Asking for help on the forum first.

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exxos
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Asking for help on the forum first.

Post by exxos »

I constantly get asked for help by people who purchase items from my store or help in general. While of course there is nothing wrong with this, please consider the following first..

1) When I reply individually to each support request, people do not realise is that I end up repeating myself over and over again about similar issues with someone else a few weeks later which is just not a constructive use of time. The whole idea of the forum is that the next time when another individual has the same issue, all the relevant information is already posted and people can find this information easily & quickly in the relevant sections.

A lot of guides and information is also already on my website. So please check out the resources first. All the information I have currently about all the fitting of the kits is already posted on my website. I realise there is a lot of incomplete information there, but the reason is, I have not worked through those things myself yet either. But the chances are, someone else has, and will be able to help.

Again due to the volume of emails I get, a lot of days I simply cannot keep up and some mails go unanswered. At the time of typing I am currently around 70 emails behind and some emails I may not get time to reply to at all. So please ask the community on the forum as they will likely be able to help you out quicker than myself personally. Of course if there are no replies to the issue after a few days I will try my best to help you out. But please understand I am only one person and there is only so much I can do each day.

2) As said many times, I have RSI with my fingers and typing is basically agony for me now. I can manage to type a few lines each day and that is it. It is also one reason why I hardly ever visit or reply to any other groups or forums anymore. Aside from the time, the voice recognition software does not always work well on other sites, so I am forced to do typing by hand, which hurts! I do have voice recognition software which I use to help speed up replies and avoid using my fingers so much. Though unfortunately, I end up doing a lot of manual corrections which again is a lot of typing in particular when I get 100s of emails each week. So please understand the "sledge hammer" across the back of my hands each letter I type and understand why I can't keep replying to everyone personally.

3) A lot of people email me asking where their package is etc. Tracking emails are ALWAYS sent out and if people do not receive the email, it is likely stuck in their spam box! People email me asking for tracking codes for their order, when I have already sent it out! So please people, check your spam boxes for these emails. It is honestly quicker to do this than go to the trouble of emailing me asking for tracking codes which I've already sent! Please also note, there can be up to 1 week before items are actually posted. Generally items are posted within two days.

4) People keep emailing me asking when items will be back in stock. Again, I simply cannot answer this question. You need to check the forum each day as I always post but I am working on as regularly as possible. Aside from that I simply cannot say sorry! Keep checking my store as stock is always been added each week. If there is no mention on my forum about some item, or its not been in stock , then ask on the forum, sometimes I do not notice items going out of stock.

5) I realise people cannot always purchase items from my store as they do not own a credit card. I am aware of this issue and I cannot really do anything about it the moment as Stripe only accept credit cards currently. As mentioned in the FAQ in my web store, I cannot currently accept any other payment methods, whether it be IBAN, paypal, bitcoin etc etc.

WHY ? Because my entire web store is automated for starters. Taking orders outside of the store generates a lot of issues as I have to manually edit stock quantities in the database and it also causes problems in keeping track of who has ordered what when I do not even process the orders myself my girlfriend does. This alone ends up causing a lot of confusion as there is no proper order.

As people know I am banned from PayPal, I do not accept bitcoin or any other payment methods. I do not take IBAN as the bank charges are just too much. Also when I have taken this in the past, I just get pestered constantly has the money gone over yet.. It just gets tiresome and I am not even at home of all of the week to even check. If people really want to order with IBAN, then as mentioned in my web store FAQ, you'll have to contact John Cove who will purchase items on your behalf from my web store. Though there will likely be additional charges in doing this.

6) Do I "have to" sign up with your forum to get help ? If you need help on a problem which is not already answered then I'm afraid you will have to sign up with the forum to obtain further help. I'm sorry if people do not like signing up with forums etc, but this is the support portal for hardware upgrades and issues.

As said before, regrettably, I simply cannot keep up with replying to each individual. If I continue to do this, people would likely be waiting 1-2 weeks for reply from myself to the backlog of emails.

So please people, help me out and seek help on the forum. A lot of things can easily be answered by many of the members here already. We have a great and helpful community here and there are always people online around the clock who are happy to help.

A good place to start is in the hardware section https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/forum/viewforum.php?f=49.

7) If you *really* need to contact me for any other general reasons then that is fine of course, but PLEASE make sure if your emailing from my website, you enter a valid email address! The amount of times I have taken time to reply to people only to get the email bounce back or mailbox is full... :roll:

8) Can you tell me the part numbers For the capacitors you use in your kits etc etc ? Short answer, no. I was listing part numbers for Farnell on my site originally, but then parts would become discontinued, or no longer sold, so those part numbers quickly become obsolete. Then I have people emailing me anyway if I can list updated part numbers which I do not have. In general it would be a full-time job to keep on top of all the part numbers and keep my site updated, and I just have no time to maintain that sort of information.

9) I have a idea for a project can you do this for me ? basically, no. I have that many projects of my own which I do not have time to work on, realistically I probably only get to do about 10% of the projects I want to do. If you have a idea for a project, then you should do this work yourself. Myself like many hardware developers, we just do not have any more time to give to work on any more projects. This does not mean the community will not help you if you ask for help on this forum, but there are so many projects which can be done, there may simply be nobody else who has ever even done that project before and have no idea how to help you.

Thanks for your understanding :)

exxos
https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/ All my hardware guides - mods - games - STOS
https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/store2/ - All my hardware mods for sale - Please help support by making a purchase.
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1585 Have you done the Mandatory Fixes ?
Just because a lot of people agree on something, doesn't make it a fact. ~exxos ~
People should find solutions to problems, not find problems with solutions.
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