Any ETA on fixes to the serious V3 issues?

[_Mia_]

@Moderator-Davis When can we expect some real communication about improving the new interface? Simple 'we hear you and are glad for the feedback' posts are not actual communication. Release notes after the fact are not helpful when there are ongoing issues that are costing us money every day and we have no idea if you're even working on them or have any intention to. This update is causing us costly issues every day and we're not interested in being strung along and told 'we're working on it' for months or years.

For instance, the intended workflow of the 'Create New Shipment' button seems terribly thought out and is a poor replacement for the old restore order function. At best it wastes time, at worst it causes inventory issues, doubled shipments, etc. The fact that it does not auto-populate the items manifest after creating a new shipment is a no-brainer fix that was reported OVER A YEAR AGO and remains unfixed. This is not a 'learning the new interface' problem, it's not 'this is new, I hate it' complaints that I know often accompany updates, this is inherent to the design. This is just one of many issues that were both reported and should've been fixed long, long ago. It seems as though you simply ignore any customer feedback.

I'm becoming increasingly enraged at shipstation's complete lack of customer relations.

[service15]

Davis hasn't been around for a few days, but @Manager-Erin has definitely been around and despite the increasing number of grievances, she has been rather silent, even though she said communication and transparency was coming. 

I guess transparency & communication is stealthily locking one of the more active threads on the forum with no reasoning behind why.  Obviously it's clear as day why she locked it, since there was talk of rallying the userbase to take action against shipstation's inaction, by contacting the FTC, DOJ Anti trust, etc.

I don't get it, peoples businesses are suffering and livelihoods on the line for some, but no solutions from the company are given, only empty platitudes. Then when the community comes together, as a community should, and tries to have each other's back, the company wastes no time putting a stop to those efforts. 

[Manager-Erin]

Hi @service15 and @_Mia_, 

Thanks for being a part of the community and for your comments. 

 I may have been more silent in a public facing way lately, but I can promise you we have been keeping up with every single post and comment coming in. I am a strong believer in actions over words and I have been collaborating internally with the departments who are involved with this new layout.

If you would like to know how we are moving forward with increasing transparency and prioritizing fixes, you can check out the following: 

New Layout Feedback Announcement 

New Layout Feedback Section

In order to keep moving forward we ask that all feedback of issues you are experiencing in V3 are reported in the New Layout Feedback section. This was created to be a working space where all users can directly share the blockers they are facing and this information will be presented on a weekly basis with the ultimate goal of getting answers and a way for you to follow issues through their internal lifecycle. 

 You should start to see status updates in this section in the coming week, but we need your help too. If you have actionable feedback, outside of reverting, please post it there and encourage others to do the same. 

There is a large volume of incoming posts and a lot of feedback coming in right now so you might not see  @Moderator-Davis or myself always publicly responding right away, but I want you to know that just because we are being silent does not mean it is being ignored. As your community team it is our responsibility to make sure that your voice is represented internally above all else, and while you might not be seeing immediate outreach know that we are hard at work making sure you are not only heard but that we are pushing for solutions. We will continue to work on communication going forward, and we thank you all for your patience during this time.

The community was created to give our users a space to connect and network with each other, provide constructive feedback, and to allow us insight into your collective voice so our community team can make sure that your voice is represented internally in every way possible even when you can’t see it. 

We welcome your feedback and efforts to help each other but if it is done in this space it has to be productive and respectful. Going forward we are asking that every community member be respectful and avoid attacks or non productive comments as this will no longer be welcome in this space. Any conversations that violate these guidelines will not be tolerated and will be closed without further warning.

We know that there is a lot of frustration and stress, but this team is working tirelessly to be your voice even when you can’t see it. Thank you for your understanding and for being a part of this community. 

-Erin: Your Friendly Neighborhood ShipStation Community Manager 

[service15]

@Manager-Erin 

I hear you, and I just hope that these aren't more empty platitudes. Again, peoples businesses and livelihoods are on the line here, and despite that are willing to stay, but we want to see this action you speak of, and swiftly.  

