Buying Traveller soundset: why oh why is it so difficult ?

[mevla]

I mean, how much more difficult can it be ? Will they discourage any transactions in the future ?

The email by itself does not have any link to click upon to get the soundset. There's an empty line where there should be a link.

EDIT: OK ok, ok. The indentifier to the account changes at each purchase. This means that if the browser automatically fills in the login information to your ShareIt account, it will refer a past purchase, not the current one. It is your account, but only shows a specific sale. I guess this is done for security reasons. Like sending your account password in plain text after a sale.

So, using the updated login identifier with the password they sent, it was possible to see the most recent sale - and that sale only, as well as the download link.

Not intuitive. Why are there so many business not using this outfit if it is so exceptional for security ?

Anyways, now on with the sounds !

[masterhiggins]

Yeah I have no idea why it does that. Kind of backwards.

[bsam]

Hi Mevla,

I wrote to the u-he guys, asking for handle the issue. I'm sorry for the inconvenience, looks really terrible...

I hope the sounds will compensate you to some extent for this experience...

Sam

[Viktor [TUC]]

Hi Mevla, sorry to hear you had trouble with the purchase!

What you describe might just be a Share-It Account issue, that's nothing we can change. You know you don't need to log in to any Share-It account though, in order to purchase at our shop, right?
The Share-It accounts have nothing to do with us at all, and we have no influence on them. We even removed the Share-It account login fields so that there's be less confusion.
If logging in to your Share-It account gives you any trouble, I'd recommend you write to Share-It and ask them if they can't do something about that, maybe they can help.

Also, when you say that the email doesn't have a link to the soundset, do you mean the email you received after purchasing? We had tested that and it always worked fine, with a link in big blue writing saying "Zebra2 Traveller Soundset Download". Did that not appear in your email at all?

Viktor
u-he team

[mcbpete]

You know you don't need to log in to any Share-It account though, in order to purchase at our shop, right?

Yeah I think I'm up to a suggested username of like mcbpete-68 from the all years of buying through them and not registering !

[#rob]

Yes, this is definitely a Share-It thing.
It has nothing to do with our system, for which you actually don't need a login/account at all.
I hope you understand that we have no influence on how Share-It handle things.

This behaviour is also not exclusive to our products or our Share-It store, but it's the same for every purchase from any seller you conduct through Share-It.

@mevla, did you really not receive an eMail with a download link?

As my colleague Viktor already pointed out, when you purchase a u-he soundset through Share-It, the Share-It system will *definitely* send you an eMail with a download link. With every soundset we add to our portfolio, we *always* check that this is the case by doing test purchases, as we also (successfully) did with the Traveller soundset.

If you did not receive a delivery eMail from Share-It at all, then please check your spam folder. Especially if your eMail account is with Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, GMX.

If you did receive a delivery eMail but there really is an empty line instead of the download link, then could you please send a screenshot of that to our support inbox? (support at u-he dot com) In that case, do you maybe have any aggressive ad-blocking plugins running in your browser, or did you (or your eMail hoster) activate a "remove links from HTML eMails" kind-of feature?

[mevla]

Yes, this is definitely a Share-It thing. It has nothing to do with our system, for which you actually don't need a login/account at all. I hope you understand that we have no influence on how Share-It handle things.

Hi. Yes I know. Just got Bitwig 2.0 - they use the same system, with the difference that the ShareIt email contains the Bitwig registration code. It is then possible to skip any other ShreIt interaction and go directly to Bitwig to register.

@mevla, did you really not receive an eMail with a download link?

Yes, there was no download link where the text clearly shows there would be one.

If you did not receive a delivery eMail from Share-It at all, then please check your spam folder. Especially if your eMail account is with Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, GMX.

I do not use any spam folder. email client is claws-mail, Linux, connected directly to the ISP email server.

If you did receive a delivery eMail but there really is an empty line instead of the download link, then could you please send a screenshot of that to our support inbox? (support at u-he dot com) In that case, do you maybe have any aggressive ad-blocking plugins running in your browser, or did you (or your eMail hoster) activate a "remove links from HTML eMails" kind-of feature?

Since there are no personal information contained in the copy/pasted text from the email, I will put it here. If you need the full, complete email, I can then not send a screenshot to u-he support but rather forward you the full email as is. That is, actually, the two emails sent by ShareIt.

Here is the text excerpt right from the first ShareIt email:

Code: Select all

Détails sur la livraison du produit

Zebra2 Traveller Soundset

Pour télécharger votre produit, cliquez sur le lien suivant :

Zebra2 Traveller Soundset Téléchargement
Taille : 6 Mo
Date de validité du lien : 31/MARS/2017

The line after 'cliquez sur le lien suivant :' is empty. The text that follows is simple text, no clickable link.

