The personal website of Matt Henderson.
24 November 2015
The navigation app, Waze, changed their external access mechanism, which broke apps like Rego, that used the old access mechanism. While no fault of Rego, we updated the app as soon as were were notified of the problem. But that didn’t stop a certain Rego customer from rushing off to leave a one-star review.I emailed them the following:
Hello,
I noticed a one-star review from an App Store user called, Absolutbkk, based on the problem you reported with the loss of Waze functionality. A couple other users also reported this problem, and so we’re writing to all of them about this review.
We have more than 2700 hours of effort invested in Rego. In exchange for that effort, people get to purchase Rego for the cost of a few cups of coffee, of which Apple keep a third. It’s a financially unsustainable situation.
But we continue to develop Rego, because we love it, and the people who use it also love it.
If you list every feature Rego provides, the list would probably span several hundred. Originally Rego supported navigation with Apple and Google Maps, but people using other apps like Waze and TomTom asked if we could also support those, and so we added support for those. We didn’t have to; but we did it to make people happy.
Recently, Waze changed their access mechanism, which broke apps like Rego, which depended on their former access mechanism. This situation was created by Waze, and was no fault of Rego.
Leaving a one-star review is tremendously damaging to a small company like us, as you’re basically communicating to all potential new customers, “This app couldn’t be any worse.” And to leave such a review, on nothing more than the basis of a single feature breaking, and one which we have no control over, is extremely inconsiderate and unfair.
The user who left that review upgraded it after we fixed the problem, but just imagine if Waze hadn’t continued to provide an access mechanism. That one-star review would have sat permanently in the store, encouraging all potential new customers to avoid buying the app.
Again, I don’t know if it was you that left the review, and if not, I apologize for the noise. (We’re writing to all three of customers who reported the Waze problem.)
Kind regards,
-- Matt </blockquote >
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