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Post by timleschild on Aug 10, 2024 8:46:16 GMT
Just restore the old one and the old app.They were never broken so why fix them! JHE needs to go back to Hughes media with his tail between his legs and his chequebook out Hughes media???
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Post by Chakoteya on Aug 10, 2024 8:55:47 GMT
Dear Big Finish How nice to hear that your app sort of works now. Pity, I don't give a fig because your app developer has deemed my mobile device too old to use it.
Your new website is fug-ugly with too much scrolling to find the important stuff, by the way.
I look forward to 31st August when my next purchase is supposedly available for download according to my search. Once I'd done an initial search to find the title to put into the list on my account. (Not a good look, by the way.)
Kind regards Someone who has bought hundreds of your products as download only, not the 5 CDs listed on my orders.
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Post by timleschild on Aug 10, 2024 8:56:54 GMT
Dear Big Finish How nice to hear that your app sort of works now. Pity, I don't give a fig because your app developer has deemed my mobile device too old to use it. Your new website is fug-ugly with too much scrolling to find the important stuff, by the way. I look forward to 31st August when my next purchase is supposedly available for download according to my search. Once I'd done an initial search to find the title to put into the list on my account. (Not a good look, by the way.) Kind regards Someone who has bought hundreds of your products as download only, not the 5 CDs listed on my orders. Do BF read this site?
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Post by theillusiveman on Aug 10, 2024 9:07:12 GMT
Just restore the old one and the old app.They were never broken so why fix them! JHE needs to go back to Hughes media with his tail between his legs and his chequebook out I looked them up and oddly enough some of the examples of the websites they design have a sort of similar look to the original bf website www.hughesmedia.co.uk/So why the f would big finish move away from them unless they were too expensive for big finish to keep using
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Post by timleschild on Aug 10, 2024 9:09:32 GMT
Money problems at BF? So went for a cheaper alternative & now look at the mess we are all in. Pay peanuts, get monkeys.
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Post by shallacatop on Aug 10, 2024 9:13:06 GMT
In Big Finish’s defence, I think iOS 16 being a minimum requirement for the app is more than reasonable. It came out two years ago and devices that were released seven years ago are all more than capable of having it installed.
Not only is there a cost to having to support older OS, there’s a lot of technical debt associated with it. I don’t think any of us would agree the new app was better than the previous one, but if they had to support iOS 14, 15, et al. it would be even worse. Not to mention the security updates that come with staying aligned with best practice. As customers we would be furious if the reason our credentials leaked is because of an app vulnerability that couldn’t be resolved because Big Finish were trying to cater to, say, 2% of their base. Especially when they offer alternative methods to getting their product on a mobile device.
It’s never going to work for everyone, but something has to give eventually.
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Post by timleschild on Aug 10, 2024 9:14:12 GMT
In Big Finish’s defence, I think iOS 16 being a minimum requirement for the app is more than reasonable. It came out two years ago and devices that were released seven years ago are all more than capable of having it installed. Not only is there a cost to having to support older OS, there’s a lot of technical debt associated with it. I don’t think any of us would agree the new app was better than the previous one, but if they had to support iOS 14, 15, et al. it would be even worse. Not to mention the security updates that come with staying aligned with best practice. As customers we would be furious if the reason our credentials leaked is because of an app vulnerability that couldn’t be resolved because Big Finish were trying to cater to, say, 2% of their base. Especially when they offer alternative methods to getting their product on a mobile device. It’s never going to work for everyone, but something has to give eventually. True, but another reason why it is better to have a download & use a third party audioplayer.
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lidar2
Castellan
You know, now that you mention it, I actually do rather like Attack of the Cybermen ...
Likes: 6,012
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Post by lidar2 on Aug 10, 2024 9:20:20 GMT
JHE needs to go back to Hughes media with his tail between his legs and his chequebook out Hughes media??? In the podcast in recent years, usually in answer to email questions about the website, Nick would have said that "Hughes Media do our website". He definitely said it more than once
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lidar2
Castellan
You know, now that you mention it, I actually do rather like Attack of the Cybermen ...
