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A shout out to some companies with awesome customer service.

Headlands

Senior Member
I've been using Cubase for a long time and am used to their truly abysmal customer service, so it's always great to experience it as it should be -- fast, friendly, easy to work with and totally on point knowledge-wise. The following have been amazing for me:

Spitfire, Plugin Alliance, Waves, Reaper, Soundiron, Cinematic Studio Series, Orchestral Tools...actually pretty much everybody except Steinberg! NI is not on this list, though they aren't as bad as Steinberg.

(Learn from it, Steinberg: It's very disheartening to pay a lot for software and get shite customer service. You just don't want to continue to support that kind of company if possible, and your rep for bad service is widely known, at least among the people I know who use it/used it and all the forums I've seen.)
 
I would also add some third party retailers that goes the extra mile with customer support: JRRShop, Everyplugin, Best Service and Time+Space.
 
I'm going to add Native Instruments.

I got a Komplete S61 not realising you needed Komplete at the time to use it, messaged NI pleading ignorance and they ended up depositing Komplete Select 11 into my account. Really unexpected and generous.
 
Spitfire, Hideaway Studio, SoundDust and FabFilter are all top shelf for me.
 
Here's a quick story on a recent transaction with a well-known plugin developer:

I had purchased something on sale a few months back and was surprised to find it further reduced a mere 6 weeks later. I asked if they'd consider discounting the difference back to me, noting that other developers have a grace period for similar situations. They responded by saying:

"Unfortunately, we will not be extending pricing or amending sales. Sales and discounts do not apply to transactions already completed, as finished orders are unable to be edited or modified in any way. However, we do have new sales announced every month to help our members acquire our products."

So they blamed their accounting system, then told me that new sales are a way for me to acquire their products. Holy sh*t. You mean SALES are a way for ME to acquire your products??? I hadn't thought of that.

To be clear, they don't owe me anything. I bought a great product from them at the advertised price, and they delivered it. That's a legit transaction.

But my wallet has a good memory.;)
 
Here's a quick story on a recent transaction with a well-known plugin developer:

I had purchased something on sale a few months back and was surprised to find it further reduced a mere 6 weeks later. I asked if they'd consider discounting the difference back to me, noting that other developers have a grace period for similar situations. They responded by saying:

"Unfortunately, we will not be extending pricing or amending sales. Sales and discounts do not apply to transactions already completed, as finished orders are unable to be edited or modified in any way. However, we do have new sales announced every month to help our members acquire our products."

So they blamed their accounting system, then told me that new sales are a way for me to acquire their products. Holy sh*t. You mean SALES are a way for ME to acquire your products??? I hadn't thought of that.

To be clear, they don't owe me anything. I bought a great product from them at the advertised price, and they delivered it. That's a legit transaction.

But my wallet has a good memory.;)

Well you sort of got the use of it for those 6 weeks though right? Same as how you buy a car, use it for 6 weeks, then see it cheaper in the lot 6 weeks later - you don't go back and say "eh I want the difference back". Not that plugins are different if "used" or not but I mean how far back should they give you money? I bought a plugin 3 years ago and now its on sale constantly at 99% off. Should I ask them for the difference?
 
I bought a plugin 3 years ago and now its on sale constantly at 99% off. Should I ask them for the difference?

Up to you :) To me, three years is different than 6 weeks. And plugins aren't cars.

As I've said, they don't owe it to me. But other developers have set the bar higher, so I thought I'd ask.

You know how some developers do a sale once a year, and then others (Waves, for example) do a sale that changes every five minutes? Well I had mistakenly placed this developer in the wrong category.

Now I'll look at their future sales in a different way. That's all.
 
In addition to Spitfire, I’d like to mention Arturia. Every time I’ve had a problem with their software(which has only been twice), they have been super helpful and responsive.
 
Soundiron, Spitfire, u-he, Seaweed Audio, Virharmonic, EastWest, Krotos, Soundtoys, FabFilter, and more I'm forgetting have all been good to me.

Soundiron stands out though!
 
I’ve had good luck with most sample companies. Even Apple has been very responsive when I’ve had issues with Logic. NI used to have very good customer service but this latest round, first with the recent Komplete update they pushed out and then with a problem I had with my expression pedal being run through the S61 was abysmal.
 
Along with the aforementioned, Nektar has an amazing customer service (they sent me replacement parts overseas for free for a 2nd hand keyboard !).
 
Spitfire was great back when Christian and Paul would be the ones responding. Don't know about nowadays. Steinberg and RME were good but certainly dropped the ball last time I needed support.
 
Spitfire was great back when Christian and Paul would be the ones responding. Don't know about nowadays. Steinberg and RME were good but certainly dropped the ball last time I needed support.
I've had really good experiences with all the Spitfire support folks, and my last contact was just a couple of weeks ago.
 
I've had great support experiences with UVI, EWQL, Spitfire, SoundIron, ImpactSoundWorks, 8DIO, vstbuzz, and likely many others I no longer think about. Good support responses are often about being clear and specific in the support tickets.
 
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