Plex and Technicial Support!!

General Discussions
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I strongly hope that there will actually be more communication and better responses to user issues BUT the recent fiasco of releasing server 1.0.0.x without, apparently, fully testing it in a variety of environments (I know as a Plex Pass user I did not see it until it was released generally) while simultaneously removing the ability to easily downgrade back to earlier working versions and not even communicating why it was being don that way makes me doubt the sincerity of Plex’s words.

I hope that my feeling is wrong but I really do not believe that Plex is sincere in the statements that they will do better because over the last year or two many times we have heard the same thing and the follow through has been quite lacking.

Plex has a GREAT software set that fills my needs for media storage and playback very well BUT Plex, the company, much too often hides mistakes, errors and plans behind a wall of unnecessary secrecy. A certain level of silence is needed to have a good flow of developments but Plex has taken it to a level that is more harmful than productive.

I find it very frustrating that so much is impossible to find out even when something positive happens. It is like dealing with a secretive foreign power. (like North Korea) In fact I know more about the North Korean nuclear program than I do about what Plex has planed for the next release.

I think Plex is so secretive because they fear looking bad if some target is not met or some feature proves to be harder than they initially thought it would be. But they have taken that fear to extreme and now communicate virtually nothing of any real value to the user community.

This paranoia is understandable in a company that has good or even bad official customer support lines, chats and other systems but it works poorly if the only support is from the community. Even though Plex employees and Ninjas etc do respond on these boards the informality of the boards and no set bug/help form to fill out makes this support primarily “user community” which is not bad but is poor for a company that has no other support.

Plex is no longer a tiny company run out of a garage but rather their revenue and widespread use has moved that up to the level of at least an average company and they need to provide the customer support of the average company or they need to be a LOT more open in their communication so the user community can actually be a support system.

At the minimum Plex needs to provide a formal support request form/mechanism that gets responded to EVERY time and see to it that the responses to that are both helpful and meaningful.

Plex needs to be more open in their plans and if that openness leads to some problems due to unmet delivery dates or unfulfilled feature promisees then they need to deal with that. The problems of greater openness, in my opinion, will be a lot less that the problems they have caused by the paranoia they currently operate under.

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Well said!!

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I have to agree with the thread op as well. It is a complete disservice to your paying customers to NOT offer REAL technical support and customer service. It is the only thing preventing me from purchasing a lifetime sub at this moment.

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@rsava said:
You do not pay for Plex. Plex is free. You pay for a Plex Pass.
Plex Pass gives you certain “benefits” over those that do not pay for a Plex Pass.
None of those “benefits” is a support desk. One of those “benefits” is a special section where you can ask for help and get a little better response from more experienced users. (However, the regular forums have “ninjas” patrolling there also.) The “forum support” model is what Plex has used since before I have been around.

As @plxplz states, most issues are the same ones, over and over. When a real bug comes up, a ninja (very experienced, knowledgeable user, not everyone can be one) can usually confirm and pass it along. Plenty of examples of this can be found in the forums.

It has also been the Plex model to not discuss timelines for releases. I do remember once when they did, quite a while ago. They missed and were raked over the coals. Why put up with that?

One other thing I thought of. Look at the vast, and I mean VAST, majority of issues that are posted. I see things like this all the time - “I just upgraded to the latest version (not server or client or even veersion number) and now ‘xxxxxxx’ feature is broken. Come on devs, FIX THIS!!!” Then 20 more posts of “Me too!” or “+1” or “Happens to me too, glad I’m not alone.” or (my favorite) “FIX THIS NOW DEVS!! This is the ONLY reason I use Plex!”
No one bothers to report it correctly, no one bothers to do research to see if it is reported already and how to fix it or understand that it is a known bug (I am horrible at searching but I at least attempt to search before posting). Kind of tough to give technical support based on posts like that. Then when someone posts a link to the solution (after several posts to get more details) they get berated by the new users “Why not just tell us how to fix it? You’re not very helpful.” or “Hey stupid, I don’t need a link I need to know how to fix it!” In other words, don’t make me do any work to figure this out. There have been plenty of us that stopped giving advice after being hammered like that once too many times.

None of your excuses justify piss poor technical support and customer service on the companies behalf. It is not the responsibility of the consumer to “report things correctly” and with how complex it can be for the average computer user to even understand how to config a Plex server, it baffles me that so many people think that a forum is the right way of handling customer service needs. If anything it shows the lack of respect the company has for it’s users.

. Customers are looking for help and assistance in a convenient way and Plex is deciding not to make things as simple as they could and should be. I have been in tech support almost my entire career and I DO understand that a good portion of customers do not know how to document things correctly, let alone communicate. But with THAT problem alone, don’t you think it would make logical sense to have a system in place that does not FURTHER complicate things? And if it is such an enormous issue than perhaps they should move over to a support system such as Zendesk in order to solve this issue instead of relying on this horrible forum cms.

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I agree with those of us that paid for the Plexpass and should have an an avenue to directly deal with support. Nice interface, well designed, but tech support lacking.

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I have tried everything but i cannot get plex to work on my ps4. Ive paid for plex pass and i need
support. There is nothing in the forums that works for my problem

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Seems like this is still an issue

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I have to agree with this forum. You charge what $200+ for Plex Pass which i have. What exactly are we paying for support wise? I have friends who use the free version and they can do everything with their server that i do. Paying to be a lifetime plex pass you would think comes with some kind of support. Not pawning it off on other members to do your work for you which is exactly what you do. You say you are working towards resolving this issue. Its been YEARS since this post and your “support” level hasn’t changed at all. The fact that you hav admitted that Plex needs to improve customer support and STILL doesn’t provide a formal support request form years later shows just how much Plex doesn’t care about it’s members.

