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Why Plaxo is a huge pile of poo
by Bruce Ure at 11:36 17/08/11 (Blogs::Bruce)
Been trying their 'Platinum' service to keep iPhone, iPad, GMail, Google Apps Mail, and a number of Macs' address books all in sync.

Turns out it's a huge pile of poo, partly because their own contacts interface is of piss-poor design, full of bugs and runs like treacle, but mainly because the inter-device sync itself is very far from the claimed "live" or "instant".

Here is my support chat log, if you can be arsed:


11:00:28 System says, Connected to cschat.plaxo.com
11:00:28 System says, Session ID: 41660
11:00:28 bruce says, Initial Question/Comment: Speed of sync
11:00:39 System says, Plaxo Support - Roy has joined this session!
11:00:39 System says, Connected with Plaxo Support - Roy

11:00:54 Plaxo Support - Roy says, Hello Bruce,
11:00:54 Plaxo Support - Roy says, Thank you for using Plaxo Customer Care LiveChat. How may I help you today?

11:01:55 bruce says, Hi Roy. How quickly should I expect Plaxo to sync to my google apps email account? I added a contact via the Plaxo address book about 10 minutes ago, and it's still not in my google apps mail account. I thought it was a push system, that was ...
11:02:03 bruce says, effectively instant?

11:02:46 Plaxo Support - Roy says, I will surely assist you with this.
11:02:46 Plaxo Support - Roy says, Before we continue, may I have the email address registered with Plaxo?

11:02:57 bruce says, [my email address]

11:03:31 Plaxo Support - Roy says, Thank you.
11:03:46 Plaxo Support - Roy says, Please give me two to three minutes while I check the records.

11:03:52 bruce says, ok thanks

11:08:56 Plaxo Support - Roy says, Thank you for your patience.

11:09:04 bruce says, no prob

11:10:01 Plaxo Support - Roy says, May I know the number of contacts in your Google account?

11:11:13 bruce says, The "My Contacts" group contains 680. There are about 1800 more but they are not in that group and Plaxo ignores them (as intended)

11:11:31 Plaxo Support - Roy says, Okay.
11:12:01 Plaxo Support - Roy says, The sync process does take some time depending on the server time between Google and Plaxo.
11:12:51 Plaxo Support - Roy says, I would request you to give the sync process some time and check again if the sync is completed.

11:13:17 bruce says, So it's not supposed to be instant then? How long? 30 minutes?

11:13:56 Plaxo Support - Roy says, Sometimes it may take longer than 30 mins as well.
11:14:16 Plaxo Support - Roy says, You can also delete and recreate the Google sync point, as this refreshes the sync info.

11:14:42 bruce says, Er... your web site says "With live 2-way synchronization, the updates you make at any sync point are instantly available from all sync points"

11:16:52 Plaxo Support - Roy says, Yes, I understand. However, since the sync process itself is time variable, it is not always possible for the sync to complete instantly.
11:17:28 Plaxo Support - Roy says, Instant updates occur mainly when you add/delete/edit certain contacts or events.
11:17:46 Plaxo Support - Roy says, In which case only a small amount of data has to be synced
11:17:58 Plaxo Support - Roy says, which results in instantaneous sync.

11:18:54 bruce says, Yes but I only added one contact, and you're saying it could be more than 30 minutes -- how is that "instantly available from all sync points"?

11:20:11 Plaxo Support - Roy says, I'm sorry Bruce. What I meant is, the sync process can take more than 30 mins, but that depends on the server time between Google and Plaxo.

11:21:15 bruce says, So it's kicked off the sync operation immediately, but it could take 30 minutes -- is that correct?

11:21:52 Plaxo Support - Roy says, Yes, that is correct.
11:22:05 Plaxo Support - Roy says, Is there anything else I may assist you with?

11:23:27 bruce says, I don't understand why that would be, as it's not a difficult task... not much data transferring, and not much processor needed. However if that is the way..
11:24:03 bruce says, it is, then Plaxo is not going to work for me. Also I find the text on the web site to be very misleading.
11:24:25 bruce says, Anyway thanks for your time.

11:24:42 Plaxo Support - Roy says, I understand Bruce, and I apologize for the inconvenience.
11:25:02 Plaxo Support - Roy says, I will forward this as a feedback to our product development team.

11:25:12 bruce says, Thanks. Bye for now.

11:25:22 Plaxo Support - Roy says, Thank you for using Plaxo Customer Care Live Chat.
11:25:34 Plaxo Support - Roy says, Have a great day!
11:25:34 Plaxo Support - Roy says, Bye.


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Why Plaxo is a huge pile of po... Bruce Ure - 17/08
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             Re: Why Plaxo is a huge pile o... Bruce Ure - 18/08
       Re: Why Plaxo is a huge pile o... Bruce Ure - 18/08
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