What's the deal with Softube upgrade prices?

[newjunkcity]

Just to keep you all informed, I did contact Softube support again.

Guess what?

I got the same copypasta response from them again in the same ticket as their last (identical) response!

Thanks for reaching out!

First of all; I'm sorry for any disappointment regarding the Volume 5 upgrade prices.

The Volume 5 upgrade prices are based on the most expensive plug-in or bundle in Volume 5 that you already have a license for. The most favorable upgrade price should be selected automatically when clicking the upgrade button on the Volume 5 page.

I'll do what I can for now, which is to save your thoughts and make sure they get seen by the team at Sales & Marketing.

Please let me know if you have any other questions, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

Thanks for your support!

So much for customer service...

...but if that wasn't already bad enough, I wrote back to voice my displeasure. Here's their haughty reply:

Sorry to hear you feel this way!
Out of the 33 license included, you own 6 of them plus the free Saturation Knob license, as British Class A, Model 72, Model 84 and Tube-Tech Complete Collection is not included in the Volume 5 bundle.
If you would have owned 40 or 50% of the licenses included in this bundle, the outcome might have been different.
[...]
But then again, good luck in all your endeavours!

Take care now and hopefully this sheds some light on why you cannot get a better upgrade path for Volume 5, even if $299 was a bargain!

...they actually had the nerve to imply that their upgrade prices are 'a bargain'.

For the record, I had just spent:
330.24 € on their plugins that are within the collection
(and an additional 403.79 € on plugins that are not).

The plugin collection was on sale for:
449 €
...my upgrade price was:
299 €
Difference =
150€

So the 330.24 € I had already spent on plugins within the collection was valued at 150 €.

Wow! What a bargain! /s

They're not getting another penny from me.

[plexuss]

Just to keep you all informed, I did contact Softube support again.

Guess what?

I got the same copypasta response from them again in the same ticket as their last (identical) response!

Softube's responses to you seem reasonable to me. Save your pennies.

[darkogav]

Softube are a really good company. They make some of the best plugins out there. Sometimes you get better deals if you buy from other sites. Check bestservice. They have a decent deal on volume collection.

FWIW.. a company is under no obligation to sell you discounted products just because you bought something from them. They are also under no obligation to match what other companies do with their marketing or offers.

[newjunkcity]

FWIW.. a company is under no obligation to sell you discounted products just because you bought something from them

I would agree with you, actually.

That doesn't change the facts that:

• A new customer can get a better deal than an existing customer (in my opinion that means no loyalty)
• Other plug-in companies do so much better.

I thus won't be saving my pennies, I'll instead be spending them elsewhere.

But I can appreciate that you might not think the same as me, in fact it's the reason I opened this thread in the first place, to see if I was being totally unreasonable. Some people seem to have the same opinion as I do, and some don't, and I'm fine with that, and I've made my purchasing decision based upon it.

[darkogav]

FWIW.. a company is under no obligation to sell you discounted products just because you bought something from them

I would agree with you, actually.

That doesn't change the facts that:

• A new customer can get a better deal than an existing customer (in my opinion that means no loyalty)
• Other plug-in companies do so much better.

I thus won't be saving my pennies, I'll instead be spending them elsewhere.

But I can appreciate that you might not think the same as me, in fact it's the reason I opened this thread in the first place, to see if I was being totally unreasonable. Some people seem to have the same opinion as I do, and some don't, and I'm fine with that, and I've made my purchasing decision based upon it.

I look at bundle pricing as a different beast than single product pricing. It's a pretty straight forward deal. Give a company $50 for one product or give them $300 for 10 or 20 or whatever they sell. (This is just a example scenario). You can justify it that you are getting a better deal if you divide the number of products you got for the money, but if you keep an eye on the dollar figure, it just comes down to, do you want to part with $50 or $300? I am not aware of companies that have a policy where they just deduct the straight value of what you already bought against a bundle product. That's sort of what you are asking for, no? It's always been more cost effective to buy a bundle than single products and always will be -- as long as you look at it as number of products that you go, without taking into account the age of those products or how often they get updated and patched and how often you will be using all of them. If you knew you wanted a bundle, you should have gone that route first. It seems a little unreasonable to bad mouth them publicly because they don't want to give you straight 100% value discount for what you already bought against the bundle offering. If they are willing to give you 50% value, that's pretty good I guess.

[plexuss]

Since you asked, I think you are being unreasonable. Plugin companies have no standards when it comes to upgrades, pricing, refunds, transfers etc. It's up to the consumer to figure out the details before making purchase decisions. Some companies will bend their policies if you ask but it's not a given. Softube is one of the better companies out there. I've done what you are doing, migrating from Softube single plugins to the bundle. In my case I didn't make a stink about it: I just bought the bundle on sale and then sold my singles. In the end it worked out to a great price.

[kidslow]

Having done plenty of customer support in the past, I would never send a response like they sent. It's very dismissive, and to say, "good luck in all your endeavours!" is like the blow off to end all blow-offs. What benefit can come from telling a customer that? So whether or not you are being reasonable or unreasonable about the bundle pricing, they could have handled the communication better.

[zvenx]

I am curious to see his response that they responded to like that.
Rsp

[plexuss]

Having done plenty of customer support in the past, I would never send a response like they sent. It's very dismissive, and to say, "good luck in all your endeavours!" is like the blow off to end all blow-offs. What benefit can come from telling a customer that? So whether or not you are being reasonable or unreasonable about the bundle pricing, they could have handled the communication better.

I think Softube's response was fine. You are assuming Softube was being nefarious in their reply however there is no evidence of this. Taken at face value, they are saying "we can't do what you want. good luck." which is a reasonable response.

It's tough being a plugin consumer with all the different policies of plugin companies. Your best bet is to do your research first to determine if the company meets your needs and expectations. For myself, if they don't I at least know better what to expect and make purchase decisions that way.

My advice is to buy the bundle on sale or 2nd hand and then sell your singles. Then, in the future, put more effort into understanding what you might be getting into with a plugin company before you buy. And, know, that they may change their policies at any time. It's a crap shoot in a lot of ways! If you think you have problems, talk to those who invested in Camel Alchemy or any of the other many companies that have either dropped their products and or disappeared...

[kidslow]

All of your advice is solid. I wasn't saying their response was nefarious, rather that it was dismissive. It was clumsy. Customers want to feel like they are being heard. The art is in making them feel that way without doing anything.

[dermage]

Btw is it even allowed to post their responses publicly?

On the other side, You did not post your part of the mails, maybe you were being even harsher in your text?

Anyway, I'm doing beta testing for them and they are really nice people. I did not have direct contact with customer support yet, but I do not think they would react like that, if you didn't provoke it a bit before

[newjunkcity]

I was indeed quite impolite and provocative when I received the copypasta a second time:

You've literally just copied and pasted the same response. What an awful attitude to customer support.

I'm not spending any more money on your products. After discussing online, apparently I'm not the only person who feels the same.

I'll bet you reply to me again, with exactly the same response. Good luck in keeping customers with that attitude. It's