. And I also don't get why when you have updated your subscriptions, checked that the system recognises that you are a paying customer and has updated that field, but your support tickets fail to validate. And they don't reply to any form of contact.

Well, if you wouldn't mind keeping me updated here, I'd be curious to see how this all plays out, as would others who are in the same position, I'm assuming. Good luck.