Likes: 6,012
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Post by lidar2 on Aug 10, 2024 9:32:19 GMT
In Big Finish’s defence, I think iOS 16 being a minimum requirement for the app is more than reasonable. It came out two years ago and devices that were released seven years ago are all more than capable of having it installed. Not only is there a cost to having to support older OS, there’s a lot of technical debt associated with it. I don’t think any of us would agree the new app was better than the previous one, but if they had to support iOS 14, 15, et al. it would be even worse. Not to mention the security updates that come with staying aligned with best practice. As customers we would be furious if the reason our credentials leaked is because of an app vulnerability that couldn’t be resolved because Big Finish were trying to cater to, say, 2% of their base. Especially when they offer alternative methods to getting their product on a mobile device. It’s never going to work for everyone, but something has to give eventually. I think it's a failure of project management. They seem to have gone for a big bang approach - change everything at the same time - rather than a gradual one step at a time approach. They used 2 different |T companies - was there a dedicated, suitably knowledgeable and experienced project manager overseeing it and co-ordinating the 2 companies, or was it Nick in his spare time? As for all the textbook stuff about IT project implementation - testing to death in an offline beta version, parallel running, etc - doesn't seem to have happened. I assume there is an underlying database with all the releases and which customer accounts have access to which releases and then there are two ways customers access this database - the website and the app. 3 basic components, surely it would have made more sense to have changed 1 at a time, testing along the way and only moving to the next once the current one was working ok? ie design a new website that links to the old database, but is designed to be able to switch to the new database on the go live day. Launch the new website still linking to the old database, iron out the bugs, respond to customer feedback, then repeat for the app. Once new website and app live and bedded in copy the underlying data to the new database, ensure the beta versions of the app and the website can switch to the new database. The switch the live versions of the website and app. Migrating data between databases is not that hard to do, it's a case of mapping field A in the old database to field B in the new one. Once all done, then have your go-live day and if everything has been done properly and tested properly, customers who are by now used to the new app and the new website should be barely aware that anything has changed behind the scenes I freely admit I am not an IT person, although I have been involved in IT implementation projects from a finance perspective so I have some knowledge, so maybe the above is not very accurate or else a gross over-simplification. But really, it looks like they made all the really basic elementary errors.
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Post by sherlock on Aug 10, 2024 9:37:57 GMT
In Big Finish’s defence, I think iOS 16 being a minimum requirement for the app is more than reasonable. It came out two years ago and devices that were released seven years ago are all more than capable of having it installed. Not only is there a cost to having to support older OS, there’s a lot of technical debt associated with it. I don’t think any of us would agree the new app was better than the previous one, but if they had to support iOS 14, 15, et al. it would be even worse. Not to mention the security updates that come with staying aligned with best practice. As customers we would be furious if the reason our credentials leaked is because of an app vulnerability that couldn’t be resolved because Big Finish were trying to cater to, say, 2% of their base. Especially when they offer alternative methods to getting their product on a mobile device. It’s never going to work for everyone, but something has to give eventually. Yeah with my cold hard project manager hat on (it’s grey and very heavy), I can see why that would not be a requirement. It does mean the app can’t go on my iPad, but that’s on me as it’s actually capable of installing current OS I’ve just been too lazy to clear the storage space to let it do it.
