Overall, I have spent about at least 10 hours (counting all the minutes spread over the past 24 hours) trying to get Squeeze Theme to behave and look nice and have failed miserably. I had to read the instructions. But now the theme is running nicely. I just recieved a refund for Squeeze Theme after trying to get it to behave like a standard Thesis Theme blog. Unfortunately, I have been spoilt with the bells and whistles that come as a default with Thesis Theme. It will be interesting to hear how Squeeze Theme has improved overall in about 6 months time.
I am not new to WordPress. I had no knowledge of blogging when I got online about 2 years ago, but I learnt how to use Thesis Theme beautifully and am very technologically savvy when it comes to plugging things in and getting them to work without reading the instructions.
Even free WordPres themes behave better than this one that costs about $100 for a single site.
THIS PARAGRAPH HAS BEEN INSERTED SINCE THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE…
TO REFLECT THE FACT THAT DESPITE ALL OF THESE PROBLEMS BELOW – YES THEY ALL DID TRULY EXIST – THE FOLKS AT UNIQUE BLOG DESIGNS SPENT A LOT OF THEIR THANKSGIVING WEEKEND (SATURDAY PART OF IT) TWEAKING THE CODE AND HELPING ME GET MY SITE UP AND RUNNING – FREE OF CHARGE.
THEY DID A FABULOUS JOB. THEY SAID THEY WANTED TO MAKE ME 100% HAPPY AND THEY DID.
However, after perservering for another week and still reading the constant complaints in the forum about why can’t Squeeze Theme do this, and how do I do that, only to receive comments that no additional help is offered beyond the templates. That is, if you want to change a colour or something in the custom style sheet (Custom.css) you would have to find a web designer or programmer to assist – I realised how amazing the Thesis Theme and the Thesis Theme Forum in particular is.
Problems I Experienced
- I changed the font family to Georgia 16px but it didn’t change on the site.
- I changed the link colour to red but it didn’t change either.
- I tried activating the custom style sheet, to see if that made the colour changes work but it didn’t do anything.
- I tried editing the custom style sheet, but that didn’t work.
- The Squeeze Theme logo that appears in the bottom right hand side of the site footer does not have your affiliate link - so, if you want other people to help contribute to the cost of your theme, you have to go into the Editor under Appearance and add your affiliate number to the image link, i.e. “….squeezetheme.com/888.html“
- I didn’tt know how to drive the header
- I couldn’t work out how to reduce the space in the footer.
- Changes to my background image or colour didn’t work. I uploaded a tile for the background (that I used successfully with the Thesis Theme) but it didn’t work.
- I went to the Support Forum but there wasn’t anything posted yet that answered by questions and I would have had to put about 12 different threads up to get answers specifically for each problem.
- I couldn’t get the logo image to work properly.
- I didn’t know how to get the tagline below the header.
- I didn’t like the Unique Blog Design/Squeeze Theme widgets in the footer taking visitors away from my site. I didn’t know how to alter them.
- The sales page and no sidebars templates did not make my content look any different to a normal blog.
- I wanted people who went to my home page to be clear about what the site had to offer. I couldn’t control the nav menu items, the tagline or the appearance of blog posts as I could with Thesis Theme.
- The js slider kept spitting out an error that said it will abort without the image width and height set. The only image I uploaded was the featured article post extra and it didn’t give a space to put height and width into it. All other images had height and width set automatically by WordPress. It wasn’t working – if you clicked on the image that appeared in the slider, there was no response and the bottom of the words and links were cut off.
- The only settings were in the style sheet. I thought this theme didn’t need users to know code.
- I reset the settings in case I changed something important but the site still looked the same.
- I returned to Thesis Theme and it instantly changed back to a beautiful layout with easy to read typography.
Squeeze Theme needs a lot of work still
In my opinion, the guys at Unique Blog Design (UBD) who created Squeeze Theme have a bit of work to do to compete with themes like Thesis Theme and other free themes from Woo Themes for example.
