CIQ App Support Requests with no email are useless

I'm assuming the change was probably implemented because of GDPR, but I agree that it's not very useful to get contact author emails without the ability to reply.

A way out could be to implement a webform for "indirect" replies (although I'm not a fan of webforms for example adding attachments becomes a problem).

If I recall, email used to be required for contact developer, but like Peter said, maybe became optional again with GDPR. The Contact developer submission form does say if you want to hear back, include an email address..

That said, I can't recall the last one I got that didn't have an email. I do get a few where there's a typo in the email, and I might have to try a couple to get the correct one.
In app descriptions, I tend to have a line about using contact developer at the top, and if you're having a problem, a line that also states the user needs to supply an email address there might help.

jim_m_58 peterdedecker Thanks for the responses.

The Contact developer submission form does say if you want to hear back, include an email address..

Once again, that is not the exact wording. The exact wording is:

Your own email-address won't be exposed to the developer, but you can add it if you wish to get directly contacted by the developer.

Again, this leaves room for the interpretation that there is some way to get indirectly contacted for the developer. Otherwise, why is the word "directly" there?

Yes, as I mentioned, I have noticed that many developers have included the line about needing to supply an email address. My point is that it should not be necessary. Users want a reply when they contact developers, they should not be prevented from getting one by default.

It is just another unnecessary workaround that developers must apply to be viable in the CIQ ecosystem. The fact that almost every dev has to remind users to include an email actually signifies there is a problem here.

Furthermore, if Garmin already has your email (which is necessary to have a Garmin account, since FB logins are no longer supported), why ask again, if that only introduces the potential for typos. Which I have seen too. At least ask the user to type their email in twice, to avoid typos.

What kind of UX makes it easy for you to mistype your own email, which was previously verified by Garmin?

The UX would be a lot nicer if it was just a checkbox that said:
- Send registered email ([email protected]) to developer, so they can reply to your request

Maybe there could be an option to override the email address, but only an option.

But once again, there is no point in allowing users to send a request with no way for the developer to reply. I really don't care if I can include a reminder to include your email or if most users will know to include their email. There will always be one user who doesn't read that reminder or who forgets to enter an email address. And it's not their fault or the dev's fault.

It's just bad UX. If there's one user who didn't type in their email and is now upset at the dev for not getting a response, that's one too many.

The real solution, to comply with the GDPR and legit privacy concerns, is for Garmin to provide a way for people to communicate indirectly, just like eBay and Craigslist, through intermediate email addresses and/or a web form like Peter suggested.

There's no excuse for this, it's either lack of resources or lack of will.

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I'm finding that the responses to a lot of deficiencies / bugs / poor design in the Connect IQ / Garmin ecosystem are:
- That's just the way it works, deal with it
- The problem is always assumed to be with the devs code, even when Garmin finally admits it's a problem with their code or design
- Here's a way to work around it. Too bad it wastes a bunch of memory in your app, but there's nothing you can do about it
- Here's how everyone else handles it
- Most users will never see this problem anyway

Well, I have a radical suggestion -- I think that if Garmin wants developers to stick around, they should make the experience for both users and devs as nice as possible. As I said elsewhere, I have no value to Garmin, but maybe collectively, large numbers of devs might. Maybe people who actually get paid for doing this don't mind all the workarounds and issues, but I am doing this for fun (in addition to my real day job, also as a coder), so I don't enjoy finding a new problem every time I look at the store, the CIQ plugin, the documentation or the SDK. A year and half ago, the Monkey C editor was completely broken if you opened one MC file in two views, which is a not uncommon use case for devs, IMO.

I suspect something must have recently changed since until very recently I always got given an email address. However, the last 4 of 6 requests have come without an email address so I am unable to respond. I have just added text asking people to include their email address so I can respond. But I know very few people read things like this so I'm not sure how much it will help.

gasteropod Well, I know that the potential for typos has been around for a while, since I got an email a year ago from a user who misspelled their email address. Luckily it was based on their name, so I could figure it out.

But who wants to try different versions of a possibly misspelled email address until they find the right person? It's one step away from spamming.

I'm a strong believer that people should try to use their own apps/systems, because it's a really good way to expose a less-than-ideal UX. In this case it seems like a few things were thrown together to comply with privacy laws. Garmin has our email addresses and we know it. So please find a way to let devs and users communicate without exposing user email addresses. Letting the user type in their own email address is not a substitute for facilitating indirect communication. If that's not possible, then:
1) Make it very clear that the dev cannot reply without the email address. Make them press another button to confirm they are sending a message into the void that will never be answered
2) Use their Garmin account email address by default, so that they can't mistype their own address. I think users know that Garmin has their email. Garmin just has to ask for permission to share it with the dev. If that's not possible, then force them to type it in twice.

To reiterate: if every dev that has popular apps had to add a notice to their store page reading "I CAN'T REPLY IF YOU DON'T INCLUDE UR EMAIL!!!1!!" it means something has gone terribly wrong.

Hey folks,

I've brought all of this feedback to the app store team so that your opinions and wishes are heard. I'm not sure what implementation looks like or what they will do with it exactly, but I can be your voice.

Dear all,

I see that this is an older post, but I just wanted to bring up this topic again because it still seems to be an issue. A user contacted me without providing an email address, and the fact that I cannot contact him is really unfortunate. To avoid this in the future my App description now also starts with a notice to provide an email address in case of using Contact Developer, which I don’t consider a real solution - firstly it might be overread and secondly it deteriorates the appearance of the app description.

Are there any plans by the developer team to improve this situation (which would be really nice as it’s been a while), for example to introduce an indirect answering scheme as suggested above several times?

The Connect IQ mobile app will supply the "reply to" but in the web based store, that user may not have supplied an email when they registered, which is why it's not automatic there (if I recall).

You'll likely see very few "contact developers" without an email.  And you may see a few where is a typo in the email.

In both cases, there's not much you can do, unless it's a bug they are reporting, then you fix the bug. 

jim_m_58 said:

in the web based store, that user may not have supplied an email when they registered, which is why it's not automatic there (if I recall).

That doesn't make sense in the context of the GDPR discussion above, nor in regards to why it should be different between the web-based store and the Connect IQ app.

If that was really the case, why wouldn't the email address be automatically filled in if you *did* supply an email address when you registered?

I did supply an email address (I can literally log in using my email address), and I'm still prompted to enter my email address (and device name + firmware version) when I click "Contact Developer" on the web-based store.

When I do the same in the Connect IQ app, those fields are auto-filled, like you said.

So actually, neither the GDPR explanation nor the "user didn't supply email address" explanation makes sense here.

If the Connect IQ app is allowed to auto-fill the email, why can't the web store?

Maybe I'm missing something, but I'm not seeing any technical or legal barrier that could somehow apply to the web store but not the app.