Summary:
Handango, probably the largest online mobile software store,
has abruptly closed my account and removed all of my
products from their store for no stated reason,
thus making it impossible to honor a raffle prize that I won
from them last year.
History: In 2005, I won a
raffle that Handango had, which resulted in me
receiving $5,000.00 in ad allowance to use on advertising my
products on their site and in their newsletters.
When I first tried to use part of the balance to
take out two ads, Handango forgot to schedule one
of the ads, so they apologized by giving me two
additional ad allowances which resulted in me then having:
- $4250 balance to be used for
advertising (except champion ads)
- Free Champion spot ad in a
smartphone newsletter issue ($250)
- 2 weeks of featured spot on
website ($1000)
(total of
$5,500.00)
I recently developed a new version
for one of my products (Alerts!), and I wanted to use
part of my ad allowance to promote it. But, when I
tried to use/confirm my ad balance, a new management
team at Handango wasn't aware of my ad allowance and suddenly put
a whole bunch of restrictions on it, including that I
had to use the entire balance within 5 months or
loose it. As you
will see, Handango admits that these restrictions are not documented anywhere, but
they were still holding me to them.
Being that I currently had only one product that was
worth promoting (Alerts! - because it's latest version was less then 1 year
ago), this meant that I could either blow the entire
allowance to promote just this one product, or try to rush
development on new versions of my other apps in this
short period of time. For the allowance to really be
of any use, I had no choice but to choose the later.
Naturally, my feathers were ruffled
because of these surprise undocumented ad restrictions,
and the pressure of me (being a single developer)
having to
develop two major new versions of my
products within just a few months.
We then spent almost a month going
back and forth creating the insertion order (ad
schedule) because they ignored my request to do it faster
over a phone call.
On the day that the first ad was to
appear, it didn't. And when I inquired why, they
essentially replied that they had closed my account
(for no stated reason) and will no
longer sell my apps!, thus making it impossible to use
my ad allowance at all!
If you don't believe that this is the whole
story and Handango wouldn't do something like this, then please read the below
Unedited message volley I had with
Handango and see for yourself:
[
Click
Here for the Entire Message Thread
]
I was awarded the
$5000+ ad allowance fair and square before anything
else occurred. But, by deleting my account, they made
it impossible
for me to use that allowance. Thus, Handango effectively
reneged on their own raffle prize!
IMPORTANT: If
you are an employee of
Microsoft, Motorola, Verizon, Cingular, HP, Sprint or
T-Mobile, it would be appropriate for your
company to inquire why Handango would treat one of
their partners in this fashion.
The future
development and support of my mobile apps is at risk...
Since a large number of my sales
were generated through Handango's store, the closure
of my account has stopped those sales. This has
significantly reduced the sales
potential for all of my apps and placed them lower in
my
to-do list because I need to spend my time on projects
that will pay the bills.
I hope that you never had to contact me with a support
issue for one of my products, but if you did, I trust
that I provided you with the very best support
possible. Now, I'm asking for YOUR support.
I scheduled ads for both
Vnotes and
SATALERT to go live on or around November 15th. And I
was on track to release major version upgrades for
both of them by that date. But, now that the ads have
been cancelled, there is much less incentive to
complete those upgrades. This is one reason why I need
your help in getting Handango to reconsider their
decision.
Use the below link to discuss this
issue with others:
OMNISOFT Forum: Handango Closed My Account!
|
10/30/06 UPDATE |
|
The support that everyone has
shown on this issue is overwhelming (in a good
way!) and truly reassures me that I did not
deserve this.
Thank you! :)
What to keep updated on the status of this
issue?
Subscribe to the "Handango Closed My Account!"
newsletter
|
|
Look who's
talking...