I asked for a refund and have since deleted the Squeeze Theme files and posts. I got to page 1 or 2 on Google for the keywords ’squeeze theme’ but I couldn’t promote the theme knowing that it had so many teething problems.
Unlike Thesis Theme, where people proudly provided links to their new sites within a day of getting the theme, there was only one other Squeeze Theme site that I could find via the Squeeze Theme Support Forum that was close to looking reasonable. Many newbies just couldn’t get their themes to work and to use an opt-in form in the sidebar, the Squeeze Theme Support Forum recommended a plugin! But, the theme is all about opt-in forms – WTF?
* * Help Receieved * *
The team from Unique Blog Design (UBD) spent several hours working on my site and fixing the code mishaps they were having. They provided revised versions and recommended users keep updating their theme to obtain the bug fixes. Apparently part of my problem was due to a plugin but many other problems were due to browser, coding and other problems. When I got a refund there remained many unresolved queries in the support forum after several days.
For a new theme, I found this to be too risky, time consuming and agree with comments that they probably went to market before they were really ready.
The UBD team is working hard (they say and I tend to believe theme) to make the theme great – but I am not willing to wait and risk my money in the meantime.
If you are using the Squeeze Theme and love it, since me updating this post on 21 December 2009, please offer your testimonials below to balance my not so flattering comments.
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{ 26 comments… read them below or add one }
It’s VERY, VERY buggy. Shouldn’t have been released yet – there are so many issues it’s not worth the time I’m sorry to say.
Josh,
I agree with you about the bugs. The coding and overall usability pales in comparison to Thesis Theme – at the moment. I am hoping the guys get on top of it soon. However, what does work is really good. I have a great gallery and featured article slideshow and the ease of inserting a header image is actually better than Thesis.
I am having trouble getting a response to support. I have asked for a refund which was promised up to 30 days and get no replies. Very peculiar though is the fact that the charge appears on my credit card account but the PayPal receipt has no Transaction ID and the transaction doesn’t appear on my PayPal transactions list. How did they manage this? It means I can’t set up a dispute with PayPal. I think this is fraud. Is there some innocent explanation fo rthis?
PS Please tell me how you contacted them and got results. Guess it is because you went public.
Elizabeth – not sure why there wasn’t a PayPay transaction ID. If you click into details you should go to a page in PayPal with a unique transaction id. I have also just asked for a refund (about 10 minutes ago). I will share my experience here afterwards.
Thanks I have a refund.
I do not agree with the statement on this page:
“If you’re going to be an early adopter you have to expect teething problems and when your expectations aren’t met – work through the obstacles to get whoever it is to meet them. I have been victorious and I feel that I have spent a good $87.”
That is absolute bull! This theme cost nearly $100 and they didn’t say it was beta.
Would you accept that for any non digital product? A TV for example? You got the personal help because you have a public blog . No-one else gets this personal help.
Elizabeth @ I now have also received a refund. Despite my attempts to stick with the Squeeze Theme, there did seem to be too many teething problems even for my level of patience. I suppose as a long-term Thesis Theme user I have been spoilt and the limitations of the Squeeze Theme were too many in comparison. I actually took advantage of the early days discount and used a coupon.
I suppose it is easy to forget the power of the web when you already have an established blog such as this one. I was hoping that my persistent emails were enough to get their attention but perhaps not?
Anyway, back to Thesis Theme – my familiar friend….
What a coincidence, I was about to buy the squeeze theme last night and then thought I’d wait until the morning…. Thanks for this post!
Professor Money´s last blog ..How to become a Millionaire
I checked out your blog, a nice start. You can’t do much better than Thesis Theme in my opinion. I’ve tried a few now just to see the differences as I have several sites and I keep coming back to Thesis.
Wow. I wish I read this before I made my purchase. Professor Money, you are VERY lucky you read this before buying and losing $300.