The second email that was received at the same time assumes that I have asked information about my account and proceeds to give the identifier to be used as well as the password, as well as a link to get into the account. At that moment they clearly identify themselves as Element 5. Having nothing else provided, I used that to get the soundset.

[mevla]

If logging in to your Share-It account gives you any trouble, I'd recommend you write to Share-It and ask them if they can't do something about that, maybe they can help.

Hi. I'll email them.

EDIT: The emails they sent are 'no-reply'. I logged in to the current account and used the only option to contact them which does nto allow for entering any text. You get to choose a few options from drop down menus that points to the general problem (having paid but got nothing) and that's it. I will have to wait for their reply to reply back with what the actual problem is.

Also, when you say that the email doesn't have a link to the soundset, do you mean the email you received after purchasing? We had tested that and it always worked fine, with a link in big blue writing saying "Zebra2 Traveller Soundset Download". Did that not appear in your email at all?

Yes, the first of the two emails received after purchasing. There is no color used in the email cleint I use, claws-mail, in Linux, directly connected to the ISP email server. I am using claws-mail for around 12 years now, and the credit card can be a witness to the purchases made through the years, eg. suspecting the email client simply would not add up. See my reply to Rob for details.

With all the pruchases made through the years, rare are the vendors using ShareIt/Element5. Also got a sample pack yesterday from Mode Audio: paid, got email with download link from Mode Audio within 1 minute, downloaded, installed, done.

Thanks for the prompt reply.

[mevla]

I wrote to the u-he guys, asking for handle the issue. I'm sorry for the inconvenience, looks really terrible... I hope the sounds will compensate you to some extent for this experience...

Indeed. The soundset is great ! I rely on excellent soundset creators as I do not have the knowledge to create sounds from scratch ( I would like, eventually, so I learn about synths from time to time) but more importantly, I do not have the time to experiment much. If I start spending time on creating sounds, then I'll have no time left to create music ! So I prefer to use a solid base and tweak the sounds here and there when needed.

[bsam]

Hi Mevla,

So finally you have it, great! I'm glad you like the sounds, and wish you a lot of joy in making music with them! cheers

Sam

[#rob]

Just to confirm that everything's correct on our and Share-It's end, I conducted a test purchase and this is what happened.

Directly after paying, even before getting sent an eMail from Share-It, I got taken to a purchase summary page that displayed a download link for me to immediately download the soundset.

download.jpg

A couple of seconds after that, an eMail from Share-It showed up in my inbox. I use the Apple Mail client, and as you can see from the screenshot, the eMail very much contained a download link. One that I could click.

email.jpg

So I clicked the download link, and the Traveller soundset started downloading right away.

browser.jpg

As you can see, on our end everything works.
It's an easy process, nothing is hidden or difficult.
No hassle.

Your message quote contains this line: "Zebra2 Traveller Soundset Téléchargement"
This *is* the download link, this text should be the link.

I have no idea what makes your eMail client not display the link. So many possibilities.

It could well be that your eMail client re-formats or spam-checks messages, and that the Share-It download link was removed like that. That you've chosen to have HTML messages displayed as text-only, or that you've set up your client to remove links etc., or maybe that one of these settings is "on by default". All possible.

If your ISP has a webmail frontend, which they usually do, then please log in to it and check whether the mail is displayed correctly there.

If it isn't, that still doesn't rule out the possibility of your ISP's mail server filtering the link. As I pointed out before, it is not uncommon that some ISPs have aggressive anti-spam processors that may filter out "weird looking" (because of all the numbers) download links like the one from the Share-It mail.

It is not only very common, but also has been common for literally decades now, that automated mail servers like the one sending out the order summary/confirmation from Share-It would use a no-reply address. So there's nothing special about that.

You don't need to log in anywhere if you wish to contact our support team. Just send an eMail to support at u-he dot com and we'll take care of your request. I also pointed this out in my last post.

I'm very sorry that your eMail client didn't display the download link, but I really do fail to see the "difficulty" here.

[mevla]

Directly after paying, even before getting sent an eMail from Share-It, I got taken to a purchase summary page that displayed a download link for me to immediately download the soundset.

I'm afraid no link was shown on the web page.

A couple of seconds after that, an eMail from Share-It showed up in my inbox. I use the Apple Mail client, and as you can see from the screenshot, the eMail very much contained a download link. One that I could click.

The email here does not look like that. It is text only. As you can see in the screenshot below, there is a link. The link is a valid link to the temporary account (account number removed). But there is no link for the download.

shareIt2.png

No hassle.

The ShareIt outfit does not seem to support text-only email clients. As we can clearly see above, they can provide links in a text message, but they haven't figured out how to provide the download link in the same manner. Nor do they seemingly care to do so.

