Disappointed with support response

[Douglas]

I recently shared contact I received from FaceBook on an opportunity to participate in product development and beta testing on a new project concerning events. Here is the closed thread.

https://theeventscalendar.com/support/forums/topic/facebook-has-contacted-me-about-a-new-event-product/

After being told it was more than likely a scam, I reassured Brian that it was legitimate and offered the event calendar an opportunity to participate.

Apparently, Brian does not understand the value to the team since you have invested, as I have, with interfacing with Facebooks event process. On the Facebook plugin forum no less.

I as a customer am not looking forward to Facebook completely changing the product and potentially the interface, and having to wait for the team to react and fix the plugin. This is currently happening for a number of us with the auto import process creating duplicate posts, as well as the product broken when a venue in the Facebook event is age restricted, though the info is in the event but the venue object cannot be accessed.

To have Brian claim that it is not your product and curtly wish me good luck with it while closing the thread is totally unacceptable to me as a client, customer and supporter. I would appreciate if someone from the Facebook plugin development team would be willing to contact to me directly.

Thanks, Doug Knowles.

[Brian]

Hi,

I am sorry you felt I was being hasty however, it was not my intention for that.

Here is what I can tell you about this:

• We are not affiliated with Facebook nor have any contact with them about our Facebook Event Importer for the Events Calendar
• We use the Facebook Graph API to access the information on Facebook Events
• All changes to the Facebook Graph API will be posted on their developer site and given months if not years lead time to change things: https://developers.facebook.com/
• We are using the latest version of the API (2.3), which will be around for 2 to 3 years as it was just launched

This potential product from Facebook has nothing to do with The Events Calendar and Modern Tribe. So we can provide no information, resources, or anything else as we have no idea what it even is.

If you have something like this in the future the forum is not the best place for this as it is not support related to our products.

Please use the contact form here:

Contact

Let me know if you have any follow up questions.

Thanks

[Douglas]

Brian, the contact form allows for only two types of contact and neither of them are applicable.

Please, again, would someone from The Facebook import plugin development team and or sales contact me directly or allow me to contact them. There are issues with the product that are effecting its value to me compared to what it’s value was to me when I first licensed it.

Unfortunately, those same issues as I stated before, do not support your statement about advanced warning and a need to only react when future changes to the graph API are announced.

[Brian]

Hi,

The contact options may not be applicable as per our terms and conditions, “All support is provided via our forums; there is no live chat, phone support or email support available.”

And to provide the same level of support we stick to that for all our customers.

If there is an issue with the plugin we can help out here on the forums as our policy states.

I noticed you mentioned Venues not being accessible because of age restrictions. That is a limitation of the Facebook Graph API and we are not able to get around that. Facebook does not allow us to get restricted information through their API. So there is nothing we can do about that as that comes from Facebook.

As for the duplicates we believe we found that error and fixed in 4.0 are you still having issues with it in 4.0?

Beyond that again we provide support through the forums.

If you wish to open a new thread and have someone else help you here then please do so.

Thanks

[Douglas]

I noticed you mentioned Venues not being accessible because of age restrictions. That is a limitation of the Facebook Graph API and we are not able to get around that. Facebook does not allow us to get restricted information through their API. So there is nothing we can do about that as that comes from Facebook.

The functionality was lost when your plugin was updated to get the venue object separate from the event object in hand which already contains the venue data within it. I was told that instead of erring on the venue object that you were going to use the venue data in that is already in the event object. This was to be fixed in a future release.

As for the duplicates we believe we found that error and fixed in 4.0 are you still having issues with it in 4.0?

The thread from October below is still open and I have not seen a post or change log that would tell me that it has been corrected in v4.0. Therefore I have not tested it to validate. In fact in that thread at some point it was stated that it would not likely be fixed until after 4.0 was rolled out because everyone was busy working on the roll out.

https://theeventscalendar.com/support/forums/topic/facebook-events-importing-duplicates/page/2/#post-1028687

I am asking for contact because, I am a business as well and if I am going to continue to be your customer I need assurance that issues with this plugin are as important as the others and that you intend to keep updating it.

