I purchased a simple keyword research script for $10 from Alstrasoft, to use in digging for keywords.
I was quickly drawn to their suite of applications that were near clones of major sites like Youtube and Myspace. I had been searching for similar scripts and knew there weren’t many with these immense feature sets. I signed up as an affiliate and began to send traffic. Within a short period of time I had made more than a few sales. I checked my account over and over for 3 months, thinking I would eventually be credited. Alstrasoft never paid me.
I contacted their support team (6/26/2007) and within hours a Mike Terry had replied back to me that he would look into it. Mike Terry never sent me another email. Nobody from Alstrasoft ever returned an email to me, even after multiple (6 requests) attempts to every address on their site. The 800 number on their website was even dead!
I started researching their company and realized I wasn’t the only person they quit communicating with abruptly… unhappy customers were coming out of the woodwork on forums…
- Alstrasoft Efriends Nightmare
- Alstrasoft Efriends - take a look at the customer reviews!
- Alstrasoft Videoshare Enterprise Nightmare
- Alstrasoft support coming up short
- Alstrasoft Efriends - “You Have Been Warned” - Webbizideas.com
- Alstrasoft.com shut down for copyright issues - “You Have Been Warned” - UnitHosting.net
- Alstrasoft Efriends Hacked - no support to be found (for more on this, google “alstrasoft security“)
Are you ready for the cherry on top? Alstrasoft sells an affiliate network script “Affiliate Network Pro” … but if you sign up as an Alstrasoft Affiliate you will see they are using “aMember Pro” to actually run their affiliate program! Check the screenshot if you want to forgo the signup process.
It is hard to believe that a company could put so much effort into building a legitimate storefront and then piss it all away with poor customer service, but Alstrasoft has championed the cause!
If you ever see anyone online questioning the legitimacy of any Alstrasoft script, feel free to quote from or lead them to this post.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see Alstrasoft shut down their site and re-open under a new brand sometime in the future… and if they do please let me know.
Companies that blatantly disregard their customers like this, must be held accountable.
July 13th, 2007 at 1:02 am
Looks like JaguarPC even has customers who are not able to get support from Alstrasoft! You would think that Alstrasoft’s scripts would at least be compatible with their offical hosting partner’s servers, but once again they fail to deliver!
Alstrasoft Article Manager Pro - not working
July 15th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
Thanks for the detective work. I’ll do some more reference checking and if nothing pans out I’ll pull their ANP product listing on my site.
July 15th, 2007 at 6:17 pm
I contacted Alstrasoft support asking how to reach them by phone recently (since their phone was not working as mentioned in the above post & on customer reviews submitted on hotscripts.com) and this was their response:
You can reach us at 1.888.645.1648 but it will be available next mon as we are in process of changing with our provider.
Regards,
John Ross
Alstrasoft
July 15th, 2007 at 6:37 pm
Since Alstrasoft was no longer returning emails I thought I would check in through their sales contact form from a new email address. My inquiry consisted of “Do you put limitations on uploaded file sizes within videoshare enterprise?” … the email conversation that was spawned follows:
—————-
email conversation start
—————-
from Alstrasoft
date Jul 12, 2007 11:58 PM
subject RE: AlstraSoft Feedback
Hi,
We do not place any restriction on video size.
Regards,
John Ross
Alstrasoft
—————-
to Alstrasoft
date Jul 13, 2007 12:14 AM
subject Re: AlstraSoft Feedback
Hi John,
What is this I hear about you guys not replying to customer support emails & not paying affiliates?
Please advise
—————-
Alstrasoft
date Jul 13, 2007 9:04 AM
subject RE: AlstraSoft Feedback
Hi,
We provide support via email, online customer support ticket and live chat. Payment for affiliates is by the payment methods they selected. Please provide me the references where you heard the news from so that we can check on this.
Regards,
John Ross
Alstrasoft
—————-
to Alstrasoft
date Jul 13, 2007 9:37 AM
subject Re: AlstraSoft Feedback
Hi John,
You can reference my emails to support@alstrasoft.com … they have subject lines as such:
ALSTRASOFT AFFILIATE PAYMENT REQUEST #1 - 7
Please advise
—————-
from Alstrasoft
date Jul 13, 2007 10:24 AM
subject RE: AlstraSoft Feedback
Have set your payment details in your alstrasoft account
—————-
to Alstrasoft
date Jul 13, 2007 11:13 AM
subject Re: AlstraSoft Feedback
Yes, my paypal address is *****@******.com … I had this discussion with Mike Terry on 6/27. He never followed up… in spite of 6 more messages from myself.