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Post by sherlock on Aug 10, 2024 9:44:28 GMT
In Big Finish’s defence, I think iOS 16 being a minimum requirement for the app is more than reasonable. It came out two years ago and devices that were released seven years ago are all more than capable of having it installed. Not only is there a cost to having to support older OS, there’s a lot of technical debt associated with it. I don’t think any of us would agree the new app was better than the previous one, but if they had to support iOS 14, 15, et al. it would be even worse. Not to mention the security updates that come with staying aligned with best practice. As customers we would be furious if the reason our credentials leaked is because of an app vulnerability that couldn’t be resolved because Big Finish were trying to cater to, say, 2% of their base. Especially when they offer alternative methods to getting their product on a mobile device. It’s never going to work for everyone, but something has to give eventually. I think it's a failure of project management. They seem to have gone for a big bang approach - change everything at the same time - rather than a gradual one step at a time approach. They used 2 different |T companies - was there a dedicated, suitably knowledgeable and experienced project manager overseeing it and co-ordinating the 2 companies, or was it Nick in his spare time? As for all the textbook stuff about IT project implementation - testing to death in an offline beta version, parallel running, etc - doesn't seem to have happened.I assume there is an underlying database with all the releases and which customer accounts have access to which releases and then there are two ways customers access this database - the website and the app. 3 basic components, surely it would have made more sense to have changed 1 at a time, testing along the way and only moving to the next once the current one was working ok? ie design a new website that links to the old database, but is designed to be able to switch to the new database on the go live day. Iron out the bugs, respond to customer feedback, the repeat for the app. Move the underlying data to the new database, ensure the beta versions of the app and the website can switch to the new database. Migrating data between databases is not that hard to do, it's a case of mapping field A in the old database to field B in the new one. Once all done, then have your go-live day and if everything has been done properly and tested properly, customers who are by now used to the new app and the new website should be barely aware that anything has changed behind the scenes I freely admit I am not an IT person, although I have been involved in IT implementation projects from a finance perspective so I have some knowledge, so maybe the above is not very accurate or else a gross over-simplification. But really, it looks like they made all the really basic elementary errors. Absolutely. Doing the Big Bang approach has clearly been a mistake as it’s flooded their customer services with two lines of complaints which as we learnt now they’ve been having to triage and refer to two entirely different teams, only one of which seems to be acknowledging and acting on them (at least if we take what Big Finish said about having no updates from website team on face value. And that’s quite a thing to admit publicly!). I’d be really curious to know what level of beta testing actually happened. They clearly didn’t seem to have the right test cases of customers with hundreds of releases and judging by the app’s quality of life issues they didn’t simulate how some customers would really use it (not noticing it initially couldn’t really work offline for example). I can only assume they set up some test accounts and dropped a handful of releases in to check they showed up and played when downloaded, and didn’t do any more specific scenarios than that. As for website itself, I cannot fathom what user they had in mind for testing navigating that.
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Post by shallacatop on Aug 10, 2024 10:16:01 GMT
In Big Finish’s defence, I think iOS 16 being a minimum requirement for the app is more than reasonable. It came out two years ago and devices that were released seven years ago are all more than capable of having it installed. Not only is there a cost to having to support older OS, there’s a lot of technical debt associated with it. I don’t think any of us would agree the new app was better than the previous one, but if they had to support iOS 14, 15, et al. it would be even worse. Not to mention the security updates that come with staying aligned with best practice. As customers we would be furious if the reason our credentials leaked is because of an app vulnerability that couldn’t be resolved because Big Finish were trying to cater to, say, 2% of their base. Especially when they offer alternative methods to getting their product on a mobile device. It’s never going to work for everyone, but something has to give eventually. I think it's a failure of project management. They seem to have gone for a big bang approach - change everything at the same time - rather than a gradual one step at a time approach. They used 2 different |T companies - was there a dedicated, suitably knowledgeable and experienced project manager overseeing it and co-ordinating the 2 companies, or was it Nick in his spare time? As for all the textbook stuff about IT project implementation - testing to death in an offline beta version, parallel running, etc - doesn't seem to have happened. I assume there is an underlying database with all the releases and which customer accounts have access to which releases and then there are two ways customers access this database - the website and the app. 3 basic components, surely it would have made more sense to have changed 1 at a time, testing along the way and only moving to the next once the current one was working ok? ie design a new website that links to the old database, but is designed to be able to switch to the new database on the go live day. Launch the new website still linking to the old database, iron out the bugs, respond to customer feedback, then repeat for the app. Once new website and app live and bedded in copy the underlying data to the new database, ensure the beta versions of the app and the website can switch to the new database. The switch the live versions of the website and app. Migrating data between databases is not that hard to do, it's a case of mapping field A in the old database to field B in the new one. Once all done, then have your go-live day and if everything has been done properly and tested properly, customers who are by now used to the new app and the new website should be barely aware that anything has changed behind the scenes I freely admit I am not an IT person, although I have been involved in IT implementation projects from a finance perspective so I have some knowledge, so maybe the above is not very accurate or else a gross over-simplification. But really, it looks like they made all the really basic elementary errors. Agreed, I’d have looked at doing them in phased approaches too. Ultimately, whatever the way it’s implemented, I think we’d have had the same technical output with the app in terms of it being iOS 16 minimum.