[Geoff]

Hi Douglas,

First off, nice to see you again. We’ve touched base in another thread before and I head up support for Modern Tribe.

I wanted to jump in here and make sure the conversation here is on track and that we’re all on the same page. After reading the title and opening of this thread, I have to admit I was pretty disappointed, as I would be any time it appears we have let any customer down. We hold ourselves to a high standard  and getting such negative feedback on the level of support we provide is a bummer to see, to say the least.

That said, I want to reiterate Brian’s point that The Events Calendar has no affiliation with Facebook other than the fact that the Facebook Events add-on for The Events Calendar utilizes the Facebook Graph API, which is an open resource to any developer for use Facebook data in applications.

I appreciate the fact that you were willing to share an invite you received for a beta preview in your previous thread. It’s awesome to know that you were given the opportunity and thought to share the invite with us. I hope that, by now, the misunderstanding between you and Brian has been ironed out and that there is a mutual understanding that there was no implication of anyone participating in a “scam” and that Brian was sincere in wishing you well with the beta participation while following the proper procedure of removing third-party promotions from the forums in order to keep topics on point for support-related issues.

The second part of this thread makes it clear that you’re concerned about the future of Facebook Events:

I as a customer am not looking forward to Facebook completely changing the product and potentially the interface, and having to wait for the team to react and fix the plugin.

I want to re-assure you once more that the invite you received is in no way connected to our Facebook Events product. Any work that is being done on the product mentioned in the invite will have no impact on our Facebook Events product. If the Facebook Graph API were to change, however, that is something we would need to address and build into a future release of our product. Thankfully, Facebook does communicate changes to its API fairly well and with an abundance of advanced notice, so that allows us to make changes as needed in preparation for the changes–and that is something we would certainly do since we care about our product and want to make sure it stays updated.

The thread from October below is still open and I have not seen a post or change log that would tell me that it has been corrected in v4.0. Therefore I have not tested it to validate. In fact in that thread at some point it was stated that it would not likely be fixed until after 4.0 was rolled out because everyone was busy working on the roll out.

I looked into the ticket in our system for the issue of duplicated events importing from our Facebook Events add-on and see that it is currently on hold while our developers try to replicate the issue. The ticket was updated as recently as last week and I’ve made an additional note in there to keep it moving forward. And, of course, we will be happy to follow up with you directly in this thread when we learn more.

I am asking for contact because, I am a business as well and if I am going to continue to be your customer I need assurance that issues with this plugin are as important as the others and that you intend to keep updating it.

I can assure you with full confidence that Facebook Events is a valuable product to us, as is the rest of our product line. We only put out products we believe in and have a vested interest in maintaining. We also take our duty to support those products seriously.

On that note, I have every bit of faith that Brian can help you with any support-related issues related to the duplicate events issue from here.

If you have a non-support-related topic you would like to contact us for, you can reach out to us via email at support [at] theeventscalendar.com. We do want to keep support questions here on the forum but you are welcome to email us if you have any other correspondence to share.

Sincerely,
Geoff

[Douglas]

Geoff, thank you for taking the time to respond. Your answers were reassuring and I am feeling a bit better.

You addressed the duplicate event on auto import, and I appreciate that since based on the previous reply I turned it back on and was able to turn it off before my database started overflowing again with duplicate events.

You did not address the missing Venue issue when importing an event that includes an age restricted venue. As I said before, the plugin was changed to retrieve the venue data object for importing. Previously as well as still, the venue data is also available in the actual event object regardless of any restrictions preventing access to the venue object directly and was previously imported from there. I was told that a future release would capture the venue object error and load whatever venue data was in the event object.

This is still not happening and it is also effecting my ability to use the plugin as it was when I licensed it. It causes me and others to have to manually intervene as well as manually import and as such deleting any cost savings that were available through automation.

