Subject:OT: Cakewalk unethical anti-support

Posted by: Rednroll

Date:10/26/2004 11:03:57 AM

For those of you who thought they ever got unsatisfactory support from Sony/Sonic Foundry let me share my recent experience with Cakewalk with you.

I purchased Ultrafunk's Sonitus: plugin pack v3.0. This plugin pack was purchased and now owned by Cakewalk. Recently I discovered that Cakewalk added DX automation capabilities to this plugin pack. I was therefore interested in visiting their website to find an update/upgrade option. There was none. In fact I was led to a page on their website that directly contradicted this information.

http://store.yahoo.com/cakewalkdirect/sonitus.html

Quotes from their website:
"Sonitus:fx is a series of professional audio processing tools for digital audio editing, sound design, games, multimedia, film or studio work. These plug-ins have been enhanced with DirectX automation, and can be use with SONAR, Home Studio, Project5 or any application supporting DirectX or VST."

"IMPORTANT NOTE: Registered users of SONAR 3 Producer Edition & Ultrafunk customers with Release 3x of the Sonitus:fx plug-ins do not need to upgrade. No changes were made beyond updating the UI to include the Cakewalk logo. All functionality remains the same."

All functionality remains the same? Then what does "These plug-ins have been enhanced with DirectX autiomation" mean?

I thought this might be an oversight on their part, so I went to their website looking for a way to contact support regarding this issue. I looked under alomost every link on their website entitled "support","download", "purchase" and "Products" headers on their main page for a way to contact them. I found nothing. My next step was that I posted a message in their user forums....there was no Sonitus forum, so I posted in the Sonar forum, thinking it would be the most likely to get a reply. I got many user replies, stating that yes this seems like a problem. No one from cakewalk. One user posted a techsupport contact link for me. I used that link to contact cakewalk's techsupport. 5 days later I got a tech support reply back stating, "This is a sales support issue, please contact our "Sales Support". The original message I sent was highly scrambled around and wasn't in my "Sent box", because the link I used was cakewalk's own message sending template. Therefore, instead of the techsupport just forwarding my message onto the proper support area, so that it could get properly addressed, now I had to go hunt for their "sales support" contact, which they didn't give me in the reply message, and also I had to rewrite my entire message. I became highly annoyed at this point. A user from their forum again, pointed me to the correct contact information, which was located under cakewalk's main page under the heading "About". I guess the "About" heading was the last place I would have thought about looking at for a support contact regarding a Sonitus plugin.

At this point I had 2 seperate threads going in the Sonar forum consisting of 50+ replies each, and had been viewed over 2000 times each. A hot topic like this, you can be gauranteed Sony would have addressed it in one manor or another from their support......but nothing from Cakewalk. The next step I contacted Cakewalk "Sales Support" as directed. I got a reply back in 4 days. Here's a quote from that reply:

"Thank you for contacting Cakewalk. We apologize for the delay in
response, but we have had a very high volume of email lately. You will
be able to upgrade to the newer version of the Sonitus:FX Suite for
$49.00."

They didn't mention how this transaction would be conducted and still on their webpage their was no "upgrade" offer for previous Ultrafunk users. So I posted this information to the user forums to update everyone that I had been having these discussion with. I later went back and my post with the above quote was not on the thread any longer. I thought maybe I made a mistake in posting , so I reposted the information. I went back the next day to the thread and again, the post was DELETED. After this, I was contacted via email by Cakewalk with the message below.

"Dear Brian,
The upgrade offer you were emailed is not available to the general
public and was offered as a courtesy to you directly. I apologize if
this wasn't made clear the first time around, but this matter could have
been quickly resolved by calling the toll-free Customer Service number
that was inlcuded in our email rather than posting to the user forums.
Please feel free to call 888-225-3925 to speak with a Customer Service
representative if you are interested in taking advantage of the offer or
for any assistance regarding Cakewalk products and services."


Wow!!!!! How's that for support? I just happen to be the squeaky wheel in this case. I was hoping they would have done the right thing and corrected their information on their website and offered other users like myself an "upgrade" option like the rest of their products offer. No such thing, instead they descide to oil the squeaky wheel and say screw the rest of our customer base who might have a simular situtuation. They even went as far as deleting 2 posts in their forums, which had the above $49.00 upgrade offer information, yet never posted one message in the thread to address the issue.

To make matters even worse, they don't even have any demo versions of the Sonitus pack, so that I could at least see if the automation in the plugins work in the Sony apps, before I even consider their personal upgrade offer.