Websites talking about
this issue
(if I left any websites out,
please
let
me know so I can add it to this list) |
|
Check out this very
insightful article by
Bill Ray of
The Register:
Click Here to read Article
11/21/06 Follow-up to above article:
Handango Pays Off Omnisoft |
Also, the below websites have
stopped using Handango as their software
store (if I forgot anyone,
please let me know):
(They were
selling between $3,000 and $6,000 worth of
software per month through Handango's site, but no
more!)
|
If you do not want to purchase software
through Handango, you can, for example
purchase products of the following companies
via the WebIS store at
http://ssl.webis.net:
- WebIS
- PhatWare
- Iambic
- SBSH
- Ilium
Here are some more online shops that
sell mobile software
(if I left any websites out,
please
let
me know so I can add it to this list):
|
| 11/21/06
UPDATE |
| Hello
Everyone,
This will
probably be the last update I will make for a
while on this issue.
Handango is
still not willing to re-open my account at this
time. Will Pinnell said in their official
reply “We treat all of our 16,000 global
content providers with respect and
professionalism”. I just wish I was one of
those 16,000 because I probably would have then
been extended the respect and
professional courtesy of an advanced notice
informing me that my account was at risk of
being closed, and the opportunity to fix
whatever the problem(s) were before it had to
be abruptly terminated.
Even though
Handango will not re-open my account (so
now I'm loosing almost half of my sales),
they did send me a check out of the blue for a
portion of the
ad allowance I had ($4,250.00 of the $5,500.00
total). They have not replied to my inquiry
about the remaining $1,250.00. However, they didn't
even offer this to me until after all of you showed your
support :) So, you did make a difference!
On a BIG
positive note, Mike Temporale from
SmartphoneThoughts.com (one of the
ThoughtsMedia suite of sites) informed Mobihand
about my situation. Dave Schoenbach from
Mobihand then contacted me with some really
good news:
“We’re
happy to give your products an extra
promotional boost when they get into the
catalog, including prominent listing in our
Featured Products rotation, and notification
to editors of blogs at some of our key
distribution partner sites. This is in
consideration of the difficulties you’ve gone
through, and your willingness to sign up with
MobiHand. If, in addition, you are interested
in an exclusive sales arrangement with us, in
which the MobiHand network is, at least
initially (maybe for a one month period), the
sole place to buy your products, we’d be
pleased to do a concerted blitz, including
prominent placement in our ads rotation, and
featuring your products in an upcoming
newsletter from one of our bigger
distribution partners, in addition to the
boost mentioned above.
Please
note that we also offer ecommerce services,
including a website shopping cart, mobile
shopping cart which can be linked from your
trial versions for on-device purchase, and a
direct-to-device download module, html you
can insert in your site, for users to send
their device a link via SMS or email, for
easy trial downloads. We custom design these,
branded to your site look, with no setup
charge, only a 10% fee on transactions (and
we pay credit card or PayPal fees).”
In addition,
Jack from
Mobile Gadget News
wrote me with:
“MGN is
extending one month of free banner ads to
John Cody to help him with the transition.”
Also, Feico
Mol from
MyTreo.net wrote me with:
"I'm
hoping I can help you a little by offering
free promotion and inclusion in our weekly
newsletter (reaches 250,000 Treo
users)...Would also be more than happy to get
one of our staff writers to produce a review
of one of your products for on our frontpage."
|
All of your
support helped me deal with this issue
immensely.
So, I want to say Thank You
with these offers: |
- For
everyone who read my story, I would like to
send you a FREE copy of
SmartTIP, a
tip calculator that runs on most Windows
Mobile Smartphones (2002/2003/WM5/Landscape
and app-locked devices too). All that I ask
in return is the opportunity to tell you
about new OMNISOFT products and specials via
the email address you provide below (you can
unsubscribe to my newsletter at anytime -
Our
Privacy Statement). As you can guess, I
could sure use all the sales leads I can get
;)
- And for
those who took the time to send Handango
your comments on this issue (via the form
that was on this page), I will also be
sending you a coupon good for
50% off
the OMNISOFT product of your choice! Note:
It may be a few weeks before you receive the
coupon because I need to modify my order form
to accept coupons.
Thanks for all
your support!
- John Cody
OMNISOFT |