I believe that you have a superior product still and it is priced accordingly compared to competitive products, but I am disappointed that it is taking so long to address these issues from September and we are now almost half way through December.

Thank you for your time and help.

[Brian]

Hi,

We have a bug ticket in for the missing venues scheduled for the next release.

Maybe I can come up with a patch in the mean time.

I am curious though you mention the venue is available in the event object through the graphic API.

I am having trouble reproducing that for restricted venues in version 2.4. (the current version we are using)

In 2.4 the graph api explorer it returns nothing for venue, place, or location for an age restricted venue when using it as an application and using the app token, which the importer uses.

If I use a user access token or the default access token when landing on the graph explorer it does work, but it is not possible for the Importer authenticate as a user or use that default token.

An App should be chosen under the Graph API Explorer dropdown and then under the Get Token dropdown the Get App Token needs to be choose to reproduce the environment our Importer works in.

I went back in checked and in all versions of the api from 2.1 and up the place, venue and location field are not returned to me.

This is the event id I was trying on:

1013737185323224

Here is the query I tried on an age restricted event:

1013737185323224?fields=id,owner,venue,location,place

For one that is not age restricted:

660365777399267?fields=id,owner,venue,location,place

That worked to return the place.

And I removed the field depending on what version of the api as place was there in 2.3 and up and 2.5 would not allow venue or location.

Let me know how you got it to work and perhaps I can get you a patch.

Thanks

[Douglas]

If you request just the event’s Id, it returns the whole event including the fields that can’t be return directly due to oauthexception.

It displays them using the place structure in all versions as well as location and venue at the event level are deprecated in 2.5

I can access using my app token on 2.3,2.4 and 2.5 using

10137371853232247?fields=place{name,location{city,country,latitude,longitude,state,zip}}

[Brian]

Ok so when I do just the id this is what I get:

{
“description”: “The Terry Sheets Band returns to the Wrangler for some \”Rockin\” Country!”,
“end_time”: “2015-11-21T01:30:00-0800”,
“name”: “Terry Sheets Band at the Wrangler”,
“start_time”: “2015-11-20T21:30:00-0800”,
“id”: “1013737185323224”
}

Here are my steps.

I choose my APP that I use on my site for importing

I selected the App Token

Added the id

Using this I only get the ID:

1013737185323224?fields=place{name,location{city,country,latitude,longitude,state,zip}}

Do you have any different settings in your APP that might cause this?

[Douglas]

Ok my app is built on 2.3

App restrictions.
No – contains alcahol
Yes – Social Discovery
Anyone 13+ – age restriction
No – Country Ristriction

Client OAuth settings
Yes – Client OAuth Login
Yes – Web Oath Login
Everything else no

[Douglas]

this is what i get all three versions

{
“place”: {
“name”: “The Wrangler Bar”,
“location”: {
“city”: “Elk Grove”,
“country”: “United States”,
“latitude”: 38.4327698,
“longitude”: -121.298111,
“state”: “CA”,
“zip”: “95624”
},
“id”: “109767070727”
},
“start_time”: “2015-11-20T21:30:00-0800”,
“id”: “1013737185323224”
}

[Douglas]

Access Token Info
App ID 951127374927467 : eastcountyrocks
User ID
10204206823559664 : Doug Knowles
User last installed this app via API v2.x
Issued Unknown
Expires 1449784800 (in about an hour)
Valid True
Origin Unknown
Scopes user_location, user_likes, user_managed_groups, user_events, user_photos, user_friends, user_about_me, user_status, user_tagged_places, user_posts, rsvp_event, email, ads_read, manage_pages, publish_pages, publish_actions, read_custom_friendlists, public_profile

[Douglas]

ok… I was using the page token in the explorer

when i switch to the app token I get the same as you

[Brian]

Ok so if we authenticate as a user or a page that information is available.

If we are using the app token it is not.

Are we on the same page about that?

[Author]

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