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Check your ZipForms templates: They’re probably obsolete
By: Greg Swann,
BloodhoundBlog.com
Posted: Monday, May 26th, 2008, 8:08 am MST
Category: General Information
Here’s a cute bug I just discovered last week:
When AAR updates a form, as it does with wanton abandon, you are obliged to download that revised form into ZipForms.
Hurray! Everything is always up to date!
With one exception….
Any standing templates you have prepared in ZipForms are not updated with the new forms.
You read that right. If you made the effort to build templates in ZipForms, your templates are almost certainly obsolete — containing one or more older versions of forms that have since been supplanted by newer versions — one or more times.
What, you may find yourself asking, is the benefit of using templates, if you have to go through and manually update them every time the AAR (or ARMLS) revises a form?
Good question.
Here’s the real answer:
1. ZipForms sucks. It is so kludgey and buggy that it makes the ordinary run of kludgey, buggy Windows software look good.
2. AAR is not a software company, and shoving a monopoly vendor down our throats — leaving us no opportunity to deploy competitive pressure to get optimal results from our technology vendors — is a very poor idea.
3. If the AAR and other associations would get out of the software business, decent, responsible technology vendors would put ZipForms out of business in no time.
4. Ergo, AAR is not only not helping agents by anointing monopoly technology vendors, the inevitable ineptitude of decision-making by committees of non-end-users is actually hurting working Realtors.
And so the best question is this: Why are we paying good money to frustrate our own interests?
Good grief!
May 26th, 2008 at 8:56 am
On this issue I disagree with Greg and here is why:
1. AAR has a resposibilty to it’s members throughout Arizona, to keep our forms up to date AND have the content under their licensing control to prevent agents or companies from making subtle changes that other members may not be aware of.
2. Many committee members are active agents and VOLUNTEER countless hours to help better our profession. They are not there to make indiscriminate changes and waste their time.
3. Logically, templates like retained contracts should not be automatically updated as this could change the intention of the parties to a contract or the writer of the template.
4. AAR is not a software company, does not intend on becoming one, yet through it’s dedicated staff and dedicated volunteers over many years, has and continues to work with vendors to provide reasonably priced goods and services to our members. Technology changes and as contracts expire they are reviewed, other vendors have the opportunity at that time to submit bids.
Lastly, I will say to anyone member with the time, talent and desire to get involved, AAR always has room for more volunteers.
May 26th, 2008 at 9:04 am
I consider these completely specious arguments. You would not make these kinds of excuses for any free market entity. To the contrary, you would expect, demand and get what you are paying for. That ZipForms does not update templates completely obviates the benefit of having templates built into the software. ZipForms is a very bad software company, and AAR has no business unilaterally contracting with software vendors for its membership. Excusing bad behavior because it is earnest and well-intended is nonsensical. You wouldn’t do it with your own money. Stop doing it with mine.
May 26th, 2008 at 9:34 am
Greg,
Have you contacted AAR or ZipForms about the problem. Do they know it exists? Is it fixable?
May 26th, 2008 at 9:54 am
> Have you contacted AAR or ZipForms about the problem. Do they know it exists? Is it fixable?
I’ll bug AAR about it on Tuesday, much good may it do me. The problem would not be hard to fix, except that the fact that it exists at all argues that templates actually are being treated as transactions, rather than as maps to transactions — horrible design error. Also, note that ZipForms can’t do something as simple as setting a flag when you Save All, so it’s always asking you if you want to save the files you just saved. The ZipForms people are inept.
May 26th, 2008 at 10:01 am
Greg,
I understand your frustration and don’t totally disagree with you, but since you are so knowledgeable about these things why don’t you volunteer or get involved in the committees that make these decisions?
May 26th, 2008 at 10:17 am
Hear, Hear!!!
To all of your points, let me add one. The fonts used in the user entry fields do not fax well. They have known this for years and don’t care.
May 26th, 2008 at 10:18 am
> why don’t you volunteer or get involved in the committees that make these decisions?
First, Because Socialism never works. This is hardly the worst example of the awful results achieved by collective decision-making.
Second, because I already know what I want, so I would be wasting my time.
Third, because people who work well as entrepreneurs work very badly on committees. The net consequence would be collective decision-making that was actually slower and worse — and much less satisfying to the other committee members.
Fourth, because the solution to the errors of collective decision-making is not to enlarge the collective in any way, but to abolish it — or at least to minimize its pernicious effects.
The instant solution to this problem would be for AAR to license its forms at no cost to any vendor who wants to compete for the forms-management business. They are “our” forms, after all. We’ve already paid for them a million times over and the incremental cost of sharing them is nothing.
The ZipForms contract is simply a means for AAR to hold Realtors hostage to ZipForms and ZipForms hostage to the Realtors. It’s absolutely no different from the municipal monopolization of the cable-TV business — the two-way manipulation of an artificial chokepoint.
And in that light, why would I want to make myself a party to something like that?
The disastrous results we see from these schemes are not accidental or temporary. They’re baked in the cake. The decision-making process is inherently capricious, so the results are necessarily awful. Co-opting my mind and time in the conspiracy will only make things worse. All we need is a free market — or as close as AAR is willing to let us get to a free market — and each one of us can solve our own problems in our own way to our own satisfaction — just as we do with everything else that has not been monopolized by a collective.
May 26th, 2008 at 10:20 am
> The fonts used in the user entry fields do not fax well.
Check. We routinely fax a blank form along with the faxed signed version for readability. Stoopid.
May 30th, 2008 at 8:03 am
>”Check. We routinely fax a blank form along with the faxed signed version for readability”
Greg, I am surprised that you still use a fax machine “routinely.” Talk about creating documents that are hard to read.. Do you use DocuSign or is that a horrible experience for you as well? just curious..
May 30th, 2008 at 8:13 am
We haven’t looked at paperless solutions for over a year, but — as my fax machine chugs inbound in the background — I have doubts about the benefits when so many title companies, lenders and other Realtors are unwired. We’ll take another look to see if it looks more promising by now.
May 30th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Greg,
As the new CEO for the Arizona Association of REALTORS, I appreciate your comments/concerns regarding our e-forms provider. I will look into those concerns and contact you shortly.
Regards,
Tom Farley
June 3rd, 2008 at 6:19 am
One of the discussions we have had at ARMLS meetings in the past is the ability to build forms directly into the MLS system. When the forms are filled, they could be saved, and those who are wired could have them signed electronically. Once completed, they could automatically populate the information into the MLS and eliminate all the duplicate data entry we perform.
Today we have 3 separate products - the MLS, ZipForms, and SureClose. Each requires some level of access to either create or store forms. Wouldn’t it be nice to eliminate all the manual labor to move forms from one location to another?
I realize that the entire state does not use the same MLS system, but it seems to me that interfaces could/should be available to eliminate the time-consuming processes currently in place.
July 7th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
[...] In late May I bitched about the vast hordes of bugs that infest Zipforms, but I knew going in that this was a Sysiphean effort. The people who impose these awful products on us are not the ones stuck using them. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if there are off-budget contributions — subsidies for Realtor association parties, for example — written into the contracts, which simply introduces bribery into what is already a capricious decision-making process. Caprice, it is worthwhile to stress, is the opposite of reason. [...]
July 26th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
[...] Now, if we can only get some competition in the paperless transaction offerings and end the ZipForms monopoly. In my dream world and others’, [...]
July 28th, 2008 at 8:53 pm
I’ve long suspected the WINForms/Zipform money was being diverted to pay for the development of RELAY, the Realtor-owned entry in the TMS derby.