And that was exactly what I posted upthread.
And ExpertFlyer immediately sent me a PM stating this is not allowed.

I MUCH prefer the KVS interface despite the fact that I prefer to have a legitimate (paid or not) data source. So I suggested to ExpertFlyer that they write a similar app as KVS and I would consider switching. Also, the internet speed in my area is not that great. KVS app lets me switch search parameters very quickly while EF would require an access to the internet every time I key in a parameter or retrieve saved parameters. With a slow connection, even 0.5 second every time I retrieve a parameter is a pain in the as.s to me. That's the main reason I prefer KVS. And that's why I don't like anything web-based.

There is nothing wrong IMO what KVS is doing, except KVS should market itself as a scraper instead of a data provider. Everything KVS offers can be done though other FREE websites. I pay for KVS only because of the convenience, not because of the data it provides.

The GTC thing is just another website that KVS can scrape from. KVS commits no fault by pointing to us how to be crooks ourselves (if using GTC credentials in an unauthorized way constitutes being a crook that is). We are the one being the crooks, not KVS. Whether we want to use its service or not is OUR choice. So if you think this is immoral, DON'T do it! Just stop using KVS. If you're like me, feeling no guilt of using GTC credentials, by all means continue to use KVS to scrape the info.

+1

We are paying KVS for a tool he has made (hence the name KVS Tool!), not for being a source of data.
He is pointing us to sources of data which are available for his tool.
And it is up to us if we use them or not.

I disagree. While it's called a tool, it's really not, or at least that's not how it's marketed. It's marketed as a service, and one which you must pay a subscription to use. Thus it's being marketed as a solution, and even though they're not supplying the data directly, it seems to me that it's implied that you will have access to the data they say with your subscription.

If it was just a tool, you'd expect them to sell it for a fixed cost, and then you're free to use it for your lifetime, or the lifetime that's it's useful, ie., data is available for it to use. And if it stops functioning as you expect, then you need to upgrade your tool, perhaps for some cost, or perhaps for free, depending on the software vendor's policies.

As to whether or not KVS is doing anything wrong by providing links to get access to an account which to me doesn't look like it was meant to be used by the public, I'll leave that for each individual to decide in their own mind, based on their individual sense of right/wrong. But if KVS felt there was nothing wrong with their actions, then why the need for secrecy and providing a google link? Why not just simply provide the account name/password directly and state clearly that it's up to the user to decide whether they want to use that information to make their own account? Would have been much simpler for the users. Without seeing their actual email, it sounds to me that the way they've done it, many users may not even realize that they're doing something of very questionable ethics/legality. Nor may they realize that if someone decides to revoke these newly created accounts, they will once again be without any data source and stuck with a tool which serves them no purpose, or at least not the full functionality which they thought they would get with it.

For those who purchased subscriptions and realized it's just a tool without any guarantee of data, fine, and I hope your happy. But I imagine they likely have a lot of customers who felt their subscription was a service, and now suddenly that service has been severely restricted, unless you want to register accounts/engage in activity that you may not be authorized to.

Claiming that it must be a service because it is sold as a subscription and not with one-off payment is spurious.

Plenty of software products are sold with both models... for example MS Word and Excel can be bought using either a single payment or a subscription. Using the subscription model does not alter the product which is exactly the same product you get if you buy a perpetual license. (Although buying the subscription does entitle you to ongoing upgrades... it is also possible to get those with a perpetual license + an annual support agreement.)

I use KVS to post availability on flights mostly to Florida which I have been doing for a few years, I did get a request from KVS a while ago to include "KVS Availability Tool" in all my posts which I gladly done so I'm a little upset as I've supported the tool for a few years I have asked for details of how to keep using it but I'm confused about the replies

Have you ever wondered why payments to KVS Tool are called 'contributions'?

Using the BA method all of a sudden I am getting CAPTCHAs requested which makes this tool essentially unusable - I cannot read the CAPTCHAs (they are too fuzzy) and even if I could it is totally awkward. Is this new?

Adobe does the same with most of its products now, including Photoshop and Lightroom. Not even available as a one-time purchase.

