On Sunday afternoon, last, I bought an upgrade to Dorico Elements. Tried to activate it and got the dreaded No Valid Licence error.
What to do. It wasn’t a lot of cash, just £62. Should I let it go and just buy the full version?
No.
I didn’t want to use the phone because of my hearing - if someone doesn’t speak in a cockney accent I have trouble making out what they’re saying (this is true).
So, for the first time since I first bought Cubeat back in the days before The Flood (and the web was still wearing nappies then), I reached out to support via the web site.
Got an immediate acknowledgement, of course.
Today, 2 days and 23 hours later I was asked for the email I used in the purchase.
30 minutes after that, I had my activated licence.
I think that’s pretty good. I’m in the UK (and support came from Germany), ymmv.
It’s nice to hear something positive about Steinberg’s email Support every once in a while. M a y b e they have finally upped their game and are about to return to the standards they once had. At least it’s a tiny good sign which points in the right direction. Who knows ?
P.S.: Dorico, @Googly_Smythe? You are full of surprises my friend !
Used US live chat twice this past year — once for a Cubase license issue and once for some weird behavior (can’t even remember what). Both times support was exceptional and wrapped up in under 30 minutes during business hours.
In fairness, I will at least say in their favour that I haven’t (yet) encountered the dreaded AI bot, and any issues I have had over the years have been dealt with by actual humans. The official support has been slow, but the forum is a much better place for getting answers to “how-to” type questions.
United States support was helpful and fast the one time I have needed them. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for folks in numerous other locations judging by the amount of forum posts I have seen over the past few years.
Not sure if this is relevant, but I did see requirements posted somewhere (that I of course can’t find atm) stating that you had to email support from a registered account - which tells me that they may have some manner of inbound account-matching system for registered software to get support. So if people just emailed from some random skinnypappa@boogaloo.com address, it could be automatically rejected.
But yes, I’ve seen several such posts in the forum. The question is, were they “real?”
I didn’t actually email them, I used MySteinberg→Support→Raise a Ticket. Don’t know if that makes a difference.
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As an aside, I think this is the first new product I’ve bought from Steinberg since the new licence system. I don’t use my MySteinberg email for purchases and so a new MySteinberg account was automatically created. Not sure what to think about that. But Dorico is definitely there in my usual products account.
The purchase itself has nothing to do with your actual MySteinberg account, that’s fine.
Are you sure they created a new account with a different email adress which was automatically merged with your existing MySteinberg account and its email adress?
When you registered Dorico Elements you used your existing MySteinberg account, right? In other words - you do have another spare MySteinberg ID because it was automatically created but you don’t use it to register your products? That means you have a spare MySteinberg ID and you could create another forum account like Googly_2.
That does make sense since you can create multiple accounts as long as you use different email adresses.
I now have two distinct MySteinberg accounts. The usual which has all my stuff, the new one which is empty. I can log into either (I’ve tried), obviously not at the same time.
In case you are having difficulties to come up with a proper name for your second account - @Thor.HOG will be more than happy to help you out
Jokes aside: I can’t help but think that some users around here already have more than one account and alternate between their aliases. Delicate subject…
I wonder if it would make any difference at all if there was a “registered user” badge or something where accounts that have registered a product could be more easily identified.
Nothing fancy, just an automated badge - since we already logon to the forum through the SB authentication infrastructure, they already know this information (or could).
Given how much trolling and spam posting has shot up here lately, I wonder if a simple badge (not even an avatar-based pin, but just a normal badge) would matter.
I mean, when we see first-time posts from Bubbles Finklestein saying how they are leaving Cubase after 47 years of loyal customer purchases, we already know it’s a troll. But some of the others (e.g. “For whatever reason, Magix sounds better”) may be more better recognized as trolling if we wanted to verify they owned the product.
Just spitballing ideas, and not sure it’s even a problem we should solve or not.
I think that some sort of Anti-Troll-Badge is a great idea! We see more and more trolls flooding this forum with recurring claims. It’s impossible to have any sort of fact-based discussion - they will just repeat their position over and over again and hijack every thread availiable.
It is not only annoying and killing the spirit here - it’s also quite damaging to Steinberg’s reputation. If false claims are repeated over and over again people will start to believe it sooner or later and facts will loose their credibility. Unfortunately, we have seen this in politics in recent years.
An Anti-Troll-Badge would propbably help to reduce the number of alias accounts or accounts which are not connected to any registered and paid products. Sometimes, it is a thin line to tell a troll from a regular forum user who blows off steam. This might actually help.
I would suggest to open a new thread @Thor.HOG since this topic seems to be important. Most preferrably in the Cubase forum because this is the place where most troll posts can be found.
IIRC, in one iteration of this forum in the (distant) past, it became necessary to have actually registered a product before you could post, i.e. something like a verified purchaser. The forum sections were divided differently, for example if you saw a post in the Cubase “Pro” section, then you knew that person had to have registered the dongle and have the license. I don’t know if that’s still the case but it would be much harder to implement now that the license mechanism is much less restrictive.
The real damage from the incessant moan crew will really come to light when the so-called AI bots that feed on this garbage start to regurgitate it as “alternate facts” to the terminally naive.
Indeed. And while certainly not a panacea, it could potentially help without an associated downside. I don’t think it should be a requirement to post; that should remain open. I don’t even think it should require an associated product registration to the forum category. Ideally it would be based on some “purchased” product (no matter what it was) if that wasn’t too difficult.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting this would be requirement in any way for participation, but it would at least provide a mechanism for the folks who spend a lot of time trying to help others to at least potentially qualify a post.
You know, people very well may authentically feel that (by way of example) the removal of the center node for clip gain is a deal killer and that they’re going to toss a decade of know-how out the window for Reaper. I think that’s silly, but what I think doesn’t matter. But before the threads go down the endless path to ultimate closing/deletion, we could just say “hey, you know, your account doesn’t even have a registered product, so I’ll just say good luck.”
I think anyone legitimately looking for help wouldn’t mind clicking a button or two to show they’re legit. And then we just leave it up to whomever wants to do whatever they want to do. There was another thread this morning about someone who was leaving because of the lack of a VST layering process, and though I misunderstood some of it, the guy ultimately got what he wanted. Those are great threads!
But in the age of AI and Google’s increasingly irrelevant indexing (and horrible AI) I feel like something should be tried.
I love this forum, and you know, I’m kind of attached to it even though we’re not solving the world’s problems. I respect the other folks and I learn as much as I try to help. I’d like to make sure that it doesn’t suffer from bad actors.
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