To any of you considering purchasing Sonar or any other Cakewalk product, keep this story in mine. I've heard quite a few shared horror stories regarding Cakewalk and their support. Don't walk away from Cakewalk, but RUN!!! To me this is the most unethical offer I have ever seen and was mishandled throughout the Cakewalk company.

Update: Cakewalk just deleted the entire thread that this discussion was on. I guess the truth hurts when exposed.

Subject:RE: OT: Cakewalk unethical anti-support

Reply by: Iacobus

Date:10/26/2004 6:05:44 PM

Yikes. What are they smokin' over there at Cakewalk? If the page says there weren't any changes made to version 3x (which it does), then WTF is the DirectX automation? The proverbial chopped liver?

Sounds almost similar to my run-in with McAfee support and their "wonderful" SpamKiller product.

I simply asked if I could upgrade from version 5 (which I hated) to version 6 (which I was hoping would provide some improvement). Took a runaround to give me a straight answer (which was yes...for a price).

When I found out SpamKiller version 6 was just like version 5 (bugs and all; the app basically was crippled), I said that I wanted nothing to do with it anyway on their support forum. My post was deleted. When I asked why my post was deleted, the answer was that it's a support forum and to contact customer service. So I did and mentioned that I would never buy another McAfee product again. (I used to use VirusScan as well.) Not a thing from them since.

It's not like I was nasty either; just matter-of-factly.

Iacobus
-------
RodelWorks - Original Music for the Unafraid
mD's ACIDplanet Page
Guitars 4 Kids

Subject:RE: OT: Cakewalk unethical anti-support

Reply by: Rednroll

Date:10/26/2004 8:09:01 PM

Yes, I was pretty polite with my short and to the point posts contacting Cakewalk. I got pretty upset when I finally got a response back from them and it basically said, "sorry wrong support" and they didn't even point me in the correct direction. This was after hours of reading through pages on their site looking for a support contact and the only thing I could find was a page selling the product, which told me I didn't need an update.....well that's funny my version of Sonitus doesn't have automatible effects and I really like these plugins and would appreciate an option to get the automation. Not being all that familiar with their sight, I thought the proper place to look for a contact support would be through either their support links....which there wasn't one for Sonitus....or through the updates section or product section. My first post was pretty friendly where I was inquiring for support assistance. The one after I received support that led me to a dead end, got me a little more upset. The part that amazes me is that here I am sticking up for the user in pointing out that Cakewalk is basically screwing Sonar 3 users who purchased the product bundled with Sonitus FX's and I got users pissing down my back because I'm complaining about their inadequate support.

If you're bored and into some classic Rednroll forum drama for entertainment, go here:
http://www.cakewalk.com/forum/tm.asp?m=239122

They actually, deleted the thread from the Sonar Forum and then later moved it into another forum with less traffic. The reasoning behind that was that it was non Sonar specific....while there's 20 other non Sonar specific posts, some of them also regarding the Sonitus plugins that remain in that Forum. Seeing that they don't have a Sonitus Forum and that the Sonitus plugins where purchasable if you bought the Sonar 3.0 with the producer pack and you still don't have an upgrade option.....I would tend to think this is a Sonar specific post. But hey...they offered me an upgrade option, but they want to hide that option from being public to their Sonar 3.0 producer edition series.....hmmmmmmm??? Now where's their priorities?

Subject:RE: OT: Cakewalk unethical anti-support

Reply by: Kered

Date:10/27/2004 8:54:36 PM

Hi Rednroll,

I've dealt with Cakewalk tech support over email before, and while they sometimes don't respone for a couple of days, I have always gotten a response, so I'm sorry to hear about your bad experience. Having worked in tech support in the past, I can definitely attest to how you can't give great service to all customers 100% of the time. Sometimes it's the fault of the vendor, other times it's the fault of the customer. Not knowing the full history of your posts over at the Cakewalk forums, I can't say if you overreacted, but Cakewalk definitely is an above-average company, and I'd suggest giving them another shot after you've cooled down a bit.

And for what it's worth, I have the old version of the Sonitus plugins that are still labeled as Ultrafunk and not Cakewalk (they must have changed it for Sonar 4, I got them bundled with Sonar 3), and I can automate them (in Sonar). Are you sure yours aren't automatable? Maybe Acid has trouble with the automation features? I'll have to try automating them in Acid later.