That said, I still want to have legit data access for KVS. I'm willing to pay for it, too.

Would that not mean KVS would have to pay legitimately for its data rather than screen scrape, and then the donation amount :p would go up? :rolleyes: Sounds like it would be a business model change for them... not likely to happen ...

I wasn't aware that KVS or other similar tools were using such methods to gather data.

If they are taking money for offering the service then I'm not surprised they have been blocked from doing it.

It's been a while since I looked at KVS, but I recall that there were a couple of things that weren't being done via scraping. Perhaps MPM and something else. KVS serves(ed) these direct from its own website and amusingly enough protected it against scraping with encryption and buried keys :D

YGM!

The [Awards/BA-OneWorld] Engine may occasionally request a CAPTCHA verification if you exceed its velocity limits.

You may wish to consider using another Method, such as [Awards/OneWorld] / [Awards/JL-OneWorld] / [Awards/CX-OneWorld] instead.

I would like to BUT One-World does not show JL, and JL and CX don't work for me - I use Crossover on Mac and most methods don't work - I've had to give up on *A methods (but that's OK because ANA is superior for *A in any case). I'll give CX and JL another try and report the specific problems. But I have reported various issues in the past and usually end up with KVS and Crossover support "blaming" each other. In fact I also bought a 'licence' for AwardTravler and will make a decision when my current KVS licence expires which one I will retain.

New info - re-tried CX and JL - they work sometimes - but every second or third search I get some sort of "engine error" or the like.

Yeah, this isn't cool. I'm probably going to become a newly minted EF premium member.

EF is very good, but it doesn't show award availability for BA, JL or CX. It seems to be a better award searcher for Star Alliance than for OneWorld.

That's a good point. Thanks for the info. But since I'll ever only use BA miles for AA, US and CX, I already only use the BA website for CX awards, and even then, just for JFK-YVR and vv.

Edited to add: I just got the email with a google link and some pretty cryptic instructions. I'm just fed up and will be e-mailing in the morning asking for a pro-rated refund and if I don't get a response from them in the affirmative, I'll probably dispute with AMEX, since the service is, most definitely, not what I signed up for.

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:

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:

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.

It's not a matter of "blame" -- the CrossOver product does contain bugs, which have been officially documented and confirmed by their development team.

However, there are a number of other Mac solutions available on the market, which are not subject to those bugs and enable all Methods within the KVS Tool to function properly:

http://Help.KVSTool.com/#Mac

When doing BA-OneWorld as well as QF OneWorld and GTC - I get this error for the last couple days:

Error 12031: Connection Reset
The connection to the server has been reset
Error 9002: No Data Received

I switched from the Beta version to the regular, and its still there.

"Error 12031: Connection Reset"
 

KVS Tool Users, who are experiencing "Error 12031: Connection Reset" should follow these steps:

Thanks ^

KVS tool problems?
 

The past few days I cannot check availability on KVS.
I get error message saying old method soes not work, that I must use GTC
method - that requires a sign-up, and for the life of me I cannot figure where
and how to sign up based on emails from KVS.

Anyone else having same problems? Resolved?

GTC signup was easy based on the instructions, works fine.

As this is a KVS query it's been relocated from the Air Canada forum here to the Travel Tools forum for further discussion.

tcook052
Air Canada Forum Moderator

It always was bizarre. Use a packet sniffer to find out what the 'Tool' is sending over the net on your behalf, or for some historical perspective ask Google about KVS and Lorraine Travel, or Strand Travel, and you'll quickly conclude that "engine transition" just means "using a new set of credentials without authorisation because the ones we were piggybacking have stopped working".

Never gonna happen. Most (probably back to nearly all, now, though it wasn't for a bit) of the EF data these days is paid/licensed. If that's the way you want to go then EF is likely the better source.
Lots of the KVS sources have been like this over the years. At various points in time the KVS tool has used credentials for Lorraine Travel in the GetThere/Sabre system or TravelNet, Strand Business Travel Management and Travel Center Huachinango in the DotRes/Sabre system. Similarly the Availability/FS was just scraping FlightStats and ETR was etour.co.jp.

