Support

Dear Mr. Korovyakov,

Your allegations are completely false and I invite anyone to read your public ticket 34266 for some context on your unprofessional rant.

We have not blocked your access to our software's support as demonstrated by the fact that you filed this ticket in the support section for Akeeba Backup.

I have already personally replied to two tickets of yours prior to this one with technical support matters per the Support Policy you can find in the Terms of Service to which you explicitly agreed to when subscribing:

• #34261 enquiring about translations. I linked you to the public announcement of our termination of official translations in 2018 and the third party volunteer project which maintains unofficial translations.
• #32266, even though your request was posed in an unprofessional manner, about the possibility to have multiple email addresses in the component's Options about which I told that yes, you can, by separating them with comas and invited you to open a new support ticket for any further feedback. I asked you to file a new ticket because you were already asking two separate questions, one feature request and one support request. We explicitly state in our Terms of Service that in this case we will ask you to file a separate support ticket for the second issue: in your case, the multiple email addresses.

The first part of ticket #32266 was a feature request, not a technical support issue. You were very clearly aware that the feature you wanted does not exist in our software since you explicitly mentioned the documentation information on this feature. The documentation is available free of charge and you did explicitly indicate that you are fully informed on the product before placing your order.

I explained why the feature cannot be currently implemented. You enquired about an alternative. I explained why it cannot be implemented and provided technical information as to why.

At this point you were the one who got offended and launched in an uncalled for attack full of derision and sarcasm. I kept my reply in a professional tone. I replied to the technical support part of your question. I explained once again that a feature request is not a technical support request. I explained the obvious and objective fact that asking for a feature to be implemented does not constitute an obligation for the developer to develop it. I explained that your original feature request will probably be honoured in the near future contingent to the resolution of an open issue upon which it depends, the same issue I had explicitly stated in my original reply to you on that ticket. This is more than you deserved considering the tone of your voice, the lack of reason in your demands and your overall demeanour.

Since you are bringing "What the developer promised" on the table, I would like to kindly remind you that we (company and individual developers) have not "promised" anything. The first contact we had with you was after you made your purchase, when you filed a support ticket about the translations. You are obviously referring to the legally binding Terms of Service which you explicitly stated that you agree to when you subscribed. We state the following:

We may be unable to provide our support services in the following occasions with the liability lying on the client:

[...]

• The client does not accept our technical analysis without a meaningful or technically adequate counter-argument, declines to follow our advice in whole or in part, disputes our suitability to provide support (including giving unsolicited lectures on the technologies involved in the issue we are trying to provide support for), declines to provide information deemed necessary to perform troubleshooting, declines to pursue the matter with their host or a third party developer that we have identified as the root cause of the issue or otherwise displays behavior which indicates that they are unlikely to let us provide meaningful support. Such tickets will be closed without further reply and further support for the same issue will be denied. Requesting support from us does not guarantee a solution and we provide no service level agreement whatsoever. Even though we will do whatever is humanly possible for us to help you there are things objectively outside our control -such as limitations of the programming language, restrictions imposed by your ISP / host, technical limitations of your CMS / web application etc- which may prevent us from offering a solution. In these cases we will present you with our technical analysis and tell you who's responsible for the root cause of your issue. At this point you are to accept the issue as resolved from our side. Should you need to pursue this matter with the person, company or organization responsible for the root cause is entirely up to you and we cannot interfere, prevent or help you with this endeavour in any way.

This is why I closed your ticket #34266. I provided a technical analysis you rejected without a meaningful or technically adequate counter-argument. Acting unprofessionally, belittling us and making unsubstantiated claims about our support provisioning in a public ticket does not constitute a meaningful or technically adequate counter-argument. I gave you a warning and asked you to cease that behaviour.

You have now filed yet another public ticket where you are making unsubstantiated allegations about our professional integrity. I am afraid that at this point it falls under the category of defamatory content. Combined with a demand for a refund against the Refund Policy it borders dangerously on extortion.

As a show of good faith I am willing to give you a second and final warning to cease and desist your defamatory and disrupting behaviour immediately. Your next transgression will result in your account being terminated without a refund per the Terms of Service of our site, see "Actions for content beyond fair use and account termination policy".

