You parallells people are so dishonest and have lost a loyal customer

What a bunch of crooks you people are. I have written to you at least 6 times, left messages on your answering machines, and done everything humanly possible to communicate you my attempts to purchase multiple upgrade licenses to Parallels 3.0. Of course you people chose to ignore all my messages until after the period in which one could get a preorder discount expired. Looks like I'm taking my business to VMWare. Way to go Parallels.

 

Some loyal customer. I am sure they won't miss someone like you. I got in and am very happy. Have fun elsewhere.

The beta team was more involved and spent less time whining this time too! Anybody that didn't get the $10 discount can just dig a little deeper.

It is a great product with room to improve but well worth the money at retail.

 

I sympathise with the OP, I have tried contacting Parallels on many occasions only to be ignored. I'm still waiting to see if they'll honour my free upgrade to version 3 when I bought it in December.

 

I would also appreciate if Parallels could communicate a bit more with their customers.

Most likely, having sold that many licenses in a relatively short time gets Parallels in trouble (which I can understand from a companies point of view), but there are issues which should have been solved. It´s especially strange when some features suddenly break or stop working and nobody seems to be "willing" to help finding the culprit.

Since I have purchased Paralles incl. 1 year upgrade, I´ll check version 3.x - but competition is tough and in the end, I need a VM which works with what I need and not vice versa.

Tom

P.S.: I have mentioned this before, but this forum is named "Parallels Support Forum" and it would really be helpful if Parallels Support could be here a bit more often...

 

What is your problem? The OP is clearly distressed and made several attempts to contact the company and you slam him? How old are you? 12?

Parallels has a great product, but their communication SUCKS. Their support SUCKS. They're clearly understaffed, their upgrade procedure is absurd (requiring 8-10 weeks?)

I really want to like Parallels the company, but it's tough.

 

First time writing but a happy customer since the beginning on mac.

An "absurd upgrade procedure"? Not to me.

Just installed the beta, no problem so far, as always.

Congratulations to the whole (big or little doesn't matter that much) staff.

 

I AGREE!

I am TOTALLY going for VMware.
Communication SUCKS and I hope VMware do respect their customers.

 

Ok, perhaps I am doing something wrong here...

I bought Parallels 2 a year ago. Since then all 2.x updates were free.

I bought a second licence for my Macbook a few months ago. In both cases the process took a few minutes.

Last week I received an email informing me about the upcoming release of version 3 and would I want to pre-order.

I followed the links and bought two upgrades for my two Parallels 2 installations. I received an email with my Parallels 3 activation codes a few minutes later.

Now I read that Parallels 3 has been released and I plan to download it in a few hours and install it (on one of my two Intel Macs) and use one of the activation keys. I expect no problems.

What have you guys done differently that you ran into communications problems? Parallels support people were never involved in my business transactions. About what exactly would I need to contact them? Buying licence keys and upgrading is fully automated, I think.

Parallels' support might be bad, but I have not really found better support anywhere else. Apple pretty much ignore emails sent to them, as do other software companies (except for the open source places for some reason).

But I never had a serious problem with Parallels 2. You might say that I simply didn't have the problems other people were having, but then I don't know what exactly could have gone wrong. Anything that did go wrong I solved with a reboot. After a few updates, those problems went away too.

My host systems:

iMac Core 2 Duo 2.16 GHz, 2 GB, Mac OS X 10.4.9
MacBook Core 2 Duo 2 GHz, 2 GB, Mac OS X 10.4.9

Guest systems (no boot camp):

Microsoft Windows XP
Microsoft Windows Vista
eComStation 1.1
SuSE Linux 10.1 (or 10.0, not sure)
FreeBSD 5 (or 6, not sure)
Minix 2 (or 3? only installed one of them as a test once)
Microsoft Windows XP migrated from Virtual PC 7

No major problems.

 

Good luck with the upgrade. I am having problems activating my copy of 3.0, it refuses to accept my original activation key. I originally purchased the UK boxed version. I know there are a number of international customers having the same dificulties.

I have emailed Avanquest with my problem and they have already replied asking for more details, so I am hopeful it will be sorted fairly soon.

 

I can't think of a worse upgrade experience than I have had with Parallels 3.0. Not only does the software flat-out fail to deliver its promised features, but there is no support available and no word from the company on offering refunds, fixes, or mitigation. Beyond that, their history of screwing over users who were entitled to upgrades leaves one wondering if they have simply absconded with our license fees. Parallels 2.0 and 2.5 were excellent products, and I was a very very happy customer. Parallels 3.0 leaves me feeling cheated and abandoned - I trusted you, Parallels, I gave you my money on faith, and you betrayed that faith. Tell me why I should trust you again, or you have lost a customer and an evangelist.

 

Very simple: I have several licenses, not just one. When you have multiple licenses, you get a discount on the additional licenses. If you use the "automated" system, it wants to charge you $39.99 for each upgrade. At that rate, the upgrade would cost me more than my initial purchase. There are plenty of non-support addresses specifically for "business transactions", including [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected]. Now I wrote to these addresses and more offering to get a price under which I could buy MORE licenses and add upgrade protection, for which I presumably would have to pay full retail. If the issue was only $10, I can understand their lack of responsiveness (even though it is pretty rude), but with a customer literally begging to move up to a higher volume licensing tier, you'd think that that would be a customer that they'd want to keep. I've got a lot of machines for which I am responsible and I am trying to manage a transition to Macs in which some sort of windows VM is an important part. I deal with a lot of different vendors in our procurement process, and I can assure you that Parallels is the ONLY company I've ever dealt with who has ignored my volume purchase inquiries. I still want to use Parallels for that, but MY deadline for getting a response from them is now pretty much closed.

 

RE: Activation codes.

This is not Parallels per se, but the few companies doing the actual selling for them. One company sent the codes right away, and another completely flopped on it. If you're going to complain to Parallels, then tell them which company you used. It will be listed in your confirmation email you received. That will help Parallels improve future sales by dropping the companies that dropped the ball on this. I'm sure that they are working with these cheesheads on your behalf trying to get this sorted out. You are their customers, and they do care believe it or not.

RE: Support.

Dead on right. Not enough staff stop by and act interested in the problems we have. I've been a victim of RTFM myself and I'm sure a lot of minor things are user problems that could be fixed with a simple suggestion from a friendly Parallels forum member. I've never phoned them, but their reputation there preceeds them.

Support needs more staff... good staff.

 

I just want to say that I was finally contacted by Parallels and everything has been satisfactorily resolved. Thanks Parallels (finally).

 

I expected that the two licence keys I was sent would simply activate Parallels 3?