Not a class Act!

Many people have mixed feelings about class action lawsuits, seeing as how the only real winners are usually the lawyers. But is such litigation more justified against a software company that keeps putting out a buggy product? That was the question confronting one reader when he received notice of a settlement involving Sage Software’s Act! 2005.

As with many readers previously (see “Some Sage Advice“), the reader wrote me earlier this year about his frustration over how Sage has handled Act since acquiring it. “After 20 years as an Act! Certified Consultant I’m hanging it up because of the current got-to-have-this-year’s-version mentality of Sage. They put out buggy products and don’t fix them because they are too busy with next year’s release. They’ve left their client base in the lurch in the process. I was in the first class of Act! Certified Consultants back when Contact Software was in Dallas and have been one ever since, through today. But I am dropping the product in 2008 – at least my formal affiliation with Sage. I’ve had it with their total revenue mentality and their terrible end-user support from Bangalore.”

Sage’s apparent philosophy of bringing out a new version every year of the contact management software is the source of all the problems, the reader believes. “Since Act! 2005 was released and took the product to SQL, Sage has been releasing a new version every September. Conventional wisdom is to wait for the first service pack before deployment and that is what I do with my clients. But six months after release of this year’s model we start hearing all about next year’s model. There used to be three years or so between releases — time to stabilize the current product, issue service packs to address issues, and be responsive to other products with which Act! had linkages. Not anymore. I think the final blow came in January last year when Office 2007 hit the street for general users. Word 2007 would not work with Act! 2007, released in September 2006. Any time a new version of Office came out in times past, the current owner of Act! would be quick to issue a patch to make that version compatible with Office. But this time Sage made it clear that Act 2007 would not be compatible with Office 2007. Period. End of statement. Users would have to wait for Act! 2008 in September 2007. And of course because it was a version upgrade they would have to pay for this fix for Office 2007. That left people in the lurch.”

The reader also feels there’s been a bloatware problem with recent versions of Act!. “Sage has tied development tightly around the .NET framework and SQL, and that has raised the complexity and demands of the product. Small companies, historically the bread and butter of Act!’s installed base, would no longer be able to maintain their systems without help from more expensive IT specialists — not to help them USE the product, just to make it behave. The core concepts of Act!, which are very good, have been supplemented by features that most of my small business clients do not use (whoopee, another metrics dashboard in Act! 2008)! The simple elegance of contact management – the heart and soul of Act! — has gone away. Lost to gee whiz bells and whistles and a difficult to maintain product. And a totally revenue driven company.”

“Sage is doing the same thing with TimeSlips and PeachTree,” the reader added. “I get their mailings about the new release of these products, the upgrade costs, and the pending demise of support for a product three years old. So in 2008 stick a fork in me. I’m done! I think there are millions of users out there angry at Sage for painting them into this box. And where are they going to go? Outlook? I don’t think so. Business Contact Manager for Outlook 2007 has some nice features but it is cumbersome to use and brings Outlook to its knees. Oh, well.”

Just by coincidence, the week after writing me the reader received a notice in the mail of a settlement by Sage in a class action lawsuit over defects in Act! 2005. The reader was less than wildly enthusiastic. “No admission of liability, and they are compensating folks at a whopping $47 per license! Gee, I feel better. How’d they arrive at $47? That’s a totally weird number and doesn’t cover anything. I won’t apply — as an Act! consultant they’d certainly disqualify me anyway. Besides, what would $47 buy — some beers and burgers for you and me?”

Sure, when you’ve suffered at the hands of a company, the compensation a class action settlement offers is almost always going to seem ridiculous. And you know the lawyers are the ones who are really getting the money. But I am pleased to see this particular settlement, just because it is a software company having to pay a price for an obvious pattern of putting out buggy releases.

That hasn’t happened as often as it should have. Years ago, for example, a rather similar case was brought against Corel after its own got-to-have-this-year’s-version syndrome produced a series of very buggy CorelDraw releases. Corel’s lawyers easily dragged the case out for years with licensing obstacles and the like until the case finally just died. So that Sage did not succeed in blocking this action is perhaps a good sign.

What do you think? If there’d been a few more successful class actions over buggy software like Act! 2005, would we have better-quality software today? Post your comments below or write me at Foster@gripe2ed.com.