Your message quote contains this line: "Zebra2 Traveller Soundset Téléchargement" This *is* the download link, this text should be the link.

As you can see above, there is no such link.

I have no idea what makes your eMail client not display the link. So many possibilities.

Like for instance, they do not provide a link. Would that be by any chance, a good possibility ?

It could well be that your eMail client re-formats or spam-checks messages, and that the Share-It download link was removed like that. If you've chosen to have HTML messages displayed as text-only, or if you've set up your client to remove links etc., or maybe one of these settings is "on by default". All possible.

Not possible to take out a single link in an email. You know, I could take a day and go through the email client source code to dispute this formally although from the outset, the possibility of filtering a single link in the middle of an email while leaving the rest intact is as possible as having flying elephants, basically.

If your ISP has a webmail frontent, which they usually do, please log in to it and check whether the mail is displayed correctly there. If it isn't, that still doesn't rule out the possibility of your ISP's mail server filtering the link. As I pointed out before, it is not uncommon that some ISPs have aggressive anti-spam processors that may filter out "weird looking" (because of all the numbers) download links like the one from the Share-It mail.

Again, same principle applies here. Filtering out one single line out of an email while delivering the rest of email itself is a supposition that is a bit wild. It would mean that lines inside emails can be removed transparently to the user. The whole email blocked by spam filtering, all right. But a single line within an email ?

It is not only very common, but also has been common for literally decades now, that automated mail servers like the one sending out the order summary/confirmation from Share-It would use a no-reply address. So there's nothing special about that.

I mentioned this to report a detail. Not that I'm newbie at this. For almost 20 years, been working in embedded software development on Linux, etc, building Linux systems from scratch for home and at work, which includes a major company in Germany. Also been involved with security, cryptography and federal standards.

You don't need to log in anywhere if you wish to contact our support team. Just send an eMail to support at u-he dot com and we'll take care of your request. I also pointed this out in my last post.

The problem, as hinted at previously, has to do with ShareIt. So I prefer to contact them since I have the source of the problem. Going through a 3rd party to resolve this will not help. If I forward the emails to u-he (2 of them - you did not mention the 2nd email that was received right after the purchase) then what else could be suspected between the ISP and email relayers along the path, all of which could adversely affect the content of the email.

I'm very sorry that your eMail client didn't display the download link, but I really do fail to see the "difficulty" here.

Thanks for your concern and reply. Once again, u-he is showing great support. As problem description unfolds though, this is out of u-he's domain now. We will see what ShareIt replies, if they do.

To sum up the 'difficulty' :

1) no download link provided in web page, no product download link provided in email.

2) Second email received contained a numbered identifier and password for a ShareIt account, along with a link to the account. Somebody else in this thread here confirmed this behaviour of having numbered accounts.

3) Visited the page and the firefox browser immediately filled out the login information from a past purchase (The Unfinished Diva Oxide soundset bought at u-he)

4) The 'account' login does not show any other purchase than the Oxide soundset.

5) Have to log off, and log back in this time entering manually the login information as provided in the second email from ShareIt (now presenting themselves as Element5)

6) Only then the Traveller soundset purchase was shown, along with a download link.

I had the same issue when getting the Oxide soundset but did not report it. This time I do.

Next time: follow same procedure. Obviously, as one gets used to it, it does not become as much of a 'difficulty', just a few extra steps.

Thanks for the prompt reply.

[mevla]

So finally you have it, great! I'm glad you like the sounds, and wish you a lot of joy in making music with them!

If I can just critic just one thing - and with my reporting the ShareIt problem hopefully not passing for a grumpy user - maybe relying less on reverb/delay effects for putting emphasis to some sounds.

Looking forward to other soundsets you may create !

Cheers.

[mevla]

Just a follow-up. And so I got a reply from ShareIt. They said they were sorry that the product could not be downloaded and provided a direct link. So that's great from them. OTOH, they also send another machine-generated reply that was exactly like the first one, eg., with the missing product download link.

It appears that they do not understand the problem with their text-only version messages for product downloads. Since I have a work-around, that is to establish as a standard procedure logging on manually to their web site to fetch the product, I am not certain at this point if I want to pursue trying to make them see that there is a missing link in their text-only messages. As it might go as far back as them asking what's a text-only email and such. What ? Your email client does not download automatically all of our nice pictures, graphics and colours ?

[bsam]

Hi Mevla, thanks a lot for your feedback, appreciation and critic! As always, it helps me to shape my future portfolio. Just as a side note, please don't forget to check out the Performance page on each preset, I've made a lot of effort to provide instant sound warping possibilities on the patches by almost 500 carefully programmed X/Y-pads (and MW, AT, Velocity assignments, as well). In most of the cases you will find there an easy and intuitive way to set delay/reverb amount and color according to taste and musical context. Cheers!