Here’s my story…
Note: I’m not one to EVER bash anyone or any company. Ever. And I’m not bashing here. Just telling the full truth and story of what is happening here in hopes others do not get ripped off like I have.
I would not ever do business with Unique Blog designs again. I did make a purchase awhile back – and I was happy with my purchase. This time around, I purchased both the WordPress Squeeze Theme and the WordPress Affiliate Theme priced at $297.
That was on December 14th, 2009. I knew I was in trouble when I saw the forum and all of the issues others were having with the themes. I went ahead and installed the WordPress Squeeze Theme on my server and spent the next 4-5 hours trying to get things to work correctly. I’ve been a WP user for the last 4-5 years and I’m a full-time marketer, so I know my way around WP really well.
The same day I asked for a refund from Josh. I got an immediate reply asking which theme I wasn’t happy with. I explained the situation nicely, and then nothing for a few days. I put a refund request in via PayPal, which Josh Mullineau denied.
Here it is December 22nd, and after emails including a voice mail left – all my refund requests are being ignored.
I have zero tolerance for this type of business practice and others should be warned about Josh Mullineau and the Squeeze Theme and Affiliate Theem for WordPress put out by Unique Blog Designs.
Don’t get me wrong, the product will be nice someday – it just has a lot of bugs and issues. The product should have stayed in beta until the bugs were fixed and then launched to the public.
I have no idea how many others are getting/feeling ripped off like me, but I encourage those who feel the same way and/or tried to get a refund from Josh Mullineau and he doesn’t reply to any of your emails to contact PayPal. Let them know the truth about what is happening here.
I’m sure I’m not the only person to have purchased the Squeeze Theme and Affiliate Theme for WordPress to have many issues. And I’m sure I’m not the only one whose refund request was ignored.
To get our money back…. I spoke to my contact at PayPal. All it takes is several of us to tell the truth and explain the situation about the product, issues we’ve had, etc. Once a few of those are in, PayPal will lock down Josh Mullineau’s PayPal accounts and everyone who purchased the Wordpress Squeeze Theme and/or Affiliate Theme will be refunded their money.
So sad there are still these types of sellers out there – but thankfully it’s a lot easier now-a-days to report them and get our money back.
Thanks.
P.S… Affiliates who are promoting this offer: BEWARE. As a buyer, I’m not only upset at Unique Blog Designs, but also the marketer who has a popular blog I read. His review made it sound like he used the themes – I now know MUCH different and I have lost respect for him completely lying in his review. So if you are promoting this, just keep all of the above in mind and if this is really something you want your readers to jump on.
UPDATE…
After reading the above, I see that others are now able to get refunds. So Josh really is scamming a lot of people here. How sad.
Time for ALL of us – and everyone who reads this post who also got ripped off by Unique Blog Designs to do the following:
1. Contact PayPal and let them know the truth. That the website is misleading, says things will work, when they don’t. The software is full of bugs – so much so for me that it’s completely unusable. The use of deceptive advertising practices, etc. Also that you requested a full refund and no communication has been made.
As I said in the above post, PayPal just needs a few of these true stories from others who were scammed by Josh @ Unique Blog Designs and the Affiliate Theme along with the Squeeze Theme. They will see that indeed, many people are getting scammed here, being sold a product that doesn’t work and not getting their money back.
They will proceed to lock and shut down his PayPal account and refund everyone who has made a purchase. The time it takes for us to get our money back after Josh’s PayPal account is locked and shut down varies I’m told. But the bottom line is that we will get our money back. All of us.
I hope this is a lesson for all marketers – Your customers are your # 1 priority. Do everything it takes to make them happy. Even if it’s providing a full refund. Do it. ClickBank has a 60-day $ back guarantee. Do I cry when I get refund requests or take it personal? No. But I do bend over backwards to make sure the customers are happy even after they get a refund – even going as far as giving them another product or two believe it or not.
