Do Your Own Research !!!

I broke one of my own cardinal rules this weekend, and bought a piece of software based on a recommendation, but without looking into it first.

Bad mistake.

Luckily it wasn’t too expensive ($100) and it reminded me that no matter what ANYONE says about a product or service, check it out yourself before buying.

In short, the software pretty much ‘did what it said on the tin’, but the kicker was what it didn’t tell you. It wasn’t open source (by the nature of it, I had assumed it would be open source  – and nothing on the site said it wasn’t – my bad). Pretty much straight away the attitude of support was questionable, there was little documentation, and after a couple of days of major frustration i asked for a refund.

“We don’t do refunds” was the reply. Aha.. Looking deeper there was actually no user agreement or privacy policy, and a few other things that didn’t quite add up. Hmmm, maybe I’m paranoid but encrypted software with unique license key for every website, and with no proper user agreement or privacy policy smells distinctly fishy – I dropped it like a hot potato.

Valuable lesson re-learned. Could I fight for a refund ? Yes I could, but frankly I just haven’t got the time and ultimately it is my fault. I should have checked first.

So it’s cost me $100, but I get a sneaky feeling it may have cost me a lot more had I actually used the software.

So back to the headline.

Do your own research.

Somebody else’s opinion may be valuable as a guide, but it can never replace your own work.

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