[freeside-users] Is the staff at Freeside okay?

[Nathan Anderson]

On Wednesday, March 14, 2018 10:22 AM, Charles Sprickman wrote:

> On Mar 14, 2018, at 1:24 PM, Anthony Polselli wrote:
> 
> > Hi all,
> >  
> > We contracted with Freeside to get us setup and last time we heard from them
> > was late January.  Been leaving VM's and email and haven't heard back from
> > anyone.  I know this isn't normally the place for this kind of thing, but
> > don't know what else to do.  Has anyone else heard from them...are they still
> > around?
> 
> Just a "me too", submitted a quote for an upgrade, never heard back.

Just a "me three". :-)

Sent payment in full at the end of December for a complete data migration +
3-day training.  We have in-house talent that could do everything if need be,
but we have been so busy with other things lately *plus* we wanted to throw
some business Ivan's way and support the product financially that way / put
some of our own skin in the game, that it made sense to hire him & his team. 
We are currently on an old system that will likely not remain in compliance
with new PCI standards come July 1 (still looking into this), and we also
liked the idea of shifting our PCI compliance burden over to CardFortress.

We thought 6 months should be plenty of time to make the transition, even if
there ended up being bumps in the road and (inevitable) split focus, but here
we are after 3 months with nothing to show for it, so I guess not? :-(

I believe at this point that my boss has already requested a full refund. 
This whole situation is depressing as I don't know what this will end up doing
to Freeside's prospects within my organization.  I have tried to be a vocal
champion for it internally, but I think that after this, many people in my
company, including my boss, are all a bit spooked, and I have to say,
understandably so, since the whole situation feels eerily similar to what we
went through many years ago with the author of the product we are still stuck
with today and are trying to get away from (he just dropped off the map).

I think that if we could demonstrate an ability to maintain our Freeside
instance ourselves, my boss might still go for it, but the wildcard in the
equation now is CardFortress.  We really don't want to go with an in-the-cloud
billing system, but we also don't want to store CC#s ourselves any longer. 
Freeside + CF seemed like the perfect solution.  But if "Freeside, Inc." is
potentially in jeopardy, then what assurances do we have that CardFortress
won't fall off the map without warning...

In any case and despite all of this, I do genuinely hope for Ivan's well-being
and that he & his are doing okay...may he bounce back soon from whatever has
happened / is happening.

-- 
Nathan Anderson
First Step Internet, LLC
nathana at fsr.com