Never Buy Read Iris, or Anything Else, from Iris Link

This person isn’t the first to have problems with the rip-off/scam artists known as Iris Link. This company is well known for making software that fails to work and doesn’t have features advertised, providing extremely poor customer support, failing to provide serial numbers for previously purchased software, and much worse. In my particular case, it took over a week, plus an email and two phone calls, to provide me with the serial number when I purchased Read Iris 11 for OS X, because of what they said was a flaw in their software. I’m now having troubles with my Read Iris 12 license, and have discovered that Read Iris 12 doesn’t work quite right with voiceover, and that it has serious bugs impacting OCR quality. Iris Link released an update that fixed, as far as I could tell, a grand total of zero of the problems. Currently, OCR quality is better in Read Iris 11 than Read Iris 12. That’s one hell of an upgrade! Someone should start a class action against these people.

The original complaint that enspired this post follows:

Hi all.

On September 25th I upgraded to readiris 12 for the mac for $40. It
didn’t work with voiceover. I called iris and after trying to get it
to work for me the customer service person supposedly processed a
refund. I thought I had seen a refund come back in but I think now
that it was just the authorization expiring. So this morning I checked
my account and found that $40 from readers had been processed on
October 5th–a whole week and a half after the initial processing. I
called iris and the person who answered the phone asked for an RMA; I
wasn’t given an ram. so I was told I’d have to call back in two hours
and talk to somebody named Casey who supposedly must have been the
person I talked to on September 25th. But this person I talked to this
morning said he didn’t know how Casey would look it up if I didn’t
have an RMA. I offered to give him my order number but he refused,
saying he couldn’t look it up that way. Since this isn’t the first
time I’ve seen delays or misplacement of information with Iris I told
the man that I wouldn’t be buying from the company again and planned
to file a report with the Better Business Bureau. He told me not to
threaten him and I said I wasn’t threatening, that I planned to carry
this out. He launched into what a big company they are and how many
euros they make a year and how they weren’t interested in scamming me.
I told him that the point was that the refund should have been
processed and the money certainly shouldn’t have been finally taken
out of my account a week and a half after I had requested the refund,
especially since I filed the request the same day I downloaded. He
told me how it’s a long process to refund–funny, it’s not a long
process to charge me and I’ve seen companies refund reasonably
quickly!!! I will be calling back and talking to Casey but I’ve also
filed a dispute with my bank which temporarily credits me wit the
money while they investigate. Merchants do have 30 days to refund
which I think is way too generous at least in this case. At any rate,
since this isn’t the first time I or somebody I know has had a refund
problem, though it was eventually resolved, I won’t be buying from
this company again no matter how good their product may become. I’l
use iris 11 as long as it works on the mac and after that if there
isn’t another program to scan adequately I’ll just have to go back to
using Abby Finereader in Windows. It’s not so much the time it takes
for a refund I’m griping about; it’s the fact that I was finally
charged again on October 5th after the authorization had apparently
expired, the fact that I wasn’t given an RMA, the fact that the person
on the phone passed the buck and wouldn’t even take my order number
and try to investigate or take my number and have Casey call me back
(I know they ask for your order number to process the refund so I
doubt his claim that the order number wouldn’t have been helpful!) and
it’s the fact that Carla and I too if i remember correctly had to call
again because refunds hadn’t gotten processed correctly!!! I’m sorry;
readers 11 was a good program, but I won’t be buying from this company
again.

–

Cheryl