Because all it takes is a few very unhappy customers who feel mislead and ripped off to start an avalanche online. If Josh provided me a fast refund, who knows how many more people would be ripped off? So in some ways, I’m glad this happened to me so we can save others from dealing with Unique Blog Designs.
One last thing – sorry…
By the way, I’ve been a fan of this blog for a long time and a very avid Thesis user – learned a lot here!
What I wanted to say is that on the support forum for Squeeze Theme and Affiliate Theme – if you post anything there – including support issues you need help on – the posts are not published right away – they are moderated! Another big flag!
Imagine if the Thesis forums were moderated and every post you made had to be approved? Jeesh. When people have a support question, they usually need help right then and there and hope to get help from other users if the creator of the software/theme/whatever isn’t there at that moment.
Talk about shady practices adding up here. Wow.
I think just one problem can cause a lock down from PayPal. All you have to do is set up a dispute. I know because this happened to me briefly when a customer set up a dispute instead of emailing me and asking about a download she had not been able to get. The minute she set up a dispute my account was unable to accept payments. A bit draconian – she called them that same day and had it lifted thankfully.
I have also bought Thesis and it is so much better. It actually works!
They used to post the support posts right away but they stopped. Maybe because they they were too many negative ones.
Josh @ glad you saved your time and money.
Elizabeth @ good to hear you got your refund.
Very Unhappy @ sounds like you got the really rough end of the stick.
As I said earlier – the Thesis Theme and Thesis Theme Forum are absolutely amazing. Because it is an established theme with a supportive, friendly, creative, willing and demanding community – we get what we ask for. The healthy ego of the Thesis Theme team is well deserved – we get a great deal for our small investment.
I also got a refund for the Squeeze Camp about 10 days after it started. For nearly $200, it was advertised as an amazing 12 weeks of learning with a 30-40 page booklet each week. After receiving the first week’s booklet I was a little disappointed. It wasn’t very well written and had lots of gaps in information. Overall I didn’t learn anything in the first week. Then, the second week’s book was late and after waiting 3 days I started to feel uncomfortable with the whole thing. This on top of the bugs in the Squeeze Theme I thought overall it was not a good investment and I decided the pull the pin while I could.
I would have to disagree, Squeeze Theme has allowed me to build some very sleek looking yet very well converting capture pages. If you’ve been in the marketing game for any amount of time you know that the proof is in the numbers and Squeeze Theme delivers high conversions by making is stupid simple for your visitor to opt into your site.
Further more, you probably are spoiled by the Thesis bells and whilstles because they are awesome. But you probably just need some more experience working with code and regular Wordpress themes because to truly become a master of affiliate marketing you need to have versatile skills and Wordpress is quickly becoming the standard.
I say rethink your decision on Squeeze Theme, it has done nothing but good things for me and will continue to do so…
Matthew´s last blog ..UBD Squeeze Theme Review
Just what I was hoping for – a good experience to provide hope for those who stuck it out during the early adoption phase. Would love it if you could provide some links to your squeeze theme sites. As for your comment about “…just need some more experience working with code…”, the Squeeze Theme was promoted as a solution for newbies without expertise with sites, a plug’n play type solution. While I personally have some experience with code and Thesis, I could not without considerable time, have worked out the code behind Squeeze Theme to make the changes I like to make using Thesis – so yes. I am a biased Thesis Theme spoilt-blogger – fair cop gov.
I feel your pain, Buddy. I purchased the Affiliate Theme (the developer option) from Unique Blog Designs and I will never do business with them again. In fact I will be posting a review of their product and it will truly be an honest one and not very favorable I might add. There is absolutely no way I will be purchasing The Squeeze Theme.
I have been working for a month + and still don’t have the first site up. The sidebar screws up and is unreadable and the post title link is unreadable.
Support is horrible. They say on the forum they have a 24 hour response and they do not. They are too busy promoting Squeeze theme to handle support issues on Affiliate Theme.
