Not cool MacZot…not cool at all.
I love MacZot. I really, really do. I've spent about $300 there since mid-2006, and have gotten some great deals. But, the article linked is about how the owner acted very unprofessionally in regard to a deal he made with the developer of xPad.
Basically, Mr. Ball decided he didn't want xPad any longer, and wasn't going to pay for it. However, he continued to sell the product. In fact, I did not regain control of the domain until November 25, which means Mr. Ball was selling my product for over a month after he defaulted on a contract.
As as far as me "over-valuing" the product goes—Mr. Ball and I spoke at length about the exact value of the product and I made it completely clear that there was no way to give a true estimation. I did zero advertising for xPad since the day I launched it, and I didn't update it more than once in 3 years, but it was still selling. I made it clear to Mr. Ball that he could make money from xPad, but that he would have to put some work into it first. He said he understood this, and that he was going to hire a developer to do work on the app (he did—Juan Alvarez of Midnight Apps).
I'm not feeling so inclined to be as generous with MacZot in the future because of this. The Mac community is very close knit, and it's things like this that make for bad press and hard feelings.
Mr. Ball, as I said on Digg:
Brian, if that's really you, I don't think you are doing yourself a service by arguing this in the public forum.
Your argument that this is like buying something at Target and returning it is invalid. You bought the source code to his software (which you probably still have) and can develop similar apps or apps with similar features. You sold the product during the purchase time (which he couldn't, legally) and you likely caused Garrett undue financial hardship during the 90 days...90 days in which you sold how many copies of xPad?
You were, in the moral sense, COMPLETELY in the wrong. Perhaps legally you have the upperhand, but as a member of the Mac community, you are not in a very noble position.
I think that you should offer refunds to everyone who purchased xPad from MacZot during this time period.
Read more: http://maniacalrage.net/past/2007/1/4/you_might_remember_a_post/
Post Data
- Posted: Jan 4, 2007 by Scott McDaniel
- Tags: apple
- Short URL: http://bit.ly/3nbUQ