As for your refund request, it is declined on the grounds set forth in the Refund Policy which is an integral part of our Terms of Service. The service provisioning that results in your waiving your rights for a refund per the Refund Policy and Directive 2011/83/EU, Article 16, §m are as follows:

A. Downloads

Akeeba Backup for Joomla! 7.5.0.1  Akeeba Backup Professional installation package

OlegKor

2020-12-17

https://www.akeeba.com/download.html

193.25.176.XXX

Akeeba Kickstart 7.0.3  Kickstart Professional

OlegKor

2020-12-17

https://www.akeeba.com/download.html

193.25.176.XXX

Akeeba Kickstart 7.0.3  Kickstart Professional

OlegKor

2020-12-24

https://www.akeeba.com/products/akeeba-kickstart.html

91.212.177.XXX

Akeeba Kickstart 7.0.3  Kickstart Professional

OlegKor

2020-12-24

https://www.akeeba.com/download/official/akeeba-kickstart/7-0-3.html

91.212.177.XXX

UNiTE 4.1.3  UNiTE package

OlegKor

2020-12-24

https://www.akeeba.com/download.html

91.212.177.XXX

The full IP addresses are available to us. I have obscured the last octet for this public message in compliance with EU GDPR. The IP address you used for your downloads on December 24th is the same one you subscribed from, meaning that it was you beyond any reasonable doubt.

B. Support requests

#34261: Russian and Ukrainian localization files ,  Created on Thursday, 24 December 2020 13:59 EET by OlegKor

#34266: Predefined variables in the message (only the part about multiple email addresses),  Created on Saturday, 26 December 2020 10:12 EET by OlegKor

Beyond that, I have a more personal message. Dear Oleg, would you please stop occupying a disproportionate chunk of my time with your behaviour and let me work on the code so I can fulfil your original feature request as I have already explained? I even have some ideas about determining the part sizes – essentially doing the math for you based on the total size of the backup and the number of parts – which MIGHT even result in your second suggestion being implemented (without accuracy down to the byte, but I guess that's not what you were after anyway). The only reason I have so far been unable to sit in front of my IDE and work on solving those problems is that you keep on wasting my time. Please, let me work.

As I told you, I could implement your feature request given time to actually work on the code.

I have addressed the reported backup size accuracy and implemented two variables for the post-backup email:

• [TOTALSIZE] is the total size of the backup (all parts) expressed automatically in Kb, Mb or Gb
• [FILESIZESLIST] lists the backup archive parts and their approximate sizes in Kb, Mb or Gb. It doesn't try for byte accuracy. It makes the assumption that whole parts are equal to the part size for split archives and the last part (.jpa, .jps or .zip) is the total size minus the part size times one less than the number of parts. Since this is expressed automatically in Kb, Mb or Gb byte accuracy is irrelevant. Note that this could NOT be implemented without first implementing [TOTALSIZE] which could NOT be implemented without fixing the accuracy of the underlying total backup size recorded in the #__ak_stats table.

You can download the latest development release which includes these new features from https://www.akeeba.com/download/developer-releases/akeebapro/rev041ce71f.html This will be released between January 7th and 14th as Akeeba Backup 7.5.1.

As I told you, I do take feature requests into consideration. I will implement what makes sense as long as it can work reliably and doesn't cause other problems. Once I fixed the underlying problem that prevented me from implementing [TOTALSIZE] I could implement your original feature request. Your secondary feature request couldn't be implemented as requested but at least I can give a good enough, approximate file size which should be fine for most intents and purposes.

Your behaviour has nothing to do with the fact that English is not a native language for either one of us. Your native language is Ukrainian, mine is Greek. We are communicating in English as the common language between us. The fact that we only provide support in English is part of the Terms of Service you agreed to before purchasing a subscription, so there are no excuses for bringing it up. If you believed that your level of English is not adequate to receive support in you could simply not purchase a subscription.

Regarding the time for development, I had already told you that I need to make sure that the total backup size accuracy issue needs to be addressed because this was the reason why I deliberately hadn't added a variable for the total file size just yet. It is in the second paragraph of my first reply to ticket 34266. My last reply in ticket 34266 clearly stated that I could not promise a timeline or that the issue would be resolve since at that point in time it was a to-do item, not something done, and I cannot promise features I don't know I can deliver. The fact that my attempt at fixing it worked the first time I tried is a happy coincidence but I could not have predicted it. It could be just as well that it would require a large scale refactoring of the backup engine which has a timeframe of months.

