I’ve recently had to answer some emails asking (and rightly so) why Daxhotel, a currently unusable app is still being sold and I’ve had to come up with good answers all of which legitimate but none of them really convincing in itself. They were in essence:

• It’s not Daxhotel that’s broken, it’s startek.com. And because startrek.com is out of my hands, I don’t know how long the outage will last. As a matter of fact, in the beginning I was sure it would be a couple of weeks at most which is why I didn’t take it down immediately.
• Also, if I had taken down the app and startrek.com was up again the next day, I didn’t know if my app would ever get approved again.
• Upgrade path. This comes in two parts. Firstly, the app works fine for people who already have it and I didn’t want to kill the upgrade for people who might not have had a chance to get the latest version. Secondly: no-one could really assure me that the upgrade path would be kept intact if the app was removed from sale and later re-added. The last thing I wanted, however, was for current users – especially not the kind for whom it has never worked – to be paying again for an update.
• Lastly: I’ve responded to all E-Mails concerning the issue and offered a refund or an Ad-Hoc version (of which everyone chose the latter) and got only kind replies which I thought so nice that they would warrant to keep ripping users off for a while…

To avoid these kinds of defences, I have decided to stop ripping people off and instead only rip those off that already purchased: I am making Daxhotel free for the time being (meaning as long as it’s not working).

Those who know how the app store work also know what this means: all the updates which are to (hopefully) come afterwards will also be free to the people who got it while it was free. So here’s your chance to get even and rip me off for a change…

Regarding the updates: I do intend to get the fixed version out – someday, it’s obviously taking longer than I thought it would. The fixed version is currently rejected (while the old version is still being sold even though nothing has changed except the added search and – obviously – the fix; but nothing that’s even remotely related to CBS’ IP…) and I’m currently in contact with a lawyer from CBS. Keep your fingers crossed.