Viart Shop

I am getting to that point....
 
I have paid for the enterprise version and customization and installation, etc about $1000 and I am getting only vague answer or excuses or even worst, emails from support saying "that everything is fine" when it is not working properly.
 
I have provided screen shots and video of my screen, showing when the shopping cart is not working while placing an order, etc.
 
I have tried to be patience and understand very well that being a programmer is difficult and there are many things to look at, etc, but I am fed up with the non customer service orientation this company have. For SURE, when they do changes they do not TEST and something else is wrong in the cart.
 
Meanwhile my customer spend a LOT of money in infomercials, website, etc and is so frustrated as well as I am.
 
Summary to be fixed and still waiting:
1. Checkout page acts funning refreshing two times and un click the "I agree" at checkout with no reason.
2. Affiliates does not work and gives commission "sometimes" and when it does, gives the commission of the full price of the product not the price of sale (for example if I apply a coupon, the commission is without the coupon) giving more money to the affiliates than it suppose to be.
3. I am still waiting for the "remove" link in the customization I paid for $600 in the checkout screen.
4. I have asked 100 times for a simple way of displaying the cart:
 
Products
product1 $100
product2 $150
 
Coupons
coupon1 $50
 
Total $200
 
I now can see why people in the forum posted that the viart company is done by programmers only and not by ecommerce professionals, there is a big difference. I live by doing ecommerce everyday, working with carts besides being a powerseller on ebay as well. The cart has some great ideas, need to improve tough in some others (like the 6/8 steps checkout process=abandon rate). I was impressed by the admin features of the enterprise edition and by now I can tell that I am not impressed with the support side. (from ukrania I believe, as my ip log shows). I think if you want to buy this cart, think twice, look around they may be better alternatives, pay more if necessary.
 
Ahhhh by the way, I offer ONLY two products. Unbelievable isn't it?
 
Claudio
 
Remoterestore.com

I feel for you. The software and the company have some great features and their cart is poised to be one of the best I have seen. We were gung ho to roll out Viart to our clients, after a lot of testing an some peeks under the hood, we tempered our enthusiasm a bit, and are proceeding a little more cautiously.
 
The good news is they are listening, they are responding. Since we started working with the software they have fixed a number of bugs and improved many features.
 
I think you are right they are somewhere in Eastern Europe, IP addresses, May day holidays, staff names... they all point there... not sure what is in the UK. I had a similar experience with a Russian shopping cart developer a few years back. Over time things improved a lot, and we deployed several stores successfully. I see Viart improving the same way.
 
If us early adopters show patience and support AND the Viart continues to react positively to our feedback, this product will get finished nicely and become a winner in the marketplace.

Viart is a British Company:
 
http://www.viart.com/about

Hi,
 
Just for clarity Viart Limited is a UK registered Company. Our finance and administrative functions are operated from there. The bulk of our team including core product development, graphic design, e-commerce services and support are based in Ukraine.
 
We are a team of 30 people covering all of the above disciplines. We strive to provide a good product and service at a low cost and our offshore operation allows us to achieve this. At the present time we prefer to expand our offshore team rather than opening offices in other countries to ensure we can continue to add more and more features to our already expansive system and undertake bespoke development at what we hope are reasonable rates.
 
Having said all that you have obviously had a problem and our service in this case does not appear to have matched your expectations. I will take a look at your project right now to try and ascertain why we have not performed to your satisfaction.
 
thanks,
Artem Birzul
ViArt Support

I love this response Artem, it gives me great confidence in ViArt.
I am constantly promoting your product and have nothing but good to say.
As mentioned in my other forum responses I see nothing but a great product in the near future from ViArt.
Personally our experience with ViArt and it's support staff has been very pleasant and professional.
Claudio, sorry about what you are going through, I am sure Artem and his team will resolve it swiftly.

I disagree with you. I have a standard version of ViArt and I get responses in a short period of time. The software itself is good, and you have to be careful while installing files to your FTP. I had problems at the beginning too but got it solved by the help of ViArt staff. Please just give it a time, I am pretty sure you will be satisfied both with the product and support.

I have absolutely no doubt that Viart are 100% commited to making the software the best possible. All the staff care about the service they provide and are pleasant people. The price they put on the software is very reasonable, in fact it must be hard when you (they, Viart) want to make it great but still need to keep it cost effective.

I guess that Claudio has experienced what we all find occasionally. No matter how committed we are to the Viart product - and I have often enough said how good it is - there are always moments when support falls down.
 
I just relate it to my business where it becomes a challenge to maintain standards when sale demand takes a leap forwards.
 
I hope you find that Viart is well worth sticking with Claudio - best wishes
 
Chris

Hello Chris,
 
I totally agree with your post. I was about to post something on the same lines.
 
Thanks for posting on my behalf

Ibn, it's a pleasure to be part of the team!!

Artem,
 
Thank you for your reply.
There are few things not working, please I need your help in getting the problems resolved.
The recurring payments are not working now. I do not know if it is a setting issue or something that got messed up after the coupons modifications (the recurring payment was working properly).
I just need a solution. I have only two products with recurring payments, how difficult can be to set up this payments properly?
This was the reason why I choose viart in the first place.
We started this project about 4 months ago, I think is time to make it work.
I really appreciate your help.
Best,
Claudio
 
Remoterestore.com

I been messing with the trail version for a while and although there's alot of features there just thrown together. The html and css is poorly written many errors and the templates are dated a bit. For the money Viart charges they should validate their css and html files. I see alot of sites that don't even include a <!DOCTYPE>.
 
You will also notice they use loose.dtd which is for beginners.
 
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> I like to see XHTML Script!
 
Viart needs to add a design team and SEO team. Either then that it's pretty good software.

Also we can't edit our own forum posts... is this available?
What if we misspell or want to include an attachment after we already posted and want to go back to fix it? Just my 2 cents

Another bug when you edit the checkout info in the admin section from customer name to firstname and lastname with the 2 boxes it doesn't store the customer first and last name after the register. I created an account then went shopping and these 2 boxes were empty at checkout. The 2 vars are not being passed?

I have learned an awful lot about the ViArt CMS... I believe an educated Customer is the Best Consumer... I give the Team as much info and access as I can... Have a Quality Host at Intelli-net, research as much as I can before I contact them, and I have to be Honest... The Team has ALWAYS resolved any Issue in about 24 hours or less... I learn more every day about this CMS and Quite Frankly, am amazed at it's broad Platform and Ease of Customization.
I Have Nothing But Good Things to Say about ViArt, and Plan on using it on every Site I can... (besides, with the Time I've invested in ViArt, why would I want to start from scratch in learning someone else's code?) I felt compelled to leave a Positive message... I'm gonna' get back to work...
Cheers

3starinc, you reflet exactly what so many of us feel about Viart. We get tired of people who take up so much forum space whining about it. If they don't like one of the best eCommerce programs about they don't have to use it and can go elsewhere.
 
Like you I have had a mass of good help from helpful Viart people

I'm not here to whine about the product, as an e-commerce professional, I know exactly what it is and where it is. Viart's playform might have the richest set of functions available for an off the shelf store.
 
Our success as users depends on their success in the market. Market success depends less on 'the best product' (ref: Microsoft) and more on a company's ability to read and react to customer needs in products and customer service. It's never fun for supporters or the company staff to see negative feedback -- however all feedback, good and bad is viewed as valuable.
 
Asking those with gripes to leave simply shorts Viart, and ultimately all of us.