I worked with LaGarde's Storefront for a tad over two years. The product has
been migrated to VB.NET and is quite robust in its feature sets but I warn
you now -- if you decide to buy in you do so well advised -- be prepared to
be lied to and cheated at every turn and don't expcet quality code. In over
twenty years in the IT business I have found Bob LaGarde to be the most
dishonest and slimy vendor in the business.
To make matters worse he attracts a cadre of liars and cheating sycophants
who pimp niave merchants in the web forums he had to put up to enable him to
censor and prevent complaints and criticisms about his scurilous conduct and
that of the pimps that worked the newsgroup like street corner whores
waiting to lure a drive-by trick. I tell you the lies and deceit I witnessed
was pitiful.
LaGarde had to put up web forums after his many antics raised the ire of so
many customers that he had to stop using public newsgroups for support which
I might add is non-existent as all support is obtained by interacting with
peers (pimps who will ostracize you unless you are accepted into their
clique). There is paid support but of such poor quality and in some cases
real rip-offs which is why so many customers revolted.
That came to a climax shortly after he released the VB.NET edition which he
attempted to embed with spyware which was discovered when merchant stores
were being shut down remotely. Then and only then LaGarde came clean and
told customers he was building "licensing code" into the product but the
hooks were there embedded into compiled assemblies.
He also refused to inform customers that the product was insecure after I
discovered and reported the merchant database could be read by those who had
disbled JavaScript in the browser. I built and released the patch the next
day and I caught hell for making it known and releasing the patch from all
the pimps two of which happen to be FrontPage MVPs one named Willet and the
other Rowe; a couple of real honest to goodness pieces of sh!t just like Bob
LaGarde who never made any official announcement to customers running that
version of the software (SF5) and who did not update the software for months
afterwords. Because SF5 required significant modifications to function all
of which would have to be redeployed and in some cases rewritten when
upgrading I have no doubt there are many merchants out there running his
insecure software who never upgraded and are left exposed because the piece
of sh!t has no integrity and has refused to even send his customers email
notifying them of the problem.
LaGarde offers a 30 day money back guarantee but this POS has a history of
giving customers who request their money back the run around and is known
not to return a check for many months afterwards claiming his accounting
does not allow him to return the check any sooner. Its sh!t like that this
slime will pull at every opportunity.
A smart business person would acknowledge problems and offer a coupon to
upgrade. But Bob LaGarde and the scum he attracts are not smart. They are
sleazy slime. Be advised.
As for BVC it was an up and coming solution that grew rapidly during that
time period while I was involved with StoreFront. Due to my experience with
StoreFront and the lack of any robust solutions that ran on the Windows
platform that could be used to make money with I left e-commerce for other
pursuits and never delved deeply into BVC but I have since installed the
free version for a look-see which I suggest you try yourself. I found the
admin UI clunky and know nothing about the real value of the product line.
Discussions with my former customers and some StoreFront peers who continued
to talk to me suggested the developer seemed to be genuine and motivated to
learn from his mistakes so if I had a choice to determine time invested
evaluating I would give BVC a thumbs up for evaluation once again myself.
I know nothing about the other products. Good luck to you.
<%= Clinton Gallagher
NET csgallagher AT metromilwaukee.com
URL
http://clintongallagher.metromilwaukee.com/
"BigDave" <da********@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:11**********************@j33g2000cwa.googlegr oups.com...
Hi all,
I'm looking for opinions and recommendations on an ASP.NET e-commerce
software.
As a long-time ASP.NET developer, I'm looking to provide e-commerce
solutions to businesses, and thus am looking for the most feature-rich,
bug-free, and extendable package out there.
Packages that I've come across so far are:
AspDotNetStoreFront
StoreFront
BVSoftware
DotNetECommerce (DotNetCart, DotNetShip, etc.)
ECommerceSoft
AbleCommerce
Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
