Being I'm not a KVS member, I guess I've pretty much already said enough, so don't really plan to post any more to this thread. But just to comment on a couple of the replies already, and some final thoughts:
Originally Posted by
golfmad
Have you ever wondered why payments to KVS Tool are called 'contributions'?
Originally Posted by
lewinr
Claiming that it must be a service because it is sold as a subscription and not with one-off payment is spurious.
Whatever you or some might think about KVS, and whether it's just buying a tool used for scraping information, or whether, in the eyes of the customer, is a service, providing a turnkey result to their needs is very obviously one of perspective. And just from this thread there's quite obviously a number of KVS customers who assumed (evidently wrongly so) that they were buying a turnkey solution. Just to quote one of the many customers in this thread:
Originally Posted by
United747
the service is, most definitely, not what I signed up for.
For me to argue further about a service (or tool if you will) which I don't use nor plan to is fruitless. It's quite clear that others felt the same way as what the impression I got about what the KVS product is. And as a result KVS has what appears to be a very big problem on their hands.
I'm merely interested in finding a new availability solution, now that flightstats.com's solution doesn't work anymore. And it's very obvious to me from KVS's and others' responses here that KVS is absolutely not something that fits the bill for what I need. At the moment, ExpertFlyer, or purchasing a service directly from Sabre seem to be the only turnkey solution that will provide me legally with the data I need to make my travel decisions. Had KVS taken a more open approach publicly in explaining what was going on, what they intend to do about it, and maybe offer an alternate turnkey solution guaranteeing a service, I would have considered them for my needs. I've always been extremely leery of any business which sees the need to use excessive secrecy in their business model/products.