I have mentioned I want a refund via email and through a forum post. Now my posts have to be approved before they are posted and they have deleted two negative comments I made and have closed the thread I opened on the forum about the issues I was having with this theme.
The worst $147.00 I have ever spent.
Renee´s last blog ..How Not To Win Friends and Influence Followers on Twitter
Not a good story at all. I am yet to find a good Squeeze Theme site that can hold it up to Thesis or even WP Squeeze Page Generator – a fantastic bit of software I bought for $37 that lets me easily and quickly create squeeze pages and landing pages galore within Thesis Theme and within any WordPress theme. Check out the link for more information.
Thanks so much for the link and info to the Squeeze Page Generator. I will be purchasing Thesis. You have some useful information on your blog and I will be back.
Too often I find affiliate marketers and internet gurus pushing products like Squeeze Theme and Affiliate Theme and they aren’t using the products and have not fully tested them. Major fail. It’s hard to find honest review sites on products such as these. Basically most review sites are just affiliate sites in disguise. They don’t care if the product works, they are out to make money.
Kiddos to people like you who post honest and in depth reviews and information :]
Renee´s last blog ..How Not To Win Friends and Influence Followers on Twitter
Thanks Renee. Ethics and integrity mean the world to me. I’m not interested in a fast buck. You have to deserve what comes to you.
Interesting! I was not expecting such a “real” and “honest” review of a product. I mean I have also used these theme and I did not encounter any problems at all. Although I already changed it again. I was not satisfied of squeeze theme. Well, I guess you’re just being honest and you deserved a refund. Thanks. ;-)
Hello fans of Squeeze Theme,
I recently paid $147 for Squeeze Theme and have yet
to receive it…all I got was a PayPal confirmation/receipt #.
I called a Seattle phone number but all I get is
an answering machine…that promises
a call back..that never comes
I wish they would send me the Squeeze Theme
that I paid for so that I can be disappointed
like the rest of you..
but I can’t even get that far.
Philip
Try one of the company directors … nate@uniqueblogdesigns.com
Squeeze Theme is for sale at Flippa. They are asking $180,000.
http://flippa.com/auctions/95270/Popular-WordPress-Themes-and-IM-Training—176864-83-in-revenue-in-6-Months#comment379484
I did ask some questions:
Some Squeeze Theme customers have been dissatisfied with the theme and service, especially in the support forum…
http://thesisthemehq.com/new-squeeze-theme-for-wordpress-is-not-user-friendly/
…have these issues been resolved? Is it safe to assume there are a number of affiliates that are no longer promoting the theme but still remain on the books?
What technical (coding) knowledge does the buyer of squeeze theme need to address any issues in the forum. Based on nearly every WordPress theme forum out there, there appears to be an ongoing need to upgrade the theme when WordPress is upgraded and as a result of finding bugs and needing to apply patches.
And also…
Do your stats for 120,000+ visitors to your site include the traffic from theme users going to the forum for support and affiliates going to their stats panel to check their earnings? Most users would ping a forum and/or affiliate panel at least daily, especially when setting up the theme and during intial promotional efforts.
My thoughts…
I get the impression the people hungry to buy the site are after the “Email list of over 800 members” and the PR5.
I’m hoping the new owner understands the amount of unhappy people there are (or at least used to be) and maintains some level of technical support. There is only a 1 month techical theme support package with the sale. I wouldn’t be holding my breath for the squeeze theme to be upgraded all of the time like Thesis Theme is.
Apparently if the new owner can’t manage the comments in the forum they can pay someone around $1,000 a month to do it for them. Bargain!
I think as a former customer and affiliate my name is on the email list still. Guess I’ll be seeing an email or two from the new owner in a few months offering to sell me something.
Squeeze Theme is for sale at Flippa. They are asking $180,000. As at 16 June 2010, the bids are up to $22,000. Still way below an estimated reserve price. If I had lots of money I would NOT buy this domain/software/mailing list. This post is about why…