Comments on: YouMail Visual Voicemail Plus Updated to Fix “Greetings” Bug

By: AlexQuilici

AlexQuilici — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 15:56:16 +0000

I wanted to respond to a couple of the comments here.

1) Our single biggest reason for using AppWorld for distribution is that they do the constraint checking on carrier, O/S, and phone for us. That’s an enormous savings in terms of customer support for a small company that’s providing a free servicewith a big and growing user base – since it has eliminated the tons of e-mails and calls saying “YouMail is broken”, which we diligently pursue, and then we go to find out they are trying to run it on a non-supported old O/S or phone or carrier. We’d rather have our support people working and responding to real issues faster.

2) It’s not that easy for us to simply update the OTA link because we have multiple versions of the software for different O/Ss – and while we’ve left it up to provide an alternative for those people who simply can’t use AppWorld, it’s a surprisingly big source of customer support issues for us.

3) We’ve been heads down working on improvements to our clients – but agree we could better communicate some of our fixes – like the 001 issue mentioned.

Believe me, we’re listening to folks here and other places, we appreciate the feedback, and we’re working to find solutions to some of the problems. However, we also have a set of constraints on what we can do and how quickly we can do it.

–Alex

By: dbltap

dbltap — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:55:30 +0000

Surprise surprise. I guess my complaining to support paid off after all. Carrier 001 is now able to see YouMail. Finally able to update.

Would have been nice after all the correspondence over this if they had sent a note to tell me it was fixed.

By: DavidB

DavidB — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:00:30 +0000

Right Ronen, except they ARE hosting an OTA download, how hard can it be to update the version there? At the least they ought to pull it.

And I agree with you on GV. YouMail has had a large head start but will be completely gobbled up by GV. Maybe that is the handwriting they too see on the wall, and thus aren’t willing to spend a penny? I mean really, their app has been out for months and STILL isn’t a “1.0″ release.

By: Ronen Halevy

Ronen Halevy — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:46:36 +0000

Yeah they claim that it would cost them too much to support the infrastructure for serving OTA downloads. I explained to them that it would cost less than $40 per release if they use a competent CDN but I guess that is too much.

Honestly my feeling was that they like the tracking capabilities of the App World and they do not get that via OTA. As you said dbltap they are more worried about their marketing then customers.

Good thing Google Voice is starting to roll out!

By: dbltap

dbltap — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:26:06 +0000

That’s the whole point. They refuse to update the OTA link to the latest version. They have decided to offer this updated version based on the Carrier ID through AppWorld. Guess which ID is NOT included? RIM’s own 001. So if anyone has unlocked and debranded their Bold in the past to be able to switch between 2G & 3G, you can not update your app. They are aware of the issue and don’t give a damn. I’ve exchanged several e-mails with their support and they simply don’t care. It would be a simple process for them to update that OTA link in addition to APPWolrd. But in this case, the Marketing Geniuses and their feedback loop are more important to them than their current customers.

By: DavidB

DavidB — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:24:35 +0000

Is it 0.96.0.0 that this article is about?

And yes there is an OTA download but it is still at version 0.95.9.0. Kinda dumb of a company to leave up an old beta on their own download page as the only version you can download.
http://m.youmail.com/ota/YouMail.jad

By: Corinne

Corinne — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 05:50:41 +0000

They already have a link outside of the app world. If you go to m.youmail.com. It’s not the latest version.