I am gong to take a chance here since this will alert you and i might actually get aome help. Since you are support where do you suggest i post and actually get a response from support about your playlists not play continuously like they used to unless you use shuffle**???** I have asked for help about this issue twice in general forums & no plex support response. Like mentioned by another member. Any response is better than no response. Don’t get me wrong, I do love your product but getting supports help is like pulling teeth. Because of this I dread updating Plex because every single time you guys release an update it breaks remote access without fail.

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3 years later and nothing’s changed. I hope your feels won’t be hurt too much.

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Dear gh057ofsin

I admire your calm enumeration of systemic problems with the Plex platform. i do not believe that you will ever talk to a Public Relations executive. This is a company that started as Open Source hobby and the same totally techy coders are running the place. They are far beyond the tipping point when a great tech idea, with no business input is spoiled by too many customers. We should get Roku to buy them. Or find the resources to buy them ourselves. Customer ownership would directly solve Plex’s worst problems.

Plex has over extended itself. Just because you can write code to connect every type of Linux box, in your local testing shop, does not mean that you can provide the required staff of two times the developers to do customer support. Not to mention the specialized staff needed to do proper quality control. Some readers will wonder how I could know this. I worked for a tech company which struggled with these issues and almost lost the farm. The only way we saved the business was to realize these truths and have a CEO that moved decisively to fix them.

The adding of a online streaming division to the company is doomed to competitive defeat. It does not reinforce the core differential value of the company’s product, which is the personal media server, and it drains technical and management focus from the core product. Which causes the hemorrhaging of subscribers you reference because no one is paying attention to customer service. Some readers wonder how can I know subscribers are leaving. When a subscriber, such as myself, builds a special media computer hardware to fit in my home media center and stocks it with a lot of favorite movies and the failure of the Plex Media Server makes it a piece of junk, there is a serious problem. Reading the forum will confirm that I am not alone. Roku has nothing to fear from the Plex media streamer.

Plex, as an enterprise, has a very bleak future however. Plex has established a market need for a local media server product. However, even in the new world of streaming services, people have favorite movies that they watch often. That’s why people use to buy DVD’s instead of renting them. In addition, the idea that I can watch my movie collection, on an airplane, on a device that I already carry, is a powerful driver of user demand. Plex’s current ability to field web clients for a range of platforms is its major competitive advantage. Google or Amazon could duplicate this functionality in two months. Write code, extensive quality testing, installation and user documentation for only the strategic platforms. Google could supply the equivalent of the Plex client on their phones OS as basic video function. Bye bye Plex.

I do not know if Google or Amazon is already in negotiations to acquire Plex’s technology, but they should be.

Again, gh057ofsin I enjoyed your discussion of the specific technical challenges Plex faces. I hope that my long winded discussion of the broader business and marketing aspects will reinforce the sense of urgency to address these issues you convey.

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Really were do you guys get this stuff, Is it your imagination or substance abuse.

Merry Christmas to all.

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Personally I think a product should work as intended if purchased and have direct support for purchased products. Forums don’t seem good here. I am seeing the same issue (TV Guide mismatch) from 2013 to present.

Can we ask for refunds? I purchased a plex pass lifetime and it’s been a nightmare with the episode names / thumbnail / season and episode numbers are all incorrect.

Where can I submit a trackable ticket? These forum’s don’t seem to be effective since the problem has been reported countless times and the issue persists.

May I suggest contacting HD Home run prime as they seem to have it nailed.

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It’s all because of the luck of concurrent. If there another almost the same product but with support, I would switch.

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Emby. It works for me. I have yet to have a question or problem go unanswered on their forums by a developer for more than about 10 hours and, mostly, I get my first response from one of the Emby developers within a hour of posting. The quality of the response depends on asking the question or posting the problem, including logs, in as clear a manner as possible. That is a question like “My Emby client does not play any content, does anyone know why?” will go unanswered because there really can be no answer and the same is true for Plex. The only real difference between the two is that sometimes in Plex even well presented questions including logs can often go unanswered for weeks, months or, in some cases, even years. That has never happened on the Emby site to my knowledge.

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A lot of this software service is identical to any other service that’s online based. Disnee+ on launch had a horrible start in the first week with people on the phone with tech support for some as long as 4 hrs. And if you really think about software app services today, this still is uncharted territory for companies to support a vast device support not alone customers across the globe 24/7. Yes it to be expected to have the utmost highest support but expectations of only ONE employee to know absolutely everything is not going to happen all the time. It’s these forums, these communities that are here that actually keep everyone’s questions front and center even though they can get hidden. They still are searchable and can be upvoted or flagged. What’s been the trend to get CEO’s attention the past decade about their services? Complaining on social media. That’s not always the way to get something solved. I can’t see myself calling a 1800 number, sitting and waiting hours for one service agent to refer to notes and prompts to come up with a solution only to be more frustrated. Plex works tremendously well most of the time but when it breaks, it’s like 1st world dooms day and that’s how I felt with the Disneee+ melt down. The issue here with Plex is that Plex server alone can be installed on so many devices, that matching clients to the install can also break things along the way. It’s quite different for something like Netflicks or Disneee where most of their servers are higher spec’d and more contained. We live a great time right now for personal media in the home and I’m enjoying the ride.

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Thx a lot for the advised alternative. Will look on it.

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