Incredimail's changes. Review on Incredimail

I purchased Incredimail sometime during my first year of using it and have been a faithful customer for four years. During that period, I've seen it through a lot of changes, dealt with its glitches (such as its dependencies on Macromedia's flash files--which is occasionally uninstalled by other ambitious uninstall programs, its occasional insistence that it ''can't find the server'' when everything else is working fine and the list goes on), but they weren't anything I couldn't work around. I liked the notifiers because I could customize them to tell me which person had sent me e-mail. For a person who carries on numerous e-mail conversations with people who don't like ''IMing'' this is a handy tool. And, I have to admit, I'm a sucker for pretty stationary. I like eye candy--so what? :) One of its best features was the junk mail filter which made ''separating the sheep from the rams'' a breeze.

I wasn't happy when they went to ''gold gallery'' (offering lots of additional notifers, stationary and animations all for a large additional charge) but they left enough behind to keep me happy. I wasn't thrilled with the links it always installed on my desktop whenever I upgraded, but I deleted them with no trouble.

However, I made the mistake of upgrading Incredimail this evening only to discover that it had changed the JunkFilter to something called JunkmailPlus and it refused to turn the feature back on without my purchasing just that feature for a yearly supscription price of $39.95!!

I emailed support and began checking reviews around the internet. I'm not the only unhappy customer. In fact, it looks like the number is growing with every upgrade. I find it most disturbing that they don't warn customers that this is going to happen. There's nothing in the newsletters or in the screens one clicks through to get to the download. This smacks of open dishonesty and greed. The upgrade is a trap.

What were these people thinking? With all the free e-mail programs out there, as well as the open source software, not to mention Outlook Express which comes as a part of every Microsoft Office program, this was stupid move.

Oh--and the response to my e-mail? A statement that I can download an earlier version. No I can't. I looked. However, I did a system restore and recovered the older version from there so I'm good for now. They also offered me a ten dollar coupon. Gee thanks. So in a year when I have to resubscribe, how much will it be? I gave the customer service agent an ''eyeful'' in response and sent him links to all the unhappy reviews I'd found. He then offered me a $20.00 coupon and raved about all the new features of the filter--most of which are in the older version. I won't bother to respond (though I did wonder if I pressed the issue, whether they'd offer a $30.00 coupon)

It's a shame really. What a sad way for what was a pretty good program to go out. Greed is a bad thing.