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Post by timleschild on Aug 10, 2024 10:19:29 GMT
In the podcast in recent years, usually in answer to email questions about the website, Nick would have said that "Hughes Media do our website". He definitely said it more than once Thanks. i don't listen to the podcast. I wonder what their answer's be to email questions this time.
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Post by fitzoliverj on Aug 10, 2024 13:33:31 GMT
Dear Big Finish How nice to hear that your app sort of works now. Pity, I don't give a fig because your app developer has deemed my mobile device too old to use it.
In BF's semi-defence, one of the reasons I had to buy a new computer was that Audible's iTunes plug-in refused to work with Windows 10. So, dreadful service that it is, it is industry-standard bad service.
Interestingly, I reckon I should have 373 items; the website is calculating 375 (including Coda, but excluding Opereation Werewolf & Deathworld, and of those that ARE there some still aren't downloadable). The app has 224 (up from 216 earlier in the week) including Op Werewolf, Deathworld and Coda.
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Post by timleschild on Aug 10, 2024 18:22:17 GMT
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Post by vivdunstan on Aug 10, 2024 21:37:19 GMT
I’m finding the company’s silence on the website problems really frustrating. I still can’t access via the website many recent audios I’ve bought. And their updates so far have focused on the app, with no idea of when the website may be fixed. Even if we seemingly know why now! Today they’ve again removed the banner at the top of the website pointing to advice about known issues. Which remain a problem, prominent banner or not. I’m just really frustrated with them all round.
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Post by timleschild on Aug 10, 2024 21:52:56 GMT
I’m finding the company’s silence on the website problems really frustrating. I still can’t access via the website many recent audios I’ve bought. And their updates so far have focused on the app, with no idea of when the website may be fixed. Even if we seemingly know why now! Today they’ve again removed the banner at the top of the website pointing to advice about known issues. Which remain a problem, prominent banner or not. I’m just really frustrated with them all round. This is really highlighting how inept BF are at communicating with customers & PR in general. This has been a disaster for them. Maybe not all of their own making but they've made it worse with how they have handled it.
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lidar2
Castellan
You know, now that you mention it, I actually do rather like Attack of the Cybermen ...
Likes: 6,012
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Post by lidar2 on Aug 10, 2024 23:39:10 GMT
Wonder what all this means for BF's money coming in. I would imagine revenue has dropped very significantly in the last 2 weeks, partly due to problems for customers actually placing orders and also due to customers not placing orders because of a lack of confidence in the website.
If a situation like that develops - and it's hard to imagine it hasn't to some degree - and persists, it can only go on for so long before the company has serious financial problems.
Possibly people trying to beat the price rises by ordering before the old website ceased will have given BF enough of a financial windfall to tide them over until things pickup.
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Post by theillusiveman on Aug 11, 2024 0:50:04 GMT
Wonder what all this means for BF's money coming in. I would imagine revenue has dropped very significantly in the last 2 weeks, partly due to problems for customers actually placing orders and also due to customers not placing orders because of a lack of confidence in the website. If a situation like that develops - and it's hard to imagine it hasn't to some degree - and persists, it can only go on for so long before the company has serious financial problems. Possibly people trying to beat the price rises by ordering before the old website ceased will have given BF enough of a financial windfall to tide them over until things pickup. Didn’t big finish have debt to pay off? which doesn’t help with the situation I mean from what was said online they were doing alright but with the new website issues and being ghosted let’s hope it doesn’t effect them
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Post by timleschild on Aug 11, 2024 6:11:49 GMT
BF are in debt? It does seem like they're in a precarious position if that is true & if a couple weeks of drop in orders hits them hard financially.
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