Tommy_PhoneWagonQ: Hi Sumo-lings, I'm the CTO and Co-Founder at PhoneWagon.
I know the community is upset that the deal changed but Ryan and the Company has been been very upfront and honest about why we had to change it. This new deal will help sustain PhoneWagon and allow us to continue to build great product for our Customers. We have tons in store and will continue to update our public product board. Please make suggestions as well.
https://app.getacute.io/v/phonewagon/
We don't want to sell you guys a lifetime deal and go out of business in a year. That would be horrible for you and the company. I always root for other people's success and I hope you guys can look past the disappointment and do the same for the Team at PhoneWagon.
Also, we are extremely appreciative of AppSumo for understanding and helping us restructure the deal. They are awesome and I hope we sell more deals so they can make more money.
Is there anyway of getting international numbers again on an Ltd? I’m in the uk and keen on getting some uk ones and unfortunately missed the deal by a day (like many others)
No UK for this deal, contact us in live chat and a Sales Rep will help you on a custom plan.
This simply isnt good enough, every comment made by Sumo-lings about the pulling of the original deal is completely rational and logical and every response from phonewagon has been smoke and mirrors to the facts.
1. Phonewagon didn't plan properly at all for supply and demand
2. Phonewagon are showing they have no care for waisting their potential customers time or phonewagon's reputation.
3. It always astounds me how some people have no regard to anything else other than their own gain, We all only have so much time in a day, Phonewagon need to think about this before they decide its ok to offer a deal then pull it without any prior warning, have you ever thought about all the people that have spent their precious time looking at this deal only to find out they are being told they cannot get it anymore?
4. From the comments, users of Appsumo are questioning why they should even use Appsumo when deals get pulled and change like this without any warning and makes Appsumo look bad.
5. I read comments from the co-founder, "not sure why there is such a backlash". Well let me give you an example, I spent hours researching the platform, then digesting the info and comments before the deal was pulled. I then spent several hours speaking with all my clients to offer it as a FREE service to look after my customers and build customer loyalty, (and I would pay for the deal out my own pocket) only to return today to see it has been pulled, no upfront warning from Appsumo, lots of angry sumo-lings that are happy to warn others.
If I cannot get the original deal, i will then have to have awkward conversations for several hours again will clients to tell them it will not be possible and damage my own company reputation. I for one will be looking for my time to be reimbursed for loss of earnings when i could have been concentrating on something else, I would appreciate you get in contact with me direct to sort this out. Thanks
1. We admitted that we underestimated the demand for our first product and had to pull it for that reason.
2. We do care and that is why Ryan and the Company added on to this deal which is by far the best rates you can get on the market.
3. 4. 5. We appreciate everyone reviewing our product and making an informed decision before purchasing. But there is always a limited supply, whether it is the number of deals or number of man hours to successfully support the deal. If you were an investor and spent time researching a stock (say Tesla) but never pulled the trigger to buy it for your clients, are you going to blame Tesla when the stock jumps to $1000 and there are no more shares at $100? Would you blame them that they wasted your time researching the company?
@Tommy:
Your and Ryan's responses fall far short of "open and honest" communication.
For example, despite dozens of sumolings asking the same thing, you still have not answered this question: what do international numbers have to do with the rest of the deal? Okay, we get it that you completely mismanaged and underestimated the effort involved to set up the international numbers, but why renege on the rest of the deal?
And your response to donalsfargo76 is downright condescending. A deal on Appsumo is not the same thing as a publicly-traded stock. I see from your bio that you used to work at Goldman Sachs, so I know you know the difference. Making that disingenuous comparison is not an example of "open and honest" communication. It is simply yet another attempt to mislead and obfuscate the real issues.
1. We admitted that we underestimated the demand for our first product and had to pull it for that reason.
JUST BECAUSE YOU UNDERESTIMATED DOESNT MEAN THAT THE CUSTOMER LOSES OUT, YOU STAND BY YOUR MISTAKES AND LEARN FROM THEM
2. We do care and that is why Ryan and the Company added on to this deal which is by far the best rates you can get on the market. I DON'T SEE ANY EVIDENCE ON THIS FOR INTERNATIONAL NUMBERS, THE UK WHICH I BASED SEVERAL HOURS OF WORK CALLING PEOPLE
3. 4. 5. We appreciate everyone reviewing our product and making an informed decision before purchasing. But there is always a limited supply, whether it is the number of deals or number of man hours to successfully support the deal. If you were an investor and spent time researching a stock (say Tesla) but never pulled the trigger to buy it for your clients, are you going to blame Tesla when the stock jumps to $1000 and there are no more shares at $100? Would you blame them that they wasted your time researching the company? THIS IS A SOFTWARE PROMOTION PLATFORM, NOT THE STOCK MARKET, THERE WAS NO CLEAR INDICATION OF THE AMOUNT OF UNITS OF THE TIME OF EXPIRY FOR THIS OFFER, JUST 24 HOURS AND THEN TAKEN DOWN, THE COMMUNITY SHOULDNT BE GUINNY PIGS FOR THIS.
