It seems that Freedom Scientific has a bit of a Big Brother is Watching attitude. I am not surprised to find another incident of JAWS licensing restriction on yet another consumer; but highly disheartened by these sub-business practices. The following is Monty Icenogle’s account of his customer service experience as posted on shane’s rants. ne’s rants!
April 19, 2009
my take on this whole thing about freedom scientific.
I don’t post on this blog much because i have my own, but I have a profile here so i can comment and not get spammed.
I asked shane to update my level to author, so I can post this.If you read my previous comments on the previous posts on this blog, you’ll know my views, so I won’t bore you with those details, but here is a message, and it’s headers that prooves shane’s header theory and that the headers that he posted did indeed come from freedom scientific!
First the headers:Return-Path:
X-Original-To: monty@kd6cae.net
Delivered-To: kd6cae@spaceymail-mx1.g.dreamhost.com
Received: from partners.FreedomScientific.com (partners.freedomscientific.com [66.77.170.196])
by spaceymail-mx1.g.dreamhost.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5DF20CE779
for ; Thu, 4 Sep 2008 08:44:08 -0700 (PDT)
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft Exchange V6.5.7235.2
Content-class: urn:content-classes:message
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset=”us-ascii”
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Subject: RE: ILM Activation Reset Requests
Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2008 11:43:25 -0400
Message-ID:
X-MS-Has-Attach:
X-MS-TNEF-Correlator:
Thread-Topic: RE: ILM Activation Reset Requests
Thread-Index: AckOF0/pm7Ri/KzZTrys4idaqymQHQAdspxAAAQ6IXAAAKTGsAAAfb7AAAAe/GA=
X-Priority: 1
Priority: Urgent
Importance: high
From: “Bryan Carver”
To:so, to Mr. Damery and the rest of you losers at freedom fuck me over, please, play again. the headers shane did post were accurate and valid, so ha!
Let’s move on to the e-mail message itself—– Original Message —–
From: “Bryan Carver”
To: “monty icenogle”
Sent: Thursday, September 04, 2008 8:43 AM
Subject: RE: ILM Activation Reset RequestsHello Monty, Thank you for your e-mail. Since it has been 9 months since your last reset request, I have reset your activations back to 3. I did notice that for the first few years, you had an unusually high number of resets, so I am glad to see that whatever technical issues you had that caused so many resets has been resolved. If you again start experiencing such technical issues again that require a large number of resets, please do not hesitate to give our tech support line a call at:
727-803-8600
Monday through Friday from 8:30 AM to 7:00 PM Eastern time.
Regards,
Bryan Carver Director of Technical Support Freedom Scientific Inc.
Phone: 800-444-4443 Extension: 1062 E-Mail: BryanC@freedomscientific.com
—–Original Message—– From: Webmaster@FreedomScientific.com [mailto:Webmaster@FreedomScientific.com] Sent: Wednesday, September 03, 2008 6:50 PM To: activate Subject: ILM Activation Reset Request Importance: High
Subject = ILM Activation Reset Request
==========* * * Contact Information
Serial or Auth Number partial = 59243 Registered User Name = Monty Icenogle Registered User Email = monty@kd6cae.net
Let’s take that e-mail one chunk at a time.
He first states:Hello Monty, Thank you for your e-mail. Since it has been 9 months since your last reset request, I have reset your activations back to 3.
wait a second, why should it matter how long it’s been since my last activation, I own the product, and should be able to do whatever I want with it!
Ok, so then he says:I did notice that for the first few years, you had an unusually high number of resets, so I am glad to see that whatever technical issues you had that caused so many resets has been resolved.
Technical issues? um, no, hardware changes, system reloads, among other things that commonly plague computer users caused me to have a high number of activations!
Let’s see, does freedom scientific expect me to never have to upgrade? never have to reload my system? come on!
I liked the old days where you could sticka floppy in the drive, and move said authorization back to the floppy!
Why don’t they allow us to put ILM activations back?
would that not prevent high numbers of reactivations and reset requests?
If I want to upgrade my computer, I’m gonna certainly do it and I won’t think twice about it.
Ok, my rant is over so comment away!
- Ex-employees are treated less respectfully in the JAWS licensing restriction department tan consumers. When Wil was canned last year, his keys on the ILM server were dropped from 3 to 1; and his JAWS upgrade version was dropped from 11 to 9. I’m glad that I am an Ai Squared girl!!! I have always been treated with the utmost respect in my 15 years of using ZoomText. When I need to upgrade computers, software, or any other issue requiring a re-activation of ZoomText, I simply transfer my license to the activation server until my computer is ready for its reloading and activation. Freedom Scientific could sure learn some valuable tips from Ai Squared, the originator and king of screen magnification.
- Until next time…
You don’t know how good it feels for me to read this entry. I’m glad that folks are finally able to read about the insane tactics that Freedom Scientific is using on users of their screen reading products. As one can tell by my JAWS serial number of 59243, I’ve been a JAWS user continuously since JFW 4.0, and it baffles my mind as to why Freedom Scientific treats their customers in this manner! Back around the time that JFW 6.0 was released, I’d pieced together a new computer for myself, and had loaded the operating system and associated programs, including JAWS, on to it. A few days later, my Sony DVD burner decided to no longer read DVD media, requiring me to replace the DVD burner. this issue was not a planned hardware replacement. After the replacement DVD burner was in place, of course I needed to re-activate my JAWS license. The activation went OK, but it used the last of my activations at the time. After getting my count reset back to 3 that time, I contacted Freedom Scientific to find out what I could do to reduce the amount of times I needed to activate my product when doing computer upgrades. The response I got, was to use JAWS in 40 minute demo mode until I knew everything was working, and then activate the product!
Well how exactly will that reduce the number of times I need to activate, in the event of hardware failure, such as what happened with my DVD burner?
I mean when I initially installed the computer, the DVD burner was working fine, so was I suppose to just magically know that my burner was going to fail, and refrain from activating JAWS until I had my new burner installed?
Also, what exactly is the point of the “Remove Activation” option in the JAWS 10.0, tools, submenu? If that option removed the activation, but then also put it back on the ILM server, then it’d be useful for doing planned computer upgrades or hardware maintenance. However, that option only removes the authorization from your computer, nothing more, so exactly what’s the point of that?
Finally, does anyone remember the brief JAWS 5.10 beta I think it was, that was going to be the beginning of a truly useful demo version of JAWS, since instead of 40 minutes of demo, you’d have a fully functional 30 day version of the product, the way most demos of software work? Why was the 30 day demo quickly taken away, never to be heard from again?
I’m disgusted that Freedom Scientific treats their former employees so poorly, deliberately reducing the number of allowed activations, and even the version that Wil was Entitled to upgrade to! What exactly was their reasoning for this I wonder? Is their whole goal to annoy everyone they deal with? Anyway, I’d welcome comments from anyone about this, good or bad. Feel free to follow me on twitter at http://twitter.com/kd6cae
You can skype me at kd6cae, and emails are also welcome at monty@kd6cae.net. I hope that somehow some way, we can get the message across to Freedom Scientific, that we’re tired of being treated like slaves! Hell Microsoft even treats it’s customers with slightly more respect than Freedom seems to be doing!