I did NOT implement your request to list the exact file size of each backup archive part in the email, despite you believing the opposite. I did not implement that suggestion for the technical reasons I listed in my second reply in ticket 34266. As I explicitly stated in my previous reply in this ticket here (34271) I implemented a slightly inaccurate version which sidesteps those technical issues. Implementing even this slightly inaccurate version was contingent on addressing the total backup size accuracy issue.

You keep stating in bad faith that I did not answer any of your questions. THIS IS A BLATANT LIE! The first paragraph of my first reply to ticket 34266 reads exactly the following:

You do not need a time variable, but it's still there. You can use all of the archive naming variables in the subject and body. Moreover, the body can additionally use the [PROFILENUMBER], [PROFILENAME], [PARTCOUNT], [FILELIST] and [REMOTESTATUS] variables which are specific to the email message body.

Please do realise that I answered your question precisely, even though the way it was posed was unprofessional and passive-aggressive. I gave you the benefit of the doubt. Furthermore, the question you asked is already answered in the documentation: https://www.akeeba.com/documentation/akeeba-backup-documentation/editing-components-parameters.html Per the Terms of Service we are not obliged to respond to questions answered precisely in the documentation. I still replied to you despite the fact I didn't have to. Therefore stating that I didn't try to help you is beyond a bold face lie, it's outright offensive!

If you do not understand what "archive naming variables" means in this context you never told me. If you had, I could have pointed you to https://www.akeeba.com/documentation/akeeba-backup-documentation/configuration.html#basic-configuration where all of them are documented.

Instead, you sent me a sarcastic and contentious reply. I ignored your extremely unprofessional tone of voice and addressed the technical details of your question / suggestion that the exact archive part sizes be listed in the email. You then continued with even more sarcasm, derision and contention than before.

Your allegations are completely uncalled for, considering that I have already replied to every single question you have posed. If you do not understand English well enough to realise that there's Google Translate. However, given the fact that you seem to nitpick on my replies I believe that you are more than capable of understanding what I am writing. Your behaviour and demeanour is your choice, it's not a misunderstanding, it's not being unable to understand what I am saying and it's not you being unable to communicate in English. Not to put too fine a point on it, you chose to be a jerk.

It's your prerogative to conduct yourself in a pedestrian, unprofessional, contentious, disruptive and repulsive manner. It's our prerogative to not have to put up with this kind of behaviour which detracts us from the continued development of our software and providing support to the vast majority of our clients who choose to conduct themselves in a professional and reasonable manner.

Your account has now been terminated without a refund per our Terms of Service. The reason for your immediate account termination is the continued abusive and disruptive behaviour you are exhibiting despite the fact that you received two clear and explicit warnings to cease that behaviour immediately.

Goodbye.

Unfortunately, Mr. Oleg Mikolanovich Korovyakov chose to continue his extortion by email, using our contact form. We doing not bow to bullies. I am posting the contact form he submitted in full, between the horizontal dividers.

I have BOUGHT the right to manage my license ... you have blocked this opportunity.

If you insist that I bought your emotions and do not agree that I bought a License, I expect 40 USD to be returned to my account:

UA753052990000026206771340506

...

There are two ways:

1. I DO NOT need your technical support, but I have the right (because I bought this right) to manage my license, as you promised before payment.

2. You return my money to me and we each keep our own.

3. You leave this fact as it is (about the essence of the theft of payment for my software license) on your conscience. And I publish this incident wherever you advertise your software. In essence, I am describing the Truth ...

Trust me, I will win back my 40 euros on your reputation. I can do a lot of things (which by the way you are well aware) that will drown your reputation in shit.

So. Two ways. Choose ...

Based on the last two paragraphs it is abundantly clear that Mr. Korovyakov is attempting to extort us. We are putting this information publicly to ensure that his potential clients and business associates are aware of the true nature of Mr. Korovyakov's character and be forewarned that doing business with him will invariably result in unprofessional and contentious behaviour that culminates to outright extortion and direct threats.