Family Historian User Group

On 22 March 2012 I purchased an upgrade for V3 to V4 at a cost of £20.88. 5 days later i.e. on the 27 March 2012 FH email me to inform me of V5 of which I had no knowledge at the time of my upgrade purchase.

It appears to me that to upgrade V4 to V5 will cost £22.99. This is a total of £43.87 for the sake of five days. Is this unfair or what, as the full cost of V5 is only £35.99. They should have made it clear at the time of my purchase. Perhaps I am missing the point, I don't use FH a great deal but it is undoubtedly an excellent program.

I am fully in favour of paying for good software but am very unhaapy about this.

Any comments/advice?

Robert.

ID:6052

I thought if you had purchased Ver 4 recently the upgrade to Ver 5 was free.[confused]

V4 had to be purchased months later than that to get the free offer.

Moral of story is:- Buy upgrades sooner rather than later in order to benefit from your investment for as long as possible.

Nevertheless, you have had the benefit of V4 and the free upgrade to V4.1.3 for less than 6p per day.

On 22 March 2012 I purchased an upgrade

We are still in March so how could it be months later [wink]

which I had no knowledge at the time of my upgrade purchase.

V5 release has been on most websites that supply it since before christmas.

It is not good though - try contacting the vendor and see what he says? I think you had to buy from an 'approved' vendor to get the free upgrade.

I was going to buy V4 last summer but looking at the age of the v4 release decided to wait and see what happened. I sit here patiantly waiting for my upgrade disc.

The Family Historian Website clearly showed V5 was coming since November last year and that ONLY full V4 purchases qualified for a free upgrade to V5.

V3-V4 upgrades did not qualify for a free upgrade, but were available for sale on the same page as the sections which stated that V5 was a free upgrade for full licenses purchased prior to V5s release.

To my knowledge most of the resellers sites also made it clear that V5 was on the way on the same page as V4 upgrades were being sold.

It was announced last November that V5 would be coming out in Feb 2012 (later delayed until March) and that anyone who bought a boxed copy of the FULL version of V4 from one of the participating stockists after 10 November 2011 would qualify for a free upgrade to V5 when it came out.  Unfortunately I don't think an upgrade version of V4 qualifies for this.
The coming of V5 has been advertised on the FH official website for some time now, so I'm gueassing you didn't buy the download version from there or you would have seen the info.  If you bought the upgrade from one of the participating stockists (in the UK these are My History, S&N Genealogy and TWR Computing) I'm surprised they didn't advise you to wait a few more days as they knew V5 was just about to be released.  Who did you buy from?  If I were you I'd contact them to see if you can exchange for a new full V5 (more expensive than an upgrade but cheaper that 2 upgrades, one from V3 to V4 and one from V4 to V5).

Ok so I trusted Calico Pie Ltd. from whom I purchased the upgrade. If what I was doing was daft, then these people who can do wonderful programming could have picked up I was doing the wrong thing and warned me. How kind and good would that have been?  I have been telling everyone who mentions FTW no, get FH! And I suppose I still will do so hmm... but watch the pricing! And Calico can also learn from this. You have some stupid customers so help them, it would be a wonderful advert for you.

'Knowledge is knowing who to trust. Wisdom is not getting caught a second time'.

Robert.

I understand your frustration but this a bit unfair to Calico. Their website home page has been plastered with 'Family Historian 5 out soon' for a long time. So if you went to the website to buy version 4 and didn't see it then it can hardly be blamed on them can it?!

If I were you I'd contact Calico Pie and explain the situation rather than complaining about it on this site which is a user website and not a Calico one. I think if you get no joy from them then feel free to come back here and moan about it, but give Calico a chance to sort this out first!

OK, point taken I will contact Calico. However I simply paid for the upgrade and admit I did not read anything else (rushing!). So yes, more fool me. But I still think it not altogether reasonable to sell this knowing that it will cost the customer approx. £8 more going this route. I will post back when I have their reply.

Thanks all, Robert.