—————-
email conversation end
—————-
Notice how fast the responses to emails were up until that last message? It is now 7/15 and I have not had a response back. Alstrasoft seems to have perfected the art of not returning emails when they are backed into a corner.
I welcome any prospective Alstrasoft customers to ask Alstrasoft what their response is to this? Please do… if you get a response, it is more than I can say for myself - as Alstrasoft continues to duck and dodge affiliates and customers alike.
July 15th, 2007 at 7:24 pm
At least give them until Monday, LOL.
Not that I think they’ll respond…. but try again then!
Thanks for letting me know about jaguarPC I’m sure they’ll be interested to hear over there, too. Also on Monday.
July 16th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
VideoShare Enterprise demo:
http://www.alstrahost.com/videoshare/include/conf.ini
July 16th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
JPC Customer,
You are right, it is expected that weekends are not for working.
However, I am 99.9% sure this company operates out of India. Therefore when they emailed me a response at Jul 12, 2007 11:58 PM… they were actually about 12 hours ahead of me (12 PM Saturday Afternoon).
And now here we are on Monday 12 noon PST (Tuesday in India) and I have no word back from them.
July 16th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
For future reference, online businesses that use Privacy Protection on their whois = red flag.
http://whois.domaintools.com/alstrasoft.com
However,
http://whois.webhosting.info/69.73.169.212
… shows they host 7 other sites and you can be sure one of them doesn’t have privacy protect
Administrative Contact:
DomainTrax
John Ross (nixiak@singnet.com.sg)
+65.5869866
Fax: +1.5555555555
25C Farrer Road St 25
Singapore, P 693847
SG
July 21st, 2007 at 5:19 am
Hi,
My name is Phil and i own www.phplemon.com - I have just written a post on sitepoint.com here http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3482264&postcount=59
The post is all about how alstrasoft are selling pirated copies our my software that i have spent over a year developing with my team of programmers. Please have a read of it. Its in the same thread as the one where this blog is mentioned.
Phil
July 22nd, 2007 at 4:01 pm
Phil thanks for the headsup!
Please report this copyright theft with a DMCA Letter to their hosting provider abuse@jaguarpc.com
If you notice, the 6th link I posted in the original article above, shows that a hosting reseller (unityhosting.net) was previously shut down for hosting Alstrasoft.com’s domain. Apparently another copyright holder complained to ThePlanet.com and had the site brought down.
July 25th, 2007 at 2:40 am
I have just canceled my 700.00 USD order with them. Jeez- why they are allowed to sell online?
Customer service-not existing.
July 26th, 2007 at 10:57 am
I have a partner that have the same problem with Alstrasoft and he is trying at this time to get a refund and they are refusing, what Alstrasoft doesnt know is that we are many people involved on this. and they better refund my partner or their site will be out of bs we dont care if the owner is in mars.
The reason we think Alstrasoft still on business is because they know what they doing and have a good way to get out of trouble, but they do have weak points.
July 27th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
Well- on July 11th I have purchased 3 licenses for 710.00 USD and after ‘no customer service’ experience I have decided to cancel my order.
Alstrasoft is refusing to refund,so I am charging them back with my bank.
Swreg INC. (merchant account provider)does not gives a shit about that neither.
I’m just curious-why Swreg inc. is working with them???
July 29th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
Alstrasoft finally sent a reply!
—————-
email start
—————-
AlstraSoft
date Jul 25, 2007 2:15 AM
subject Re: AlstraSoft Feedback
Hi,
I do regret for the delay in reply as I am now in charge of handling this case.
Gary is formerly in charge of the sales/payment whom I have personally overtaken for this. From the current affiliate sales there are 5 pending sales from the period ofApril to June. Payment was to be made on your account June since. The reason why you did not get the payment as we were currently pending reviewing your affiliate account as we do not allow promoting on sites (i.e xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.com) that have adult content or any illegal subject matter as highlighted on http://www.alstrasoft.com/atos.htm when you register for our affiliate program. Furthermore we do not tolerate any negative reviews made by our affiliates which you have setup on your website: http://internet-marketing-tools.org/alstrasoft/. I have done a reassessment pertaining to this issue as we value all our affiliate including you since you have done considerable work as well promoting our website.
For the above 2 issues I have address to them as follows:
- I have approve the advertising method you employ on these websites since you do not run/operate these websites
- Pertaining to the below review on AlstraSoft, I have informed Gary to release the payment of the 4 pending affiliate commissions: US$577.5 only upon total removal of the listing: http://internet-marketing-tools.org/alstrasoft/ as well as all the post you made on the forums such as jaguarpc.com. You may still continue to promote our software as long as you like and payment will be made as per normal unless there is a breach of our affiliate TOS. This is also a personal assurance that you are free to put up the website should we fail to issue you payments subsequently.
