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Love/Hate Relationship With IK

kitekrazy1

By kitekrazy1
in The Coffee House

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kitekrazy1

kitekrazy1

Posted
Posted

There's always something great but..........there's always a catch.  

I've forked over $350 in this group buy.  I have everything.  I have 4 machines and it's not unusual to have duplicate licenses despite the great 10 authorizations.

The issue I have is now my selections are even more limited and those would be duplicates.   I have no intention of selling software.  I make my bed and lay in it despite any disappointment.  For me to get a duplicate of something I would have to create a new account and pay to transfer it to my other account.  Sounds stupid to me.

And the fine print

IK Multimedia reserves the right at its sole discretion to terminate or modify the promotion.

Well I guess they did in my case. 

So at some point many of you will have no choices left.

One could make the case of acting entitled or looking a gift horse in the mouth but these promotions are made to get sales.  The group buy prompted my to buy an Axe.  I didn't need it but it's a great unit.

 One day it's being a member of the IK fan club then there is a policy where it's like never again.     There are plenty of "never again" out there in other forums.  I was in the never again crowd until a month ago.   See what changed my mind?   IK makes some great hardware (except keys).  If it weren't for the hardware I would have blown this off.  

 But once again this issue puts me on the hate side of IK.   Maybe they will change this so I will be happy again.  But it's these little things that prompt me to go with the never again crowd.   Part of me wants to broadcast this everywhere but I don't want to mess with them possibly changing their ways when there is a possibility of others getting their promotions while some of ours will lay dormant.   It's like being invited to dine at Subway and only allowing whiter bread on veggies, no sauce.

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Larry Shelby

Larry Shelby

Posted
Posted

These group buys are great...but they ALWAYS put a "cabash" on something...

for instance...if you already own something you can't get ANOTHER one in 
the group buy, BUT they will happily sell you another one!

Do I love IK products?  YES!
Do I love their business practices? NO!!!

Authorizations are not "removable", so, should you
do a fresh install, or a new system, then you have
to WASTE authorizations, and, when you
have exhausted them, you MUST request a reset, at
which point THEY will decide if you can have more or not.
(They usually do - so at least there is that)

Products purchased with MONEY are resaleable.
Products purchased with Gear Credits, which were 
purchased with MONEY, are NOT resaleable.

Jampoints accumulate...that is, until you sell something.
THEN they take the Jampoints back!  Even if you bought it
5 or 10 years ago...they take them BACK, which can effectively
leave you with a NEGATIVE Jampoints balance, and you won't have any 
"Usable" Jampoints until you have paid back the deficit.

Customer Service is NON EXISTENT on Weekends.  No exceptions.
As if no Studio actually WORKS on Weekends?

Your "Sounds" downloads are only available for X amount of time...
after that, if you need to download them again, you have to PAY again,
despite having already purchased them!  So you should always archive
your downloads, but, should something happen to your archive drive, 
prepare to open your wallet!

These are just a few of my "Pet Peeves" with IK.
Thankfully, at least the product is "decent".

 

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InstrEd

InstrEd

Posted
Posted
5 hours ago, Byron Dickens said:

Almost like having a real job.

I have customers come in on the weekend and want me to find an answer for them like I have the manufacturers personal phone numbers to call them up.

I remember some of them wanted a form faxed over to them and they would get back in 48-72 hours.  I feel sorry for the people who are growing up with smart phones now. As soon as it doesn't work they are in a total panic. Plus I notice more and more that the younger crowd doesn't know how to socialize unless they are on their phones.

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Starise

Starise

Posted
Posted

 I guess it never really bothered me if one guy gets a better deal on something I might have paid more for earlier. Things are always changing. Companies are trying to flex with the market and times. 

