At any rate, the point is that I love apps for my iPhone. I have tons of games, exercise and work-out apps, apps to help me track my finances, and much more. Up until now, I haven’t had any major issues at all with the apps I’ve downloaded – they either work or they don’t and they suit my needs or not. I have now, however, encountered my first issue with an app developer who has most thoroughly shafted his customers and I feel compelled to share it. Let me give you an overview of what happened with this particular app, Gazette:

• Gazette, an RSS reader app by developer Matt Rajca, goes on sale in the App Store for $2.99 in October 2008.
• Reviews are fair to middling for the app and subsequent .0X updates. Many reviewers, including me, noted that syncing many feeds can take upwards of 15 minutes (NetNewsWire took only a couple of minutes comparatively for the same number of feeds for me). Rajca stated that this would be fixed in Gazette 2.0, with an ETA in January 2009.
• When asked if 2.0 would be a free upgrade, Rajca replied that it would be free to existing users, but would of course require a purchase to new customers.
• Gazette 2.0 is not released in January.
• In late March, Rajca posts that he’s still working on 2.0.
• More than 3 months later, Rajca announces that Gazette 2.0 has been submitted to the App Store in mid-June. However, it is no longer a free upgrade for current users, but will cost $2.99 for all customers.
• Gazette 1.0.4 has disappeared from the App Store, along with all of the reviews users had written about it.

To be clear, I know this isn’t the end of the world. It’s just an app and it’s just $3. But I think this behavior by a developer is deplorable. In my eyes, I had an app that was so slow it was unusable, and to get the improved app that does exactly the same thing, albeit purportedly faster, I have to pay for it again. Rajca had feedback from me via an iTunes review, completion of an optional survey he posted in a forum I frequent, as well as direct feedback from me in that same forum. I was not the only one who had the same issues with his app. (I should note that there are users who are perfectly happy with Gazette, though I must think they must only track about 10 feeds for this to be possible.) And, he had previously stated that 2.0 would be a free update to existing customers. Having a change of heart is one thing, but going back on your word to customers is another entirely. To parrot my mother, he should be ashamed of himself. And you can bet he’s lost me as a customer.

The official macgirl.net recommendation: Don’t buy Gazette and let developers like Matt Rajca think it’s okay to go back on their word and treat customers like crap. Behavior like this is right up there on my list of pet peeves, in between Close Talkers and customer service ineptitude (previous experiences with AT&T come to mind here).

Two RSS readers I can stand by are Byline and NetNewsWire. I started out with NetNewsWire but switched to Byline since it syncs with Google Reader, which became my primary RSS feed subscription manager. Both are speedy and have great features, and their developers don’t appear to feel the need to shaft their customers.