*Note: Please kindly note that we wll need you to inform us of all the listings on other forums/websites that you will removed so that we can verify that all the comments posted will be deleted before we release the payment via paypal.
Do feel free to contact us if you have any other questions.
Regards,
John Ross
AlstraSoft Support Team
Email: support@alstrasoft.com
http://www.alstrasoft.com
—————-
email end
—————-
August 2nd, 2007 at 11:45 pm
Hello again!
Alstrasoft is refusing refund-Swreg is just watching around,therefore I have placed a dispute trough my bank .
September 19th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
I purchased e-friends and I have it running on my server but there are so many things that do not work. Their customer disservice is the worst I have ever seen and their documentation sucks.
Has anyone thought about filing a class action lawsuit against the guys? From everything I have read around the web it seems that there may be enough people to do it.
I will be talking to my bank on Monday and hopefully they will submit a charge back due to fraud.
Are there any websites that have a forum for users of e-friends to help each other fix thesloppy coding from Alstrasoft?
September 22nd, 2007 at 2:00 pm
I also bough both efriends and video share. They gave great sales support, but the minute I paid, they went dark and gave no support. We agreed to pay them to merge the software and they never did that.
I am considering opening a forum to provide support for both products. Whereby users could post issues and others could help.
I agree that we will never get our money back, because Altrasoft Sucks, but we can make the product better by putting in some effort.
September 24th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
I had the same issues with Alstrasoft. Their website looks good and they talk a big game but it’s all crap. I bought the videoshare and text ad enterprise and it doesn’t work. They typically take weeks to respond to my emails. When they do respond their responses are usually laden with typos and they don’t respond to specific request for better documentation.
Stay as far away from Altrasoft products as possible.
I did not know their products were pirated but that is serious concern. If anyone knows who they stole videoshare from please post that so we can contact the real authors of the software and get Alstrasoft shutdown.
October 3rd, 2007 at 7:06 am
Just a quick update, i have sent DMCA notifications to both alstrasofts webhost and payment processor and i am now waiting to hear back form them.
Anyone who buys our companies software from alstrasoft will get a piece of software that is full of bugs and that doen’t work. It was a pre-beta version from before version 1 was released, but still, people won’t know that and will buy a piece of software that just doesn’t work.
October 16th, 2007 at 6:12 pm
http://www.ostube.de/en/index.php
The “community” version is free.
Which came first chicken or the egg?
Clipshare has the same vulnerabilities as Alstrasoft’s videoshare (because it’s the same script with new themes.)
October 26th, 2007 at 6:39 pm
Hi, does anyone own the AJAX Destop-script (netvibes-clone)? I was ready to buy it, but now Im not so sure…
It looks good, but is it really?
October 26th, 2007 at 8:49 pm
Hey Tim,
In all honesty, I would look for an alternative to any script you see at
Alstrasoft. I guarantee there are better options out there and with less
headaches in the long run.
November 29th, 2007 at 5:48 pm
I’ve had a terrible experience with Alstrasoft and have since requested a full refund. And the shame is - the product looks good - just dismal customer service. I launched a complaint with JPC (there is a colloboration deal between Alstrasoft and Jaguarpc.com for hosting), and JPC is fully aware of customer server complaints about Alstrasoft. JPC by the way has responded quickly to all questions…
I’ve also send many, many emails to Alstrasoft and haven’t heard a peep……
I purchased Startpage and installed it myself - but my host was missing a few required componenets - so I did as Alstrasoft suggested and purchased another host license on JPC.
As part of the purchase, Alstrasoft was to professionall install Startpage - this is where things went from bad to worse. At first they just kept peppering me with questions that they already knew the answer to (already stated in the email thread), then they just stopped responding completely.
I haven’t heard from them in 3 days and their toll free number 888-645-1648 doesn’t work. They haven’t responded to emails, to tickets opened on their system, to request to have them call me and of course, as stated before, they do not answer their own toll free line.
I would strongly suggest you do your homework on this company before buying any product from them. Out of all the products I’ve bought over the internet - this company has been the worst.
Keyword for meta: DO NOT BUY Alstrasoft, Alstrasoft Not Good, Alstrasoft Many Complaints, Alstrasoft Poor Customer Service, Alstrasoft Toll Free Does Not Work
December 10th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
Thanks for the comments. Now I know they Alstrasoft is a big con. I was very impressed by their features list for AlstraSoft Affiliate Network Pro. But their lack of working telephone no. let them down.
December 22nd, 2007 at 3:51 pm
I am really looking forward to putdown Alstrasoft cpompletely.
