The T1 NFR User lobby

[Germ777]

but wouldn't common sense tell you that your free version wouldn't receive the same benefits as the users who paid? what would make you think you'd get the same deal on software that was given to you for free?

Well. Mackie sent me an email telling me to register for free because I had downloaded the demo a long time ago. I was never told the opposite. So why should I think I was not getting the same or at least a similar deal on it?

y when you've had a free version for 6 months. In which you could purchase a full license if you felt so strongly about the software.

I have had Tracktion since November of 2003 and felt strongly about it, but saw so little movement on upgrades (nothing against jules. We all have different priorities in our schedules) that I needed that had to look for other host to do what I wanted.
My interest was brought upon the download of the T2 demo and as said before. I had the (wrong) idea that I had a registered copy.
Now if you don`t se it fair to have the upgrade for 100$ then maybe 150$. It was just a middle ground option I thought about.
As for being unfair to the rest of Tracktion users. Think about all the group buys that have been going on. I have paid full price for Sytrus, Camaleon and many more apps. If someone else gets a great discount in a group buy. More power to them! why should I get angry?
Think if you might that Mackie decides on a T2 group buy a year from now or a few months from now. Will you moan on how unfair it is? Be happy that you have used Tracktion for a long time and belong to a very strong family-like group with great support.
I don`t know. I am just very tired and will let it rest now. None of the parts I addressed this thread to ( Mackie or whomever )have really come forward and said anything so I will try and see how much it costs me to buy T2. As soon as I find I will let everyone know.
Germ

[Germ777]

Quotes deleted by Original poster which is the severely mentally confused Germ (me!)
Darned!!!!!!! I should read better before posting quotes.
Really sorry for the mistake. I apologize to those involved.
Good I could not sleep and got up to surf the web for a while.

[johne981]

Very good point germ.This thread certainly doesn't make me very keen to join the tracktion community - seems pretty close-minded and unfriendly to me.Like you I've bought some full priced products only to find GB's offering the products for half the price, no problem for me, glad to see more people using the product

[whyterabbyt]

Lunch Money qoth I didn't call NFR users any names when I made my point.

Very true.

WR - what's your take on the 'fairness to 3rd party developers' point?

It really depends on the terms of the bundle agreement, which obviously I'm not party to. I always got the impression that ImageLine paid a one-off sum to license plugins for FL, and if that kind of system is in place then it wouldn't really make a difference to them, or Mackie in fact. On the other hand it could be a per-sale fee, ie $10 to ReFX per 'new' copy of T2 sold or whatever (I'd assume Mackie would arrange for T1->T2 download upgrades to be exempt in the first place). If thats the case things might be different. But to be honest if it cost an extra $50 or something to 'buy off' (for want of a better term ) the licenses for the 3rd-part developers, I'd still rather do that than pay double the US dollar price due to a f**ked up non-exchange rate!

The thing is, though, I dont need T2. I work predominantly with Sonar, and I also own eXT and Project 5, and NTrack in fact, and I'll probably be registering Bidule soon. But I bought a laptop about two months ago, and T2 would fit as one of the better choices to go on it. But not at £150. Except that I own just about everything that's bundled except for RM-IV ('cos Ive got DR-008 which I find superior) so I'd be paying 'extra' for stuff I already have.

If the box is my only option, though, I'm perfectly happy to use T1 and/or eXT, and wait for Turnkey to blow it out for $50 two weeks before T3 goes on the market, picking up the free 'grace' upgrade in the process. Cos that's what'll happen.
I just prefer to pay for what I decided to use(*) now, but want an option which suited me better. Im not demanding it, and I dont mind paying more than $100 if its less than the $250-$300 I suspect it might be.

(*) And the reason I haven't done so far is that the opportunity to do so disappeared before I actually got the laptop and decided I might be interested in T2.

[whyterabbyt]

Germ, that quote is NOT by Lunch Money, it was platinumears, and I would like to insist that you remove that misattribution immediately and apologise to LM.

[ModuLR]

just to clearify.. I am not angry in the least. I think this conversation has moved away from the name calling of which I was no part. I'm just stating an opinion... and I think calling people around here close minded for having differing opinions is somewhat ironic. In any case, there are quite a few people who do nothing but extend themselves in being helpful around here. Don't let a thread with differing opinions scare you off. We are not all like minds... which is a good thing. Plat is a good guy, and super helpful... he just forgot his meds today ( ).

Just to counter the GroupBuy example. Think about this... what if you hear there is a group buy and the price is $150 but would drop to $100 if it reached 100 users. Say currently it's at 50 users. So you ride the fence, because you don't want to comit too soon. Then as time progresses, you are unsure of the exact numbers but it doesn't appear to be moving fast enough to get the $100 deal you are hoping. So instead of jumping in, you decide ride the fence, ultimately not to going for it. Then you come to find out afterwards it hits the $100 mark. Do your complain about the missed the oportunity? do you email the developer that it's not fair you missed the group buy?

[diverdee]

Indeed Germ, Lunch Money has been a gent (he usually is).
To johne981: don't let this thread put you off, as there are some sriously nice helpful dudes here. Platinumears himself is mostly extremely helpful, this thread is more of an exception to the rule for the most part.
whyterabbyt: exactly - on the price & exchange rate business. Who knows, if i'm feeling flush I still may buy the boxed T2 - but only if it is at a sterling price commensurate with the U.S. one, if it is radically different it would leave me feeling like a sucker - I hate that feeling.

