ThemeSnack: Arrogant Customer Service

I almost don’t know what to say about this… I was on the hunt for a great WordPress theme for a restaurant, when I came across ThemeSnack, which had an amazing looking theme called Dinetastic, which was last updated only a few months ago.

That sounded great, a fresh, new theme, that was recently updated to support all of the latest features WordPress has to offer. I couldn’t wait to try it out. I verified with my client that I should go ahead and purchase the theme, and they would reimburse me when the work was completed.

I went for it, as I wanted to start working on the site right away for them.

I headed over to ThemeSnack’s website, which looked extremely clean and professional.

I was impressed with the site, and even more impressed when I checked out the FAQ they have on the site.

That’s right, a 30-day guarantee or your money back! I thought I couldn’t go wrong. If they were going to guarantee the themes, they had to be of superior quality, right?

Absolutely not… I went ahead and paid for the theme, and I instantly received an email with a download link. It turns out, the link was pointing to a corrupted .zip file.

I gave ThemeSnack the benefit of a doubt on this one, and opened a ticket through their support system. They got back to me within a few hours with the proper download link.

At this point things were going good, the theme was installed and functioning on a basic level. I added in a few test menu items and moved on from there. I went to change the color scheme to a custom set, which was supported by the theme with a built-in tool, but no matter how many changes I made nothing changed on the site itself. I opened another support ticket for this, which to this day still hasn’t been answered or looked at.

I moved on and figured I’d hopefully get that resolved later. I started building the navigation system for the site, and that is where things got really sloppy. The menu building tool was great and I loved it, however there was no way to add your built menus to the navigation pane. The menus were never actually visible on the site anywhere. I opened another support ticket for this.

Both of those tickets went days without responses, and still, at the time of writing, have no responses on them at all.

I decided to contact the company via Twitter, to no avail, never received a response there at all. I moved onto messaging the person that replied to my initial ticket through Facebook, and without a response a few days later, I checked his personal Twitter account, and seen he had been active within a few minutes. This made me agitated, as I knew he was just simply ignoring my requests.

The person I’m referring to at this point is Justin Scheetz.

• http://www.facebook.com/justinscheetz
• http://twitter.com/JustinScheetz
• http://scheetzdesigns.com/
• http://www.altitudemarketing.com/about/justin-scheetz/

After this, I moved forward to ThemeSnacks Facebook page which had been inactive for a few months, but I tried it anyhow.

I got a pretty speedy reply. I’m not sure if it was from the Justin we just mentioned, or to the person whom my actual payment for the theme went to, which is Andrew Stanten.

• http://www.facebook.com/andrew.stanten
• http://twitter.com/stanten
• http://www.altitudemarketing.com/about/andrew-stanten/

Seems both of these guys work for a company called Altitude Marketing (who is also on Twitter), whom Andrew Stanten founded, or is at least the president of… Boy, I sure hope the president of a company isn’t talking to me like this…

They have too been into their support system, as I just got a reply 3 days ago, but regardless, it’s sheer arrogance, rudeness, and unprofessionalism. I’m sure I’m not the happiest customer they’ve had to deal with, but I’m irritated that it’s taken so long for them to get to my issues. Paying money for a theme that doesn’t work is ridiculous. And I know they’re delaying my refund just because they want to, but me being nice and asking for help wasn’t working, I tried many outlets listed above that just were not working.

ThemeSnack has plenty of good reviews on ThemeForest as well… and I’m utterly shocked this has happened.

So hats off to you Mr. Stanten, for your unrivaled business model and amazing customer service…

Business leader of the year, right there.

Please also take these warnings into account when purchasing from ThemeSnack, or their sister site, DesignSnack as well. And I wouldn’t touch their Altitude Marketing company with a 50-foot pole after this experience with some of their team members.

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