Linux Academy

has contacted the Support team 5 times since Dec 6th, 2019. Here is a summary of each of those interactions. All times are in CST/CDT.

1) Dec 6th 2019, 7:57 PM *** opened a ticket regarding having someone else pay for his subscription but stop automatic renewals after the payment was made. He received a response explaining the steps to stop automatic renewals at 9:59 PM (2hrs and 2mins later). He came back into the ticket at 12:08 AM to advise he was on the Free Trial portion of his subscription and how that would impact stop automatic renewals. A reply was made at 2:23 AM advising that he would have to wait for the first payment to be made before stopping future payments or he would forfeit his free trial time (2hrs 15mins later). On Dec 10th, 8:22 PM he returned to the same ticket to advise he used the incorrect login details and wanted to change multiple portions of his account settings. Dec 11th, 1:16 AM he was advised it would be better and cause fewer backend issues if he created a new account than try to change an email and authentication method on the same account. He was also told that since he was still on his free trial, he would not be charged anything if it stopped the subscription now and created a brand new account (4 hrs 54 mins later).

2) Feb 9th 2020, 3:33 AM *** opened a ticket about not seeing his name on his Certificate of Completion. He self closed the ticket at 3:36 AM after finding the FAQ page (https://***-My-certificate-of-completion-does-not-show-my-name-or-it-is-displayed-incorrectly-) explaining why his name was not there and how he could correct it.

3) Mar 2nd 2020, 3:57 PM *** opened a ticket complaining that he could not use a copy and paste function inside a terminal. At 11:19 PM he was advised that the copy and paste function was working, but the terminal would not show visual input of a password since it is protected (7hrs 22mins later). His response on Mar 3rd 20202 at 3:48 PM was "Another great example of a poorly prepared lab." Although, this is the first time he has mentioned any issue with a lab to our Support team, even though the issue is not a problem with the lab but a design of the technology to protect passwords and is universal in Linux-based terminals.

4) Mar 7th 2020, 2:22 PM *** opened a ticket stating that a lab was not working properly. At 8:52 PM he was advised the issue is that there is a great amount of work happening behind the scenes to create the lab and that it takes about 3 to 5 minutes to load properly. Once the timer showing the lab's completion progress to build is finished, the lab is easily accessible (6 hrs 30 mins later). His survey response for this was "The service is terrible and problems continue to persist." The issue that persists is that time is needed to finish building a complicated lab.

5) Mar 13th 2020, 2:22 PM *** opened a ticket claiming "I just spent 30 minutes trying to log in after being forced out of the site." At 9:22 PM he was advised that earlier in the day there was an outage with our Authentication provider (Auth0) that impacted sign-ons for a few minutes (Less than 10 minutes) but that he should be able to sign in properly now (7 hrs later). His survey reply was " I have filed a formal complaint, because I assume it's the only way to ensure these issues get the attention they deserve." which is what I believe we are doing here now.

In short, Support has responded to every one of his concerns within less than 8 hrs, offered advice and assistance, and generally attempted to help ***. What they have received in return are 4 negative reviews for their work because things do not work the way he believes they should, even though the reasoning for it has been explained to him.

At no point where the claims called "lies" or "fallacy" because they did occur. The cause, however, was found and illustrated in at least 2 of the 5 tickets created to be user error or lack of patience for an environment.

The inability to see pasted passwords in a terminal is common for any Linux based terminal application, not just ours. And the explanation for this is in an FAQ article that was proffered when the ticket was raised. This article was ignored though, and comments such as "How was I supposed to know the information was pasting to terminal when nothing shows in the terminal. Another great example of a poorly prepared lab." were launched into our tickets. The knowledge is there on the page as well as in our article to explain it, but it was ignored. We can only offer information, we cannot force users to consume it.

There was the issue with a lab taking longer to load than what *** expected. When it was explained "this Lab takes approximately 3.5 minutes to load." the response our Support team received back was "Eventually, I was able to access a functioning lab." It is a complex lab with many packages that must be installed to create it and it is not ready on demand. Simply waiting for the loading to complete produces a working lab environment. Instead of being thanked for the education as to why the lab took time, the support team received "The service is terrible and problems continue to persist."

Then there is the most recent ticket where an issue from our authentication provider caused logins to the site to fail for roughly 10 minutes. We did acknowledge the issue in the ticket with *** "There was an issue with our authentication provider earlier in the day that has since been resolved. If you attempt to log in at this time, you should find that you can access your dashboard as normal." Did Support or even Linux Academy have control? No, but we took the brunt of his comments with "Another negative experience that derailed my educational progress" and "There are so many issues with your product and you don't give a flunk. I have filed a formal complaint, because I assume it's the only way to ensure these issues get the attention they deserve."

So while the Support team has worked to be helpful with him, troubleshooting and offering screenshots when applicable to demonstrate where the issue is, he has replied back with vitriol and threats.

At this time, we are prepared to offer *** a cancellation of his subscription and a refund of his most recent payment. It is obvious we are not the platform for his needs and he would be better served somewhere else.

As this complaint does not seem to be anything we can resolve for ***, I am again stating that possibly we are not the platform for him. We are happy to refund his most recent payment as our services have not lived up to his expectations and cancel his service.