[hardwired]

Just to add a different spin on this all. I also recieved an email stating

"Congratulations! As a registered Tracktion v1 user, not only are you the first to know that the new Tracktion 2 Music Production Software is now officially available, but we are pleased to offer you exclusive upgrade options."

Cool I honestly didn't expect anything at all out of getting the NFR. It was just very cool marketing on Mackies behalf to do this.

So I go login @ the Mackie site only to find

"We're sorry, after reviewing your account you do not have any eligible Tracktion 1 licenses. If you would like to experience Tracktion 2 we encourage you to download the demo, or visit your local retailer."

Now I am not at all upset about this. As I said I expected nothing previous to recieving the email.

but

By doing what Mackie did, they effectively broke the law. Their offence is false advertising. In Washington which is where LOUD Technologies Inc. is located, there is a law to help protect consumers from false advertising and this would definately qualify as that.

Just adding to the conversation

[diverdee]

yeah - sending the email's out was certainly a monumental cock-up, there's likely at least one enterprising soul working out how this can be used to their advantage.

[Lunch Money]

I think (?) Germ was joking, but thanks for pointing it out, WR and diverdee, just in case other users had skipped the rest of the thread and thought that I actually said that.

WR - You're right that there's definitely a difference between a per-item sale and a lump sum license purchase. In the first situation, obviously contracts have to be honoured. In the second one, I guess it'd be a matter of the bean counters figuring out if the money spent aquiring the licenses (which was done in conjunction with projecting sales based on MSRP of a box, not a download) can be recouped via the money saved on packaging/distribution costs. There MAY also be an element of the 'advertising' factor at play, too, though-- some of the contracts might have even been free (a guessing man would steer toward Sampletank, though I have no way of knowing if it was free to Mackie, I'm purely guessing here) based on the opportunity for IK to gain exposure to new clients who might opt to upgrade their Sampletank SE to one of the larger IK products.

Money and exposure aside, there are also deals in place with distribution partners (ie. retailers), the details of which I couldn't even hazard a guess. I DO know that IK (as an example again) do not and will not offer crazy insane deals on their full products directly from their website, because that would be screwing over the retailers/distributors that have certain rights and contracts.

It's a hassle to set up infrastructures that can handle so many different "kinds" of Tracktion customers. Much easier and clear-cut to define and revise customer support policies when there are only 1 or 2 versions of the same product to work with.

And finally, it might also be part of Mackie's approach to marketing that they simply want a boxed version to be SEEN on store shelves, giving walk-in consumers with no DAW knowledge/experience a chance to pick up a box, read the back, and say, "Damn, THIS looks like a good program! And it's cheaper than THIS box (picking up a "Cubase Sucks" sequencer)! That's a powerful factor in the marketing equation.

[Lunch Money]

diverdee- thanks for the gent comment, though I'm not sure I always deserve it.

hardwired- they didn't break the law. The fact that you feel slighted and misled only indicates that a mistake was made, not that laws had been broken. People bandy the term "false advertising" about, but it's not as cut and dry as that. There are also laws protecting retailers, so that a customer can't walk into a store, switch some stickers, and demand that the sticker price be honoured. That's not exactly the same thing, but I just wanted to illustrate that there are also laws protecting companies in the event of misunderstandings and error on either the user's or company's part, just as there are laws protecting the consumer.

Greg

[ModuLR]

I think it's just sad, when a company does something that costs you nothing.. something from which you can benefit at no cost. T1 is still a fully functional sequencer.. but the effected users in turn want to nail them to the cross on technicalities.

and just to make another point with regards to the group buy example. NFR users have been given a fully functional $80 sequencer for free, and no paid user is complaining about it. T1 is pretty robust for free. It's hard to find something that comes close... for free. So I think the entire group buy example is rather moot.

[hardwired]

Lunch Money, with all do respect, I don't feel slighted or misled. As I said I expected nothing at all.

But it is in fact false advertising. They got Miss Cleo, they can do the same in this case. Hope not though

The switching stickers thing is actually fraud (on behalf of the sticker switcher ) and quite different from what I was stating. To bring that up in this regard really serves no purpose.

[Lunch Money]

Cheers, I admit to not having read your post carefully enough. Thanks for clarifying.

You would not win a false advertising case, though. If a mistake was made (due to the international customers issue, which I can only assume you're one of), it's a very simple matter for Mackie to explain the error, which is a reasonable one. For it to be false advertising, the plaintiff would have to be able to demonstrate that the company in question willfully gave out false information as part of a ruse or fraud. Acceptable mistakes do not count as willfully false advertising.

I already stated that the switching stickers thing is different, but there was a purpose-- to illustrate that the retailer is protected as well. In this case, the company is protected from potential "false advertising" suits by clauses allowing for reasonable margins of error.

A different example, then, if it'll make you happy. A small company wants to offer a 10% discount on their product, and send off the memo to the marketing department. Jane in marketing didn't drink enough coffee that morning, and accidentally put 100% (an extra zero). Bob, her only redundant cross-checker is on vacation, so Jane sends out the e-mail notification as it is.

Are the customers suddenly entitled to a free product? Nope. Jane obviously made a mistake.

In this case, someone at Mackie made one mistake-- they forgot (or the responsible parties simply didn't know) that there was no rebate coupon available for international customers yet, and didn't include some fine print indicating so. Or Bill (who's in charge of the mailing list) checked "all T1 customers" in his distribution list (to simplify the procedure, which I'm sure is actually more complicated than that) instead of "full retail T1 customers only".

It's clearly not false advertising.

[headquest]

Whether it is illegal or simply an administrative error, this is an appalling way to treat prospective customers. Mackie should issue an appology.