You're essentially paying for the "tool" to browse for you to other websites and push the data in a different format.
And it is worth knowing what those sources of data actually are. Especially the part where, generally speaking, there are questions about the legitimacy of such use.
Really? I suppose I should be only a little surprised given that KVS does everything possible to squash such discussions.

:-:


Most of my tools do the same stuff. I'm just more honest and open about the situation. :p

That's because the "decommissioning" could have happened rather suddenly due to notice -- a C&D notice being received by KVS. Or the source could have simply pulled the plug -- unable to find KVS. Why? Because whoever the source of the data was finally n:eek:ticed what was going on. Cue the next victim...

Definitely short-sighted on KVS' part. How long before FAU noticed all these new accounts associated with names/emails that don't match any of their faculty/students etc.

The writing is on the wall. KVS is going to be forced to revisit it's business model. I'm surprised they haven't come up with a better solution since they depend on scraping webpages, they would have known there's always going to be the risk that data source will no longer be available.

I wish everyone would stop complaining about how KVS gets it's data. It's none of my concern. It's between KVS and the data provider. If you have serious qualms about it, you always have the option of discontinuing use of KVS.

KVS is an extremely valuable tool for me that is not matched by any other service. EF is excellent but it is only minimally helpful with OneWorld award searches. I would hate to see KVS disappear.

+1 - did those who complain never wondered why they need to plug various credentials for award searches and other info requests?
KVS is not "data provider", its a browser tool that represents data you can get directly on your own in a way that some people prefer over regular browser way. You pay for convenience of data layout - not for some magic data stream officiated by each company where the data comes from.

I guess you guys didnt use UA award search which disappeared as well - you used your credentials, on your own time/cpu and UA still had a problem with it.
Given this is FT with huge volumes of posts dedicated to MS, airline mistakes, MR and BR, ways to dump fuel costs, etc - the outrage over KVS tool is comical.

Unlikely. Many people are happy to pay for what the 'Tool' does, reasonably well, much of the time, and that isn't about to change.

1. I don't think people are complaining. They're adding openness to the discussion about why users were no longer able to retrieve some data using the KVS 'Tool'.

2. KVS doesn't "get" data. It's individual 'Tool' users who retrieve data over the internet -- and who at least share responsibility for the requests and credentials they submit or cause to be submitted.

Outrage? What outrage? EDIT: Okay, having reviewed earlier posts you're right: some people's reactions have been a touch OTT.

+1

But KVS should stop marketing themselves as if they were the data provider. This is the cause of all these complaints here. The tool is just a website scraper. It is providing a huge convenience to its users, as opposed to going to individual websites to get the info. Charging a subscription fee is justified because of the continuous updates necessary to keep pace with the changes of the various data source websites. And I have no complaints about this.

That's the point -- the 'continuous updates' are not just product improvements. They happen suddenly -- after the owners of the data that is being used realize what is happening. Someone is making money by facilitating the unauthorised use (some would call it theft) of their data. That's just plain WR:eek:NG. It's also not standard business practice. Were KVS a legitimate business data source changes wouldn't always happen without notice. Think about that before condoning what is going on here.

These conspiracy theories are as entertaining as they are baseless.
In reality, the website in question was re-designed and certain unpopular sections were removed, based on insufficient demand.

We would respectfully suggest that whatever those tools do (or do not do) would be more appropriately discussed in their own Thread(s).

More precisely, the KVS Tool is a specialized web browser.

As is the case with other web browsers, it can be used to view information from various websites on the World Wide Web.

However, over time, some websites (or certain parts thereof) may cease to exist.

It would be impossible for anyone to guarantee that a particular website will continue to exist forever.

However, as a courtesy to our Members, we are able to suggest an alternative website, which has comparable functionality and is compatible with the KVS Tool.

Yes, I'm sure that would be really helpful! :rolleyes:

Now that GTC is the only availability method, how does one get GTC credentials?

Suggest you have a read back over the last few pages of this thread.