Beware Yuzoolthemes

Yuzoolthemes offer a subscription package, which I signed up to, where you get access to all the stacks they provide. Using their own cancellation button on the account management page WILL NOT cancel the subscription. They will still charge you through Paypal if you haven’t manually cancelled this yourself. This is despite their own system showing that you have not got any active subscriptions and no payment methods set up.
The Terms and Conditions on the Yuzoolthemes website say that cancelling the account can be managed through their website THIS IS NOT TRUE.
Emailing the billing address does not get any response. They will not honour any refund and Paypal will not help either. I feel as though I have been conned by this company and Paypal’s payment protection will not help!
If they will not honour their own T&Cs, should they be trusted with your money?
@yuzool I welcome your comments.

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I always thought PayPal subscriptions were like bank Standing Orders (ie. push transactions), rather than Direct Debits (ie. pull transaction).

This would mean that PayPal would send the monies on the monthly/yearly dates, rather than a Merchant having to request funds.

I always cancel subscriptions at both ends, although none of the above excuses @yuzool’s apparently poor customer service!

Thanks Adam,
Merchants can easily manage subscriptions through the APIs and webhooks that PayPal have. Therefore, cancelling on Yuzoolthemes’ website could/should cancel the recurring payment too. This is especially as they have this extract in their T&Cs:

Your renewal date (6 months or 12 months from purchase) can be accessed from inside your account. Thirty days before your Bundle renews, we’ll send an email letting you know you’re scheduled for a payment. This gives you a chance to update your credit card or cancel the Bundle extension before the charge is processed. This can be done within your account.

It is also worth noting that the promised email thirty days prior to renewal did not get received either! I am less worried about that as I had purposely set up a reminder on my calendar to review the subscription before the renewal date. Still, yet another breach of the T&Cs, though.

Looks like a very strong case, Ben. I certainly won’t be touching any @yuzool products unless this gets resolved properly.

My comment is not going to help you directly, but…

I maintain a white-gray-black list of all developers that I have ever had business with. That list reflects the quality of their products and the quality of their support. Yuzool lives in the black corner of that list, together with five others. Only seven names are located in the white portion of my list. Gray portion is the largest one.

My general advice for new RW users: find a reliable developer or few of them and stick with them. Great majority of add-ons are replicated by most developers. So, do not spread your money around blindly.

P.S. Also, avoid any subscriptions.

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When they first came on the scene I liked them. Then I believe a partnership was struck. The original dev partnered with a ruthless partner. It went from a customer friendly company to a greedy company.

They want customers who are constantly paying to use any of their products. They also offered products that required coding skills in order to get them to function as advertised.

I completely agree Rovertek… I will never do business with this company again. I am grateful we can openly talk about this stuff in a public forum. If you could share the list of reliable developers I would really appreciate it as I am working on a new site. I know you are very active and would appreciate it. I am not asking for anything negative about any developer. Just positive stuff… I understand if you chose not to… I would keep it just for my own use. I am not as active as you but have been around a long time. Thank you for your insight regardless if you share more. I am grateful for your public contributions.

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Up to 99% of all developers I had contact with are very helpful and positive as well as reliable. And I do create websites for a living, so I depend on good developers and their reactions. A positive list will likely never contain all the good ones, but naming @willwood @habitualshaker @Elixir @MultiThemes @joeworkman @tav @nickcates @el_mourabbi is a good start :slight_smile:

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THANK YOU! This information will be added to my list of serial numbers in 1Password.

In addition to the list that @Fuellemann gives, I would add @Lucas.

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I have a great appreciation for those developers I can count on. I even express that in credits on my personal website. Here’s the proof:


I’m sure there is more trusty developers around, but I haven’t had a chance to do business with all of them.

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THANK YOU! Very kind of you… added to my growing list.

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And @barchard as well as @jay

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Although this thread was created to shed light on @yuzool’s questionable (trying to be diplomatic) practice, I am pleased it has taken a postive spin too. I would thoroughly agree on @joeworkman, tav and isaiah being positive shining lights in the murk.

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I think part of your frustration with @yuzool is this is evidence of the limited marketshare that RapidWeaver offers.

In my opinion, the greatest improvement in RW started first with the release of the Blocks plugin by @isaiah followed by the absolutely amazing Stacks plug in.

The release of Stacks created a huge opportunity for development of stacks for Stacks, and @yuzool was among the most prolific–often at very reasonable costs, but there’s still a limited market for RW and thus Stacks, and people have to eat, even developers.

I still believe the most untapped potential for RapidWeaver would be as the strongest tool for maximizing SEO in web design, which would drive ever greater and greater demand for RapidWeaver-built sites, making such sites the most sought after brand for building sites, i.e., instead of a Wordpress site or a Squarespace site, end users/site owners would demand RapidWeaver-built sites.

Strengthening the SEO capability can drive the RW brand, which will grow the user base for RW, then Stacks, then the demand for stacks for Stacks–and even further development of RapidWeaver beyond Stacks.

This would motivate @yuzool to be more active. Right now he’s obviously not. I know it’s disappointing because Michael’s a nice guy.

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With all due respect to the experience of various web designers with Yuzool, maybe these shortcomings have other explanations which are unknown to the outsider.
In summer 2019 Yuzool sent out some good advice, esp. for newcomers, such as:

Lesson 1 Images retina and image optimisation.rtf
Lesson 2 Hosting, security and SSL Certs.rtf
Lesson 3 Search Engine Optimisation.rtf
Lesson 4- Editing your RapidWeaver sites online.rtfd
Lesson 5- Selling in RapidWeaver.rtfd

Hopefully they get things alright again over there at YZ !

/

my little penny, Omar KN, Stockholm, Sweden

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OmarKN, can you provide links to Lessons 1-5?

Those lessons were sent by email,
how to send them?

/okn

Ben -

You are spot on. I was surprised to see my subscription renewed without notice last year. Yuzool claims they send out a warning notice which allows cancellation. Didn’t happen. I’ve recently logged on to the dashboard and discovered you can’t cancel there either. Yuzool needs to fix this and soon. Yuzool products seem fine, but their business practices are more than a bit sketchy. Like you, I’d advise everyone to stay away till they fix their act.

B.

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@OmarKN,
This is not to do with things that we may not be aware of. This is completely about borderline fraudulent business practice and not about whether or not they have provided instructions/guidance for their product. They have taken my money, and by the looks of it, other people’s hard-earned money when they shouldn’t have. The accounts were cancelled through their own website and they have still continued to collect the subscriptions. When contacted they ignore it and have not yet shown any sign of refunding. This is all despite the terms and conditions on their own website guiding users to following this course of action to make cancellations.

All this is awful.

Keep on contacting them, and there should be better consumer protection enforced by law.

/

with best regards, Omar KN, Stockholm, Sweden

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