UPGRADE UPDATE: Problems...

Let's just say it: in the last 48 hours there have been more glitches and bugs than we expected from the upgrade to our new E-commerce and My Account software.

Despite months of careful preparation, the transition has not gone as smoothly as we planned. Too many of our users and subscribers have been inconvenienced by one problem or another. Most issues have been caused by incomplete or inaccurate data translation between our old provider’s ancient service and the new modern system we’ve moved into.

Regardless of the reason, we apologize. It pains us to know that any of you have been frustrated by this. Uninterrupted music and trouble-free service is our prime goal at HOS, and we haven't delivered it this week.

Our engineers are working through and resolving each bug as quickly as possible, prioritizing those affecting the most people. Leyla Hill is working diligently on individual account issues brought to her attention by your emails to [email protected].

We ask for and appreciate your continued patience while we make things work as they're supposed to. We thank the many of you who've sent good wishes along with your bug and glitch reports. We understand that we’ve inadvertently made you all into involuntary beta testers, and we are very grateful to those whose precise and thoughtful reports aid us in resolving the issues.

ISSUES WE'RE WORKING ON

Password reset: On Friday the 31st we did a lot of work on the new password reset process. It works well now. However, when you do a password reset, for security reasons the code kills your current listening session. That's why you see a "session expired" message. We’ll eventually find a way to get rid of that. In the meantime, if you reset your password, just dismiss the message and keep going.

Repeated “session expired” messages are blocking some of you from using the service. Our engineers are focusing on this bug now and hope to fix it soon.

Blocked access to MY ACCOUNT Information and management functions is the next bug to tackle. Again some are blocked by this, others not. Please don’t frustrate yourself trying to get past this second sign-in. It’s not something you can fix. We’re working on it.

Rights issues with cancelled, but unexpired subscriptions. It’s a server issue that has to be resolved there. In the meantime, please report this to [email protected]. If you can access Account Management under MY ACCOUNT you can reactivate the subscription temporarily, allowing you to stream music. If you can't access Account Management, we can do it for you. Then we or you can cancel the plan again once the larger rights issue is resolved on the server.

Please report issues specific to your account to [email protected] as precisely as you can. These include:

• Can’t sign in to play music or the system doesn’t recognize your email address
• You have an email address that no longer works so you can’t get the reset password message
• Your subscription seems to be missing from your account
• Your subscription renewed or upgraded shortly before the transition, but that isn’t reflected in the new system
• You get only 30 second samples of music you know you should be able to access

We’re responding to messages to [email protected] as quickly as possible. It helps if you include the email address you use for sign in if you email from a different address.

Again, our apologies. We promise to work through each and every issue as quickly and efficiently as we can.

:: Stephen Hill and the HOS Online crew

Comments

[Patrick J Cylkowski]

maybe you should've just opened for free access for all during this transistion period. It might not have made a lot of money for you but then again it wouldn't have been frustrating for your customers.

[Nancy McClure acct (by husband Francis)]

Hi--I noticed that Programs-->Number doesn't show 1000+ on a second line. Only first line going to 900+. No hurry on this one--it's easy to type in the URL directly to get 1000-1012.

[Stephen Hill]

Patrick: we considered that but there was no easy way to do it, and letting it happen very quickly revealed all the problems so we could start fixing them. Sometimes pain is useful...

Nancy: Thanks for the report, will fix this shortly.

[Craig Linker]

Hi HOS team!!
I think you and your team did a great job with the "brain surgery"! I to had some of the issues, but a quick email to the team and it was fixed pretty quickly considering everything that you had going on!!

Thanks for a job well done!!
Craig Linker