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VSL protection plan

I like that they are doing something. $50 a year. This is a no brainer I guess for my one dongle with $5000 worth of samples licensed on it. An insurance policy. Still a bit annoying that we have to pay them extra to protect them from piracy. It is not cost effective at all for the other couple of dongles I use just for vep.
 
"All VSL licenses a ViennaKey is holding at the time of reporting it as lost, stolen or broken are covered by the Vienna Protection Plan, as long as an active Vienna Protection Plan license is stored on the same key"

So it is a license to put on "protected" key.
 
It is, however, a monumental improvement on what the situation was previously.

Let's put it into perspective.

- If you buy a library from VSL there is a 30 day return window for a refund.
- If you want to sell a previously purchased library - for a small fee you can.
- There is now a way of 'insuring' your dongle for loss/theft/breakage - albeit for a fee.

Put's VSL right up there as one fo the more customer friendly developers in my book. Could it be better ? - Well, yes - it could be free. But overall, I think they have answered their critics (of which I was one) pretty convincingly, and I think they are to be congratulated.
 
Absolutely, it could be free. But for 35€/year is far less expensive than any insurance - if you find a company that can provide such insurance! And is not linked to license value.
 
It could be better (free for instance) but it's a great leap forward. But the thing I don't understand is this : you pay 70€ to insure the licences on one vienna key but you store this insurance on another vienna key? What if this second vienna key breaks?
Or I am mistaken?
Or is the trick to have two vienna keys insuring each other? ^^ (140€ for two years)?
 
It could be better (free for instance) but it's a great leap forward. But the thing I don't understand is this : you pay 70€ to insure the licences on one vienna key but you store this insurance on another vienna key? What if this second vienna key breaks?
Or I am mistaken?

The protection license need to be on the protected key. I'm guessing, but I think this is the only way for VSL to get a list of what you do have on a key, via the eLicenser software (DB mantenaince?)
 
Not to forget: For each license they have to pay a fee to Steinberg. So it is understandable.
I think the best solution would be if you could use Steinbergs recovery center for all eLicenser products. Maybe one day...
 
Another thing to consider: You do not need to buy an eLicenser every 2 years if you have the care plan. In this case that lowers the cost from 70€ to ~50€.
 
That's a good point about not having to rebuy dongles. Still kind of a lot. Honestly, if you can go 6 years or so without losing the dongle...then you are better off just avoiding the "insurance". The fact that they require us to buy insurance is still troubling to me. Mind you I bought all their stuff anyway and I'm now invested and that's that...but still...its highly troubling to me their attitude. This solution is just BARELY something for us to consider...pay more money in hundreds of dollars over time because they are paranoid about software piracy from other people..not me. Sorry VSL, you still are not favored in my book.

Nonetheless I do have $5000 worth of VSL libraries on a single dongle and I may end up having to insure it to be safe...I'm still not sure.

Does anyone know if this covers it in the case the dongle is dropped in the pool...in other words, not a technical failure but an actual user-fault damage?
 
FAQ point E: "If the ViennaKey is protected by the Vienna Protection Plan, you can chose not to send in the defective ViennaKey and to receive permanent replacement licenses right away, free of charge."

There are no reasons listed, so I assume that even that is covered.
70€ is not that much if you consider how much the licenses are worth. I don't think that it will even cover the support and license replacement cost for VSL in most cases. It is not perfect but a big improvement imo.
 
The fact that their license is so expensive to begin with is exactly why we should not have to pay more for this ridiculousness.

Sorry, they have not gained any credibility in my book. Mind you it doesn't matter, they already got as much money from me as they are probably going to get...so there is that, but word of mouth counts for something and at this point..they are still failing in this dept in my view. And despite the fact that I think they are lame and will tell everyone I know that I think they are lame and warn them about their narcissism, I still might buy the insurance, because I have $5000 invested onto a fragile dongle that could go POOF at any time and now that I have the option to may more for insurance, I expect to get absolutely zero sympathy from them if and when that ever happens.
 
5. "Your lost/broken/stolen ViennaKey will be disabled and cannot be used anymore."

VSL has the option to disable lost/broken/stolen keys. Why don't they just do that when necessary, instead of forcing us to buy an insurance biannually? If Steinberg charges VSL for that they could simply pass these costs on to the customer.

This is not a solution in my opinion. They didn't solve the problem, they simply created another stream of revenue out of it. Very disappointing move in my books, and not one that makes me want to invest any further in VSL products.
 
Omg this vi control community can complain about everything....

We all know composing is expensive! Not just for us "customers" who buys the stuff we need from the sampling companies.

It's also reeeeeeally expensive for the companies to create high end products! So for me it's understandable That they want some money in return!

Is it so hard to be happy?
 
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