[Brian]

Hi Josh,

In response to your question, I was attracted to the styles and presentation shown on your screenshots page (https://wordpress.org/plugins/the-events-calendar/screenshots/). There’s not too much difference between what your screenshots show and what appears when we install the plugin and select the “Tribe Events Styles”, but there are differences, which means we have to spend time/energy sorting that out. While I appreciate that you’ve developed decent functionality with this product, it is disappointing not to have even a small offering of out-of-the-box, diverse skins to choose from. Of course you can’t satisfy every user, but that’s not a good excuse to make no respectable effort.

I would think that a small offering of clever, creative styles would better showcase your product and its potential. It would show that you’ve taken the initiative to consider how your users might want to use your product, or how it might fit into various environments and themes. Not only that, but it would give your product a greater value to users like myself who don’t want to spend hours reading documentation, copying files/folders, writing additional code, etc. immediately after dropping $90 on this plug-in. I understand you look upon your minimalist approach as freedom for the user, but from a consumer perspective, I regret spending $90 on what is not an all-inclusive solution.

Even if I have to customize my own styles, it would be much better if you had created all the logic, file and folder structures within your own plug-in directories so that all I have to do is edit and tweak the CSS from that location instead of having to read, find, copy, paste, etc. It quite honestly feels like I’m finishing someone else’s job in following your process for customization. It doesn’t make sense for me to backtrack at this point, so I don’t want a full refund. However, as a customer, I do not feel I’ve received good value for my money thus far and I’d be inclined to caution others who might fall into the same trap. You should consider increasing the value of your product with a respectable styles offerings, or otherwise mitigate these missed expectations by any of these methods: reducing the cost of your plug-in, adding a warning to customers about your customization process, and/or offering partial refunds to dissatisfied customers.

[Author]

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