Why is Registration so painful?

Why is it that registration of these N.I. products are so painful? Does anyone know why the Native Instrument registration web-page (www.native-instruments.com/register.info) "View and manage your registrations" would show kontakt 2 ACTIVATED and registered and yet the product REAMINS in Demo mode until someone from Native Instruments is contacted? This is just absurd. It takes these guys weeks to get back to us. Why are other companies so 'with it'? Honestly we cant wait to dump our N.I. junk. We cant wait for East West to come out with their 'Play' engine so we don't have to jump through so many hoops with N.I.'s truely lousy customer support.

-Allan Leung

 

I bought Kontakt 2 and Garritan Personal Orchestra. Recently I had to reinstall the OS on my Macintosh. I contacted the Techsupport in advance and asked them would it be any problem, and they answered there wouldn't be any. However when I installed both of the applications they became immediately "deactivated" because NI websupport didn't recognize the new hardware ID. Now I am waiting for their reply and guess what - in two weeks nobody contacted me about that... I will think twice before buying anything from NI next time...

 

Sorry to hear about your mess there. We simply WONT purchase another N.I. product. When heard they were coming out with a piano we went with IVORY instead. We really dont need another authorization problem. If you go to forums and support groups like East West you will find the OWNER of the company answering questions and his responses are near IMMEDIATE. I'd put stock in companies like that long before i would support a company that cant reply to working professionals for weeks and sometimes months at a time. I read somewhere that they were planning to "work on improvinging customer relations" so obviously they KNEW that they had problems. Well to my knowledge and to our experience we havent seen any 'improvement' Instead we've seen even more convoluted registration imlpementations and more activation nightmares then I'd care to list.

It is truely ashame as Native Instruments does make some good quality products that are truely inspiring. But without quality support the products are rendered below their full potential.

Allan Leung
Assitant to composer Terry Michael Huud
www.Music4TheMovies.com
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0404698/

 

... and their clever job on control simply doesn't work - numerous cracked copies of NI software are sold in Russia, and they are working. Not that I am going to use them, but I feel extremely dissapointed to be a law-obedient customer and not to receive a proper treatment from such a famous business. It was different last summer though...

 

Yes NI, don't you realise that this problem is affecting sales.

I dare not run the latest patch for Kontakt 2, for fear of loosing activation.

Surely you can spare one member of staff, for a couple of hours a day, to answer some of these worries.

If you carry on with this level of support, soon you wont need any staff.

 

To tell the truth there are pro consultants that go around with cracked copies all the time. One time we were pulling our freakin hair out trying to get software WE BOUGHT to work and the consultant said, "well if you can't get it to work - here's a crack". I'll tell you something we are all for paying for the products we use but when you can't get your LEGITIMATE copy to work those cracks sure look apetizing!

-Allan Leung

 

I consulted some legal specialists - of course it would be a pain in the ass to take any legal actions, and NI probably does know that. I can also assume that they are in trouble and working on the problem, but it would be nice to be honest and just aknowledge that they do have one. Something like: "Please, hold on, we're on it". Instead of that there is just no reply, just the message that they may not contact me in days (or weeks?) because they have a tremendous amount of e-mails these days (I wonder why? maybe everybody expresses a gratitude?).
If I am not contacted in a reasonable amount of time (actually they should just send me another authorization key) - I will use my right to give a feedback on every internet music market company which sells NI product. I know it probably wouldn't do much - but maybe it'll provide a warning for guys like me who are thinking that they are buying a wonderful product (which it would be until they have to use help from the software providers) - maybe they'll think twice before buying.

 

I've run into soooooo many dissatisfied customers over the years I would imagine a class action lawsuit is not out of the question. I mean let's be honest here: There are DEFINITLEY things N.I. COULD do for their customers that they just are NOT doing. After they see that your not a software pirate looking for a freebie they could very easily fix any registration problems you might have within a reasonable period of time. We gave up on the Absynth4 on the PC because dealing with their customer support was taking forever. We would report a problem and 3-4 weeks would pass and we'd get an email asking something obvious like, "Did you try reinstalling the software?" Lol... So rather than tell them "Yes we did - several times" and then wait for ANOTHER 3 weeks for a response to THAT reply we just figured screw it... (lol- actually something GOOD came from all that- we discovered a few other soft synths by other manufacturers and THOSE synths installed and registered flawlessly and we've been using them nonstop here- in fact - One of those led to nice endorsement!)

-Allan Leung
Assitant to Composer Terry Michael Huud
www.Music4TheMovies.com

 

Well, when somebody leads the group of dissatisfied customers towards a legal battle - count me in
I am wondering - do they answer phone calls? Actually I'll try to call their office in CA as well as probably Germany. Also I'll probably write a certified letter to their management, and I'll write as many as needed.

 

We HAVE had much better luck calling the California office.

-Allan Leung
Assistant to Composer Tery Michael Huud
www.Music4TheMovies.com

 

Sorry to hear that customers are having problems reaching our registration support.

We are generally able to reply to most all email support inquiries in 1-2 days unless the problem requires some research on our part. Our overall volume of support inquiries can vary drastically from week to week, so response times may vary somewhat at times.

If you are experiencing problems, you may also try calling us outside of normal business hours (9a-5p PST in North America), we have 24/7 registration support now and you can often reach us more quickly after 5p.

John von Seggern
Customer Support Manager
Native Instruments North America

 

I did reach the California branch of NI and actually was told, that my software would be activated immediately. I will check everything tomorrow. However I also was told, that my e-mails were answered today (yesterday to be more exact) - but when I got home, I didn't find anything in my mailbox. Strange...

 

I think the point is: if the registration system worked properly, there wouldn't be so many support requests and any support that was necessary would get dealt with quickly.

I really should *not* have had the pain I've been through when changing out a faulty hard disk on my desktop IMO. That took over a week to resolve.

If I relied on NI software to make a living, I'd have been furious.

I buy *all* my DAW related software and don't use cracks and agree with the above. It seems that people using cracks are rewarded by having the safety net of: not having to worry about activation in an emergency, whilst those of us who've spent a LOT of money on some of this software are sometimes on tenterhooks worrying that at a crucial point, we'll lose access to the software.

As a legit owner of Komplete 4, Traktor and Massive and long-time NI customer, I'm pleading for NI to improve the activation system for those of us who've stuck with the company over the years.

It's only in the last year or so the new activation policy has come into effect. Previously, if unable to activate, we had a month's emergency use, which at least meant we could get activation sorted without panicking too much. We need something like that re-instating or another safety net.

Anyone with me?

 

The problem is resolved by now. And today I did get several e-mails from NI. So - I guess next time I will just make a phone call, it's seemingly working better than sending support requests...

 

If someone can immediately sort out a problem over the phone, how come problems can't be sorted out just as quickly via support form requests?