4. "WE WANT TO MAKE IT RIGHT" ARE THE CO-COFOUNDERS COMMENTS, WELL THE COMMUNITY IS WAITING FOR YOU, INTERNATIONAL CUSTOMERS SHOULDN'T BE ALIENTATED FROM THE NEW DEAL EITHER, IF YOU HAVE MISSED CALCULATED YOUR PROFIT, STAND BY IT AND LEARN FROM IT. FROM MY POINT OF VIEW THIS ISNT GOING AWAY AFTER SPENDING AN ENTIRE DAY TALKING WITH CLIENTS FOR THIS NOT TO BE SORTED OUT PROPERLY. IF SOMEONE DOESNT CONTACT ME WITH A RESOLVE I WILL BE GOING DIRECT TO THE PLATFORM, THANKS
Verified purchaser
Hey bro. Alright, let's see. If you guys dod this to save yourselves from lifetime expenses... Then why remove White labeling and resell it back to us as a "sweetener".
Does simply pressing a button on your end to remove your branding increase your per customer expense? I mean what do I know, I'm just a CEO and an MBA myself. I can't understand these complexities.
Your actions and explanations do not pass the smell test.
Our WhiteLabel allows the use of your own domain and there are some back and forth with SSL at the moment, this is very manual and we didn't want to overload the team and offering it without payment. With the price at $99, you still get a great deal and lets our team not have to work nights and weekends.
Verified purchaser
Alright, at least there's some logic in that. It's manual and takes employee time. Payroll is arguably the largest company cost after all. Let me ask then, since you are the only person at your company I can get any response from. I have 3 codes from the original deal, but your system is only letting me register one. How can I enter my other 2 codes?
Hey @cocchini - If you have codes from the original deal you absolutely can stack them. Ping us in live chat and we will help you stack. WE are 100000% honoring everything from original deal!
I agree with Cocchini_Corp, and everything he said. The problem is that you are honoring the original deal, but took it, then said, you ran out. Yes, you ran out of international, because of how hard it is to do those, but that is not true for the USA. 1 code vs 5 codes is the same, one code from 5 users is still 5 codes, 1 sumoling buying 5 codes is like 5 different people buying 1.
The unfair part is that when AppSumo pulls a deal, they put a timer on it and notify everyone. You did no such thing.
Tesla has no control over their stock price, you had full control over this, and to say, we thought we would get only 200 or so sales, is Ludacris. AppSumo would never have given you that idea, because they know their sumolings and 200 is never the minimum sold.
If you had a problem with international, you should have just not sold any from them, until you had tons available. Telling people that upfront would have been fine, because they would have understood that.
So let's get back to what you can do.
Why not allow USA/Canada stacking?
Why is that so limited?
What manual process prevents you from doing that?
Even if you still made people pay for the WL, at least stacking for more numbers and minutes would still appease at least some of us.
Please re-consider.
You may save face.
If it is not too little too late.
That seems to suggest you totally screwed up the first deal. How on earth did that happened, all sumo’s did is buy the deal on offer not set the terms or abuse them.
As it stands now.
No access to international sumo’s and no engagement on allowing access.
US and CA users get a much worse deal simply because you assert that you sold out of international codes. So that option expires but the rest should remain?
Appsumo, if these types of deals have limits, I understood that a limit would flash up warning they were running out. This needs to be fully transparent when it hits close to a threshold say last 1000 then inform us.
Verified purchaser
YOU LIAR TO US. YOU GAVE US A DEAL WITH ALL THE FEATURES AND THEN YOU SWITCH THE FEATURES TO MONTHLY PAYMENTS. THE ONLY WINNER IS YOU. IN A DEAL BOTH PARTY WIN.
I'm sorry that you feel this way. Everything that we have posted is honest and true.
Verified purchaser
Yeah man. Totally frustrated too. This deal has damaged my trust of AppSumo itself as well as cracked the foundation of my lifetime relationship with Phone Wagon as well. Super pissed. Definitely feel your pain.
Not at all impressed with how Appsumo decided to deal with Phonewagon vendors. Based on latest offer from Phonewagon, basically we are being moved from so called LTD (Carrot) to monthly subscription payments.
NOT INTERESTED and it's unfortunate that Appsumo allowed this to happen.
a heartbroken Appsumo fan
"very upfront and honest"
lol, I think we have different dictionaries. So because too many people used the international numbers you needed to nuke the rest of the deal? Doesn't add up and sumolings are pretty good about sniffing out BS.
Ryan keeps responding that people shouldn't have an issue because you can just add on these monthly fees. That's exactly what we're trying to avoid by using AppSumo.
This is one of the biggest clusterf*#%s ever to hit the site.
Verified purchaser
Hi Tommy,
Whilst I understand the frustrations shared by my fellow Sumolings especially with zero opportunity for any FOMO as it was over before it started :) we certainly want to invest in a business thats here for the long run. This is a great community of people so any negative feedback etc. is just in the heat of the moment. All the best for the continued launch on Appsumo. Thank you for the additional deal sweetener.
Kesvel
Thanks for the support Kesvel! Welcome to the Wagon!
Tommy_PhoneWagon,
PhoneWagon raised 1.2 million in seed funding, led by Birchmere Ventures, with participation from Active Capital. PhoneWagon already has nearly 150 customers adds 40 new customers every month (2017 numbers), according to Ryan Shank. If allowing stacking and white labeling will bankrupt you, then you are a lousy money manager of your company. Sumolings helped you in more in 24 hours than your numbers calculate you grow in a business quarter. Cutting this deal short was nothing less than a punch in the face to Sumolings, and your excuses are tiring at best.