I tried three times to download and activate my upgrade from SpectralLayers 12 Pro to SpectralLayers 13 Pro. It worked on the third try, but unfortunately Steinberg has charged me for all three attempts. I would assume that Steinberg can see that only one download was actually activated using the activation app. It would be nice not to pay for the other two that failed.
That’s strange. The only thing that should get you charged money should be at the point of making the purchase. Simply downloading products would not do that, since everything is freely downloadable.
Normally a problem regarding payment would be dealt with by the 3rd party company that processes sales for Steinberg, here: FastSpring Buyer Support
Well I’m not sure what happened except I know I only activated one copy of SpectraLayers on my computer and my Visa account shows three charges (see attached screenshot).
This is very expensive for an upgrade that I think was actually supposed to be free since I bought and activated SpectraLayers Pro 12 after June 1, 2026.
Stephen Bicknese
Certainly it can be corrected, worst case scenario you dispute two of the charges with your bank
According to the grace period support page, June 3 was the date for SpectraLayers 13. If you did actually enter your 12 DAC on or after June 3, you should have received 13. If you did get a grace period update to 13, the 12-13 DAC will not be accepted (since you already have a 13 license). Did you check in the Steinberg Activation Manager to see if you had 13 automatically before trying to purchase a possibly useless 12-13 update?
Scab_Pickens,
According to my bank records I bought SprectaLayer 12 Pro for $349.99 on June 11, 2026. I received notice (see below) on July 1, 2026 that I could upgrade to 13 for free. Somehow things didn’t work correctly as I attempted the upgrade. I’m sure it’s something I did wrong, but in any case it took 3 tries before I was able to download, install and activate version 13 of SpectraLayers. After completing the task I was surprised to see that instead of free, I was charged $89.99 three times over a matter of a few minutes (see attached screenshot from my Visa account). Some of my problem was that I was working on a brand new computer I’d picked up on July 2, 2026, so some things behaved in unfamiliar ways leading to my confusion. I don’t mind supporting Steinberg and have been a customer since I first bought Wave Lab 3 (now using WL 13) may years ago, but paying 3 times for something that should have been free to me seems a bit much.
Stephen Bicknese
Information about the free update of your SpectraLayers Pro license
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Thank you for recently activating your SpectraLayers Pro license! Good news: Since you activated it after June 02, 2026, the license has been updated to SpectraLayers Pro 13 for free as part of our Grace Period program. As soon as the new version has been released, it will be available in the Steinberg Download Assistant under “My products”. Have fun with it!
Okay, so you were definitely within the grace period. It sounds like you need to get refunded for all 3 (
) purchases, then. Good luck!
So now I just have to figure out how to make that happen. I guess it’s up to the Fastspring billing service. Steve