What you need to know about Phil-A-Form, Directory, and Phil Taylor

[mysunsite]

This is to inform anyone new or newer to the Mambo scene about the potential headaches of dealing with the well-known Phil Taylor.

While I’ve been dealing with Mr. Taylor for well over a year now, it has only lately come to a point where I can no longer just grin and bear it. I have to warn others, and I have to tell people that spending their hard earned money on a Phil Taylor product is probably not a wise choice. The precipitating factor for this was a support request for his long-standing product, PAF. After two weeks of no response I sent him an email telling him I expected some kind of response on the issue –to which Phil gave me a wonderfully silly letter stating “you attitude stinks” and telling me how my problem is that I expect things. Well, if I pay good money (which I did, I bought PAF when it was much more expensive) I do expect some kind of support, and I CERTAINLY expect a response after two weeks without having to send nagging emails.

Buying a Phil Taylor (Blue Flame IT) Product means only one thing:
BUYER BEWARE

Before purchasing any Phil Taylor product - be it mosDirectory, Phil-A-Form, or any other of his over-promising and under-performing products, you need to know the following (and keep in mind I have bought TWO of his flagship products and have been dealing with Phil for over a year now):

1) Phil over-promises what his products can do. He stretches the truth, talks about “upcoming” features like they are available now (and sometimes “upcoming” means in a few months, and in a different product – like the case when I needlessly purchased PAF expecting directory functionality). He lists the wonderful features available in his product while knowing they do not work on the majority of servers. Knowing that features don’t work yet but putting them in (and advertising them!) creates tons of “bugs” in his products. Click this, try to do this, oh- an error message pops up. Get an answer from Phil… “oh – that will be in a future release”. Here’s an idea Phil – don’t put it in the software until it works, and certainly don’t sell me your product telling me it will work.
2) Phil doesn’t like giving support. While a cursory examination of Phil’s site would indicate otherwise (live support, bug tracker) the reality is that getting answers, email responses or actual bug fixes to his products is painfully arduous and slow. Excuses are rampant, and the time delay between response is unacceptable. If any real business operated like this they would be run out of town.
3) Phil doesn’t like the responsibility of maintaining good customer relationships. I’ve actually seen something so ridiculous as Phil pasting a screen shot of his email logs on a forum so that people know how much email he gets. He thinks this is a valid excuse for not answering emails.
4) Phil over extends himself. Here’s the Blue Flame IT problem: Phil takes on way too much and then gets irate if you expect him to finish what he’s started. Case in point – the spammy emails he sends out about his latest products or how he can do custom IT work on your Mambo site. Then on support forums he says to wait for the product you purchased to be finished – there aren’t enough hours in the day, etc.
As consumers buying a product, we DON’T CARE what the situation is. If we pay XX dollars we expect XX of a product or service. The other professional Mambo developers meet those requirements – and we don’t hear them complaining all the time. We dont' want to hear about "paying the bills" or any other nonsense. This is BUSINESS. If you can't deliver a full product with proper support, don't offer it at all.

I would hope that the moderators of this forum can allow this post to stay – and that political agendas do not force its removal. I’ve based each of my statements on previous events and can back each one up with facts.

SO WHAT CAN YOU DO?
Simple – purchase your products from a reputable, honest person that delivers a solid product:
Lee Cher Yong – MOSETS
Emir Sakic
Arthur Konze

I’ve worked a lot with Lee (MOSETS), and he’s tremendous. He always handles support issues IMMEDIATELY and is honest with what his products can do. They always meet expectations (and go a little further).

Same with Emir, I was very impressed with his SEF Advanced. Dynamite product does exactly what it’s supposed to. If you need help he responds immediately.

So there you have it. If you are 110% sure that a Phil Taylor product will work (i.e. someone other that Phil has confirmed it will do what you need it to) then by all means purchase it. Otherwise, if you're just following one of Phil's sell sheets and marketing language, CAVEAT EMPTOR!

[Hospital]

Just a quick note. I personally have never bought any of Phil Taylor's components. I did entertain the idea a few times but found his demos very poor. Along with that they really didn't appear to do what they claimed.

Another reason I decided not to purchase his components was the ongoing, this component is not supported anymore, back to it is supported, then not again, and again. You get my point.

I can back up your claims about Lee Cher Yong from Mosets.com. I have purchased all of his components and they do exactly what he claims. His support it fantastic and very fast. Worth every dollar!

I also have to give credit to the folks at MamboDev.com Great product and service. I was so thrilled with the service from them that I posted it on my site back in May of this year. You can read about it here MamboThemes.com

[iainshaw]

don't have any experience of Phil Taylor's stuff but would support the praise offered on Emir Sakic. SEF_Advance is just a great product and the support is excellent

[Trooper2029]

Hm, I purchased mosIPN a long time ago and it do exactly what it should do. I had smaller problems (my fault not mosIPN) and Phil helps me within a few hours. So i cant say anything agains Phil, his service and his components (ok...i only tried mosIPN)

[starchild]

Well, I've purchased mosDirectory, and can only agree with what's said in the original posting. One of my reasons for choosing it was the high count of the word support on Phils website. Add to that the promise "Still activly developed - new features added weekly" - which comes directly from the feature-list on the same site, and what comes to mind is an actively supported component.
My experiences since are quite the opposite. Like the original posting says, reactions to bug reports and other questions are simply nonexistent. If you don't find something out by yourself, all you can hope for is a helpful soul on the products forum.
So what happens if I really experience troubles someday? My directory goes down for how long? I'm hoping to charge people at some point for their listing, so these are questions of some importance to me.
There are more little annoyances, but the above is the real problem. So the weird situation is that I'm considering to go for another solution in spite of the fact that mosDirectory meets my current needs quite well (in some aspects even better than the other option).
The bottom line is indeed what the original post says: if mosDirectory meets your needs 100% and you can get support otherwise, it is a nice product for a fair price. If not...

[malavision]

yes i bought to him a component too and the only think that i can say is that "impresantable" - beware to buy him... doesn't answer, delete all forums and so you cant see any kind of information to resolve the problem by yourself..

... so..... go away phil.... i bougth two components directory and sef...

poor phil.....

[xuanlu425]

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