briand@tekig4.UUCP (Brian Diehm) (06/23/86)
As many of you have complained, Mr. John Mitchell, author of FEdit, often does not deliver the goods when presented with shareware money. At the time of my last mention of this on the net, one person suggested that I call the Postal authorities, complaining of mail fraud. After all, he did cash my check. I am doing exactly that today. I AM ASKING THAT ANYONE ELSE ON THE NET WHO HAS BEEN SIMILARLY TREATED DO THE SAME --- simply call your post office and ask for the phone number of the nearest Postal Inspectors. Usually these are in the larger cities. The more complaints, the more impetus to action. DO NOT BE MISLED by a recent posting wherein someone stated that Mr. Mitchell's intent was to hold the orders until the "latest version" was out, at least until you read the details of my transactions below. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On December 28, 1985, I sent a $30 check to Mr. Mitchell. This was negotiated on January 15, 1986. I received no acknowledgement, no offer of an upgrade at cost, and certainly no documentation. On April 14, tired of waiting, I sent Mr. Mitchell a certified letter of com- plaint, in which I documented the transaction and asked for fulfillment of the contractual obligation implied by his cashing my check. On May 16, I received my certified letter back, marked "Unclaimed." Since my correspondent had meanwhile suggested the Postal Inspectors, I got their number while picking up the returned letter. The same day, before I called the Postal Inspectors, I checked my unix email. A correspondent at Apple, who shall remain nameless, informed me that Mr. Mitchell had been employed by Apple, and that Mr. Mitchell claimed that he had recently caught up on his correspondence with FEdit and that ALL ORDERS HAD BEEN FILLED at that time. That is why I say don't be misled by the recent posting. My response was to ask the correspondent to pass a message to Mr. Mitchell, detailing my story, and stating my intent to go to the Postal Inspectors if I did not receive satisfaction. However, since a new channel of communication (unix email) was now open to Mr. Mitchell, I was willing to wait two weeks for a response before doing so. It has been over a month now, and no response from Mr. Mitchell. However, I cannot guarantee that my Apple correspondent did indeed pass on the message, though I have every reason to believe he acted in good faith. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Therefore I am taking what action I can. I do not expect it will do much good. However, the impression I get from Mr. Mitchell's alleged statements is that he is either extremely disorganized or extremely arrogant, possibly both. I would be delighted to be proved incorrect. I do understand that some people have had excellent response when sending in money for FEdit, I just wish I were one. If you do send in a check, I would suggest that a Certified Letter will probably not get delivered, though it probably would be safer from a legal point of view. -Brian Diehm Tektronix, Inc. (SDA - Standard Disclaimers Apply)
brent@itm.UUCP (Brent) (06/25/86)
X
I have no personal interest in FEdit, but in mail-orders in
general. For the information of people who have ordered from
Mr. Mitchell, or whomever: If you place a mail order, you must
receive some sort of response within 30 days. This may be your
goods, an acknowledgement of receipt of order, a backorder
notification, or something. This is Federal Law, not just common
courtesy.
Any person or organization in violation of this should be contacted,
and if no proper response is then made, they should then be reported
to the postal inspector. Let's keep the name of mail-order clean.
Keep those cards and letters coming in,
Brent Laminack (gatech!itm!brent)jer@peora.UUCP (J. Eric Roskos) (07/02/86)
> Any person or organization in violation of this should be contacted, > and if no proper response is then made, they should then be reported > to the postal inspector. Let's keep the name of mail-order clean. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ If the company involved is in a large city (e.g., New York), the District Attorney's office usually also has some people whose job is to insure that the mail order laws are complied with. In my experience writing to them works much better than writing to the postal inspector (I must admit that I have never been too fond of the postal inspectors, ever since I read _The_Defense_Never_Rests,_ and then later observed them in action involving a postal crime at the university where I went to grad. school). The DA's office usually gets things done fast (in New York they even have fill-in-the-blank form letters they use, so it's not as if you are asking some special favor of them). -- E. Roskos
briand@tekig4.UUCP (Brian Diehm) (07/07/86)
[]
Well, I now have a copy of Fedit Plus, version 1.0.4 (?), sent to me directly
from John Mitchell.
It seems that my contact at Apple did indeed fail to forward my message of a
month ago. So at this end it appears that Mr. Mitchell did respond as soon as
he got word of my plight --- it's just that it was pretty difficult to get word
to him. Once my go-between made good, all was well.
Incidentally, the cost of Fedit Plus is $40, not $30, and so I have sent a
check to cover the difference. The documentation that comes with the product
is alone worth the $40, in my opinion. The program is not yet fully
operational, but does most of what you need and everything it did before.
-Brian Diehm
Tektronix, Inc.
P.S. - I think a "mailbox" service that will not sign for things is not much of
a service. Now that I have been alerted, I will ensure that any such
service I may use in the future does that. In fact, I think that should
be a legal requirement of those fast operators in that business. But
then I'm sure a lawyer or such slime would make short work of my opinion.