It's hard to have confidence in that when there are issues that have been brought up for over a YEAR and still haven't been addressed. It's easy for you guys to say just hold tight for an undisclosed amount of time, when YOUR job/business isn't thrown into complete turmoil by someone else's hand. A lot of us, if not most, don't have weeks to months to idly wait around for things to MAYBE get better.

The community shopping for alternatives and/or arming the community with paths to resolution for the sake of the current suffering community IS constructive AND productive. It may not come off as that way to you guys, but you guys are also the ones dropping the ball here while simultaneously failing to instill confidence that you will get things together. Those actions taken by the community, be it active or just discussed, should have no bearing on you if your product is functioning to a reasonable degree. Going authoritarian and silencing any dissent isn't going to garner any confidence or retention. Not to mention that you stand to lose business regardless so long as things don't change quickly. I should also point out that everyone has been respectful, and to a much higher degree than is deserved in my opinion.

I believe that as long as there aren't ad hominem attacks and stuff of that sort, any other discussion should not be stifled. If you truly believe in shipstation, and are confident that issues will be resolved to a degree that a majority of users are satisfied, then it shouldn't matter if people discuss alternatives and/or rectifying actions; especially since everyone here, including ones discussing alternatives, want to stay as shipstation WAS a great platform, but you guys are forcing our hand.

Not only are we paying you guys good money monthly for the product, we're also hemorrhaging 

money from the other end due to the product not working correctly and damaging business productivity.

I also would like an answer to the following question:

Why can't we be switched back to V2 until V3 is in an acceptable state?

This is asked a lot, and never answered. You even went as far as to make a rule of "No comments with the end goal to revert to the Legacy format".

If there is a reason, just tell us. No one is inherently against V3 for the sake of it; We are against it in it's current state. If it wasn't ready, then it should not have been rolled out. As many have stated, we are not paying you good money to be beta testers, we're paying for a product to function at it's advertised efficacy.

The morally correct and virtuous action would be to roll back anyone who wants to be on V2 until V3 is in an OBJECTIVELY useable state. 

Thank you.

[ARCreef]

To me the only thing that would make sense is either there was some sort of lawsuit for patent infringement and the settlement stated something like all customers had to be off that or they licensed something about V2 and they are moving to their own technology instead of continuing to pay licencing any longer.

Again this is completely my personal thoughts.  I thought as to why would you force customers off a well-working platform to one that is pretty hated in its current state and that was all I could come up with.  Nothing else makes sense to me. I've never heard someone say ohh V3 seams good.

I would say covid and short staffs could be a reason but V3 has been pushed for over 4 years now.  I literally had a ticket opened with the title "Please help me return to V2, V3 ruined my life!"  and that ticket was 4 years ago. 

I have definitely noticed looking through the improvement idea section that there's tons of ideas that are years and years old, have tons of upvotes, and now just pages and pages of people asking why this hasn't been added after 3 years of "under review".  Something is clearly amiss but it's not covid because its only been 2 years of covid and staffing issues.   I've been waiting for them to add the ability to look up a customer or order by phone number and thats been under review for years.  That's literally something that should have been part of the search feature since day 1 and I'm pretty sure it once was an option,  I remember being able to look up orders using a phone number like 8 years ago.   It seems over time that there are fewer features.  I have to pay for a separate plugin just to be able to see shipments that are stuck in transit or delayed by the carrier, and a separate plugin just to automatically apply the cheapest shipping option.   To say I'm currently unhappy is quite an understatement.  I really hope that SS gets their act together, they have so many possibilities and they can provide so much value to customers.  I hope they conduct an internal audit to figure things out or fire the appropriate people that are holding their company back.

I think a lot of us are even more frustrated because we don't know what's going on internally.  It's a weird twilight zone loop.  They ask us for feedback, we give feedback, then nothing happens for years or they remove features people were already happy with.   I think we all commented we liked V2 and we'd like to see more features added instead of everything completely changed and still no suggested features added and if you ask why we'll remove your comments.    Somebody please ask Ellon Musk to build us a shipping platform lol