My "spam" button does not work : it has been desactivated.

[stan_qaz]

It could be if not implemented well. There are a lot of options for making it work that would not be a lot of effort and would be simple to keep track of for the support folks.

[oeditor]

Whatever the rights and wrongs of charging a subscription are, this is not what I bought with v2010. We were clearly told that there would be a "small" fee for subsequent upgrades. No mention of the program stopping working after a year and having to pay all over again.

I was never able to use v2010 because of the Tiscali>TalkTalk problem which I mentioned here at the end of 2010. Recently I've had problems which caused me to try v2010 again - now it would download the mail but washing had been turned off. It prompted me to upgrade to 2012 which I did, expecting that I'd at least get a free trial, which I didn't. The small "upgrade" - i.e. buy it all over again - charge is almost four times what I paid for the 2010 version!

Why should I commit to supporting a firm which plays that sort of trick on me? Having had a 12month break, I'm not as dependent on MWP and as someone has pointed out, spam has diminished a lot. V6, which was also scuppered by TalkTalk, is working again and I'll have to stick with that, much to my annoyance. More at being ripped off than at losing the extra functionality of 20xx.

[Sidewinder]

Whatever the rights and wrongs of charging a subscription are, this is not what I bought with v2010. We were clearly told that there would be a "small" fee for subsequent upgrades. No mention of the program stopping working after a year and having to pay all over again.

I was never able to use v2010 because of the Tiscali>TalkTalk problem which I mentioned here at the end of 2010. Recently I've had problems which caused me to try v2010 again - now it would download the mail but washing had been turned off. It prompted me to upgrade to 2012 which I did, expecting that I'd at least get a free trial, which I didn't. The small "upgrade" - i.e. buy it all over again - charge is almost four times what I paid for the 2010 version!

Why should I commit to supporting a firm which plays that sort of trick on me? Having had a 12month break, I'm not as dependent on MWP and as someone has pointed out, spam has diminished a lot. V6, which was also scuppered by TalkTalk, is working again and I'll have to stick with that, much to my annoyance. More at being ripped off than at losing the extra functionality of 20xx.

Not sure how this differs from a subscription to a newspaper. When you subscribe for a specific term the clock starts. When the term has been completed the delivery stops. Whether you read the newspaper, threw it in the trash or left it laying on the street the term is the term and when it's over it stops unless you pay for another term. If you are no longer interested in the newspaper then you just don't submit a renewal payment. You surely don't blame the newspaper because you never read it.

[stan_qaz]

If you paid for the 201X version you should be able to reactivate it for the annual subscription charge. Contact support@firetrust.com with your original purchase information and tell them why you were not using it. The folks there will usually deal with the situation in a fair manner.

I'm not fond of the subscription myself, the problem is that since MW offers continual upgrades at no charge there is no income stream to continue development and support without it. They did have other options but all of them seemed worse than the subscription.

[oeditor]

I'm not blaming Firetrust for not being able to connect to TalkTalk - If I'd persevered or kept watching the forum I'd have found that it had been TalkTalk's fault and that all had come right. My complaint is that my payment for software to keep and use - unimproved - indefinitely, turned into a 12-month subscription and that continuing subscriptions cost multiples of the original "use-forever" price of the software.

I used to use a lot of Serif dtp software and they regularly offered very cheap upgrades. Then they upped the price of the upgrades and I stopped buying them - but I can still use the older versions that I paid for. I'd expected that to be the case when v2010 was replaced with v2011 and v2012 or whatever. I'd probably have upgraded as well if the upgrade price had been a fraction rather than a multiple of the original. As was the case with v6 - I paid for v2010 and can still use v6 but not v2010 which I thought I'd bought on similar terms.

Frankly, today spam isn't a problem worth over £20 a year to solve. Most of it can be spotted and deleted via webmail and the few dubious emails can be checked in v6 before deciding whether to keep them.

[anniebrion]

The subscription is not just for the software but for the FirstAlert service, if MWP20x0 still worked after your subs ended then you would effectively be getting FirstAlert for free!

[michaelkenward]

The subscription is not just for the software but for the FirstAlert service, if MWP20x0 still worked after your subs ended then you would effectively be getting FirstAlert for free!

So, bring back the option for a separate subscription to FirstAlert.

Nice to see that there are still people who have only just discovered that they were ripped off when they first bought MW's wondrous new version.

Pity the ever changing pricing regime still makes the annual renewal an unattractive option.

[Sidewinder]

Must be no one "reads" or "comprehends" the Terms and Conditions clearly presented at the initial install.

[stan_qaz]

The FirstAlert subscription income wasn't enough to pay the bills to keep developing MW. If new work was going to be done there had to be money to pay the programmers.

Everyone had the same choices, stay with v6 and no new features or go to the new 201X and pay the subscription. There were a few lifetime licenses offered but not many and not for long so that was an option too.