-Kered

Subject:RE: OT: Cakewalk unethical anti-support

Reply by: Rednroll

Date:10/29/2004 1:43:27 PM

After some kicking and screaming Cakewalk has come forth and has put the issue to rest and are looking into further correcting it.

From Cakewalk:
"Hello Brian,

We are considering changes in how we present the Sonitus:fx upgrade offer.

I can see why you drew the flea market vendor analogy, our handling seemed fairly secretive depending on your point of view.

Here’s how the offer was presented: We directly emailed all registered Sonitus plug-in owners and offered an upgrade to the latest plug-in suite for $49. The email offer was sent twice. As you stated earlier, you bought a retail version of the Sonitus suite but never registered them. Since you weren’t in our list of registered customers, it wasn’t possible to notify you.

We are looking at raising the visibility of this offer. Doing so requires some time and planning, but we’ll keep everyone up to date.

For now the solution remains:
1) Register your plug-ins here http://www.cakewalk.com/Register/default.asp
2) Then call 888-Cakewalk to place an upgrade order for $49. (or 617-423-9004)

I hope that points everyone in the right direction.

Adam Burch
Director of Service & Support
Cakewalk "

Subject:RE: OT: Cakewalk unethical anti-support

Reply by: jardeano

Date:10/29/2004 2:21:53 PM

"3), and I can automate them (in Sonar). Are you sure yours aren't automatable? Maybe Acid has trouble with the automation features? I'll have to try automating them in Acid later."

I'm using the sonitus plugins with sonar 3.1.1(they came with sonar3 and were updated with a patch)

they're all automatable in acid ,,on this end, in the" automatable " folder they are not all listed ,though,, just the reverb and wahwah,,, but they all work in Acid ,,,,

Subject:RE: OT: Cakewalk unethical anti-support

Reply by: wcreed

Date:10/29/2004 3:50:41 PM

So, why exactly are you posint all this here?

Subject:RE: OT: Cakewalk unethical anti-support

Reply by: Rednroll

Date:10/30/2004 9:37:32 AM

"So, why exactly are you posint all this here?"

Because, to finally get to the message that I posted above, this ended up taking about a month of fighting with Cakewalk, where they even deleted threads where I had quoted their tech support replies, and moved an entire thread of the discussion off their forum. So one I wanted to make other users using the Sonitus plugins and Cakewalk products aware of their unethical pricing structure and two Cakewalk has no control of the Sony forums , so they couldn't edit and delete the information at their own free will.

So, why exactly are you reading it? The post was labled "OT", which means Off Topic, and the titled was pretty obvious what this post was about.

Subject:RE: OT: Cakewalk unethical anti-support

Reply by: MyST

Date:10/31/2004 8:24:17 AM

I'm glad he posted it here.
It lets us know what we might run into if we decide to get Cakewalk software.
I have a registered copy of Home Studio 9, but thankfully never had to contact tech support for that.
I wanted a cheap CD burning app once and got their Pyro software. They'd stated that I could burn data backups with it. What wasn't mentioned anywhere in the product descrition was that it couldn't erase CD-RWs.
Something I figured goes hand in hand with data backup software.
Their answer in a nutshell...Tough, maybe the next version will have it and you can buy that.
Well, I didn't buy it.

Mario

Subject:RE: OT: Cakewalk unethical anti-support

Reply by: Djipy

Date:11/4/2004 9:58:34 AM

Some more precisions about Sonitus:

On Cakewalk website: IMPORTANT NOTE: Registered users of SONAR 3 Producer Edition & Ultrafunk customers with Release 3x of the Sonitus:fx plug-ins do not need to upgrade. No changes were made beyond updating the UI to include the Cakewalk logo. All functionality remains the same.
FALSE, as the original release R3c (version 3.3) does NOT support automation.

The 10 Sonitus directX plugins that come with Sonar may also work on their own without Sonar installed. The trick is to get a copy of the plugins (all "SonitusFx*.dll" without blank in file name, all "SonitusFx*.chm" and all "fx*DX.ini"). They must be registered in Windows by "Regsvr32 <DLL name>". No registration key is required. They work with automation in Acid 4 with WinXP and Win98SE. The plugins are still version 3.3 : they should have been 3.4 at least ! A way to check the version: watch at the bottom right of the plugin window :
Original Ultrafunk = "Ultrafunk Sonitus:fx R3c"
Cakewalk plugins = "Ultrafunk Sonitus:fx" or the Cakewalk logo on recent packages.