The only thing that has bothered me so far is when I'm in the middle of a mix trying to pull plugs for a track. I open the IK list and see a lot of choices. This seems to be because they load these duds on the list that you don't actually own. They want you to click on it, go to the custom shop and buy it. Nada. It just frustrates me and I go pull a Waves or similar plugin so I can get my mix done. I don't have all day to move out of my mix to do that. I am probably less likely to return to my IK list the next time because I'm not sure what I actually own and what was a dud they put on there for me to chase after. I want a tool box with tool I can readily pull and use. I notice the same thing with Amplitube. I would rather have an occasional email instead of them swamping my plugs list with useless stuff.

As far as my general perception of the company and their products are concerned, I think they have a great product line that covers a lot of bases, right up there with many of the others. In a nutshell, they are a great company that excels at marketing, and I mean REALLY excels at marketing. Their schtick for the plugins thing is the group buy which seems to be very effective. I have participated in several of those and I feel I got a good value for money spent. Having said that, it really is marketing at it's best. I know that. Plug X is priced higher than it's really worth because you never know how much value someone will put on a plugin. To you it might be worth 149.00, to me it might only looks like 49.99 or less. In the end you wind up with a bunch of plugins. There's also the idea that buying a product at a lower tier on a group buy sets you up for them to get an upgrade out of you later on. Notice TrackS MAX version was not offered. They did throw some nice deals into the mix this time though IMHO, ARC is great if you don't have it. Yet you will want ARC 3.0 when it comes out. This is what keeps the train moving. These guys need to eat too . I don't begrudge them that.

As far as what Cclarry and kitecrazy mentioned,  It's those little things that can loose a customer, such as not allowing unlimited time to download sounds. Charging fees for things other do for free. Might seem small. It isn't when you consider you've lost a customer or at least left a bad taste in their mouth. Err on generosity and you'll win every time. Go the other way and things won't go well.

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craigb

craigb

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, Starise said:

As far as what Cclarry and kitecrazy mentioned,  It's those little things that can loose a customer, such as not allowing unlimited time to download sounds. Charging fees for things other do for free. Might seem small. It isn't when you consider you've lost a customer or at least left a bad taste in their mouth. Err on generosity and you'll win every time. Go the other way and things won't go well.

Good point!  'Cause the last thing we want are loose customers! ?

 

(Just teasin'! ? )

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kitekrazy1

kitekrazy1

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Kudos for IK for fixing my dilemma.     Of course it will happen again if the next target is reached. I'm sure others will experience it.  IK really stretched themselves out.

My other rant is micro usb ports on their controllers.  They are in love with them. I will never buy any controller from any manufacture that uses those ports.

 

 

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paulo

paulo

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, Bapu said:

I have *all* of their software. I have Axe. 

I don't really need group buys anymore. It seems I did buy one plug twice but I have no need to sell it. It's not worth the hassle. 

Bapu don't need no more plug-ins, but recently he did buy this.............

 

dewalt-leaf-blowers-dcbl720b-64_1000.jpg

 

He's not into tidying the yard or anything. He uses it to blow all his $ bills out of the way so he can get around the house better.

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Ryan IK Multimedia

Ryan IK Multimedia

Posted
Posted
On 9/11/2019 at 1:24 PM, cclarry said:

Customer Service is NON EXISTENT on Weekends.  No exceptions.

As if no Studio actually WORKS on Weekends?

Your "Sounds" downloads are only available for X amount of time...
after that, if you need to download them again, you have to PAY again,
despite having already purchased them!  So you should always archive
your downloads, but, should something happen to your archive drive, 
prepare to open your wallet!

These are just a few of my "Pet Peeves" with IK.
Thankfully, at least the product is "decent".

 

While not official, the support team has been known to reply on weekends. If a case is time sensitive, I strongly urge users to PM me their ticket number.

On the topic of reactivation credits, these are only required for those who do not back up their sounds. If you do lose your backed up sounds due to a hardware failure or something of that nature, our team is more than look into each case, they've been known to be very helpful in cases where users loose their backups.

Below is the support contact link. Not to be redundant, but anyone who opens a ticket can feel free to PM me their ticket number.

https://www.ikmultimedia.com/contact-support/
 

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