They wanted admin access to our store!

First the good news: The plugin does a great job, so good that I upgraded to a paid, multi-site version (even though I am only using it on one site.)

But when I activated the paid version, I got a string of error messages, with words like “illegal” and “unauthorized.”

I contacted Clever immediately and they told me to set up a staging site and give them admin access. They told me to do a Google search to learn how to set up a staging site.

I looked, and it requires more than I am comfortable doing, so I told them I didn’t think I should be required to do all that work and spend money so they could fix their plugin.

They said there is nothing wrong with their plugin, it was another plugin, evidently Jetpack from what I can tell.

They finally admitted that all they planned to do was to log in to our site and turn off the error messages.

Here is the thing: I have 20 other plugins, and none of them triggered any error messages. Only the Clever plugin. Jetpack comes from the people behind WordPress, and has a million users. So I suspect the problem is with the Clever plugin, not Jetpack.

And I’m not comfortable giving unrestricted access to our store to strangers who insist on keeping my money even though I have not gotten any value from the product I paid for.

They would have access to our business data, payment processors, and all of our customers and their data.

Wouldn’t that be illegal – for us to give access to our customers’ data after we have promised that we wouldn’t share it with anybody?

A WordPress moderator thinks so. I found this reply from a moderator when someone asked for admin access:

“Just FYI, asking people for access details is a no-no. Why? Well, among other things it makes you LEGALLY responsible for the site if you break things. Which I suspect you don’t want.”

In searching around I see that there are other plugin sellers who also refuse to give refunds. As long as they make that clear in advance, I am okay with it. But the Clever people seem to indicate that they will refund your money if the plugin doesn’t work right.

Maybe their “small print” does give them the right to keep our money even though we haven’t gotten any value for it. They have 25 plugins, but we will never buy another one from them.

Yes, I know they work hard for their money. So do we. It didn’t cost them anything to let us download the paid plugin, and they can cancel the license so we cannot use it. They spent a few minutes replying to my emails. I spent just as much time writing the emails.

So they make money, and we lose money without gaining any value for it.

I would rather spend a little more and buy the Woocommerce plugin. They give us a 30 day guarantee. I am not worried about the money, it is a matter of trust.

Why would I trust somebody I don’t even know with admin access to our store when they think it is okay to keep money even though the buyer doesn’t gain any value from it.

Somebody whose idea of a solution is to turn off all warning messages so that I would think that the problem was solved!

The answer is: I wouldn’t trust somebody like that, no matter how good their plugin is.