They took to piss out of me in support. As of now the script they proided me is with full of bugs.
Alstrasoft is faking to be a US company with US toll Free number but they are singapore based.
I am not sure is Alstrasoft owns Jaguar hosting. I suspect them to be the same.
Is there any way to file a complaint on the scripts sold by the Alstrasoft and their company to show who we are as customers?
If So please post it, let figure it out. and Also see to that not any more products are sold by them.
Thanks,
Paul,
December 27th, 2007 at 5:21 pm
Alstrasoft is a complete scam site!!
They fuck me $500
February 3rd, 2008 at 10:38 pm
More webmasters who used Alstrasoft scripts and are suffering
http://us-freelancer.com/2008/02/03/alstrasoft-epaypro-support-req/
http://www.scriptlance.com/projects/1202017126.shtml?ref=jvwintl
March 12th, 2008 at 4:55 am
I wanted to alstrasoft affiliate network pro….. now that I know its not worth it, could anyone suggest better ones?
Truly appreciate a recommendation.
Thanking you
Divya
March 28th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
They just launched another site with different url and branding:
http://www.revou.com/
http://www.alstrasoft.com/products.htm
March 29th, 2008 at 9:46 am
Hi all,
I was about to invest quite a bit of money in a web 2.0 and was seriously looking at Altrasoft. Thank you for your comments as I now know better.
Does anyone have the names of alternative scripts whose companies are based in the US /Canada or EU, where regulations exists to protect the consumer from such rip offs.
Kind regards
Abbey
April 3rd, 2008 at 5:55 pm
Thank you all for posting about Altrasoft… I was all sold on buying their ePay software, but now I am very happy that I found this site, and received invaluable info on how crooked they really are.
I feel very bad for all of you who have fell victim to these online crooks. They should be shut down and locked away. Isn’t what they’re doing illegal?
Jay
April 3rd, 2008 at 9:25 pm
Thanks for very important information is very heplfull!
just few question
1) if some one fix the bugs?
if yes please provide your website or contact information and we will find the right way!
podaniel15@hotmail.com
April 9th, 2008 at 10:54 am
Hello,
I’ve bought image host script from alstrasoft. It does not work completelly….
When I try to add a image, I have one sql problem…. It would not be a problem if I could check the script… But is encripted.
Can anyone help?
Regards,
Rafael
April 17th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Alstrasoft is the worst software company to deal with ever!! Worst customer support ive ever had literally 600 emails and never fixed their bugs they seem to be happy a page comes up or you get to do a couple uploads for a few videos but then it goes into many bugs ive spent a grand trying to make it work ive caught them lying personally and two and a half months later still buggs ive had to request a refund over and over and over and had to buy another video and social script it was that bad if you buy their scripts your better off shooting your foot!!! They are a nightmare and even jaguar pc recomends other scripts and say all they get is complaints.Im going to blog everyday until i get my refund or get enough blogs out to warn people from buying any of their scripts!! By the way all of my developers or programmers all said buggy scripts and amusing code and it crashes alot and when you buy anything using www.Swreg.org they seem to not get anything resolved they did a partial refund we bought our new social script and www.swreg.org did a unauthorized charge two weeks later i had to get my bank to do a charge back www.swreg.org actually deleted my email link instead of addressing the illegal charge they did STEER CLEAR OF WWW.ALSTRASOFT.com WWW.SWREG.org WWW.SWREG.org nothing bad bad business anyone that deletes a email link when you ask them why they charged you card is fraudulent with no invoice or anything they just charged your card bad bad bad black list them !!!!
April 18th, 2008 at 9:34 am
Anyone that is interested in helping build this new website to help warn online shoppers about companies that do bad online business please contact me I will have a bulletin board up by the weekend please feel free to leave comments about alsrasoft on here and the new site the more sites have it listed the more we can stop companies like www.alstrasoft.com and www.revou.com
and to top it off any company that does the processing of funds and dont watch for companies with so many complaints and refunds wanted back should be watched also www.swreg.org did a refund then two weeks later with no notice charged my card and then they ignored 10 emails when i asked about the charge then deleted the link to the emails now thats bad business so i made www.BBBofEcommerce.com comming soon please visit thanks
Cody@xeleven59.com
April 24th, 2008 at 6:33 am
i bought a whole bunch of scripts from them and they’re all terrible. bugs exist… and eventually i had to repurchase a different script from another seller. screwq these guys. all their scripts are anyway now available for free download. just look in the right places for nulled scripts.
May 4th, 2008 at 1:00 am
Anyone know how to fix Alstrasoft’s buggy crap? Here’s a job for ya:
http://www.scriptlance.com/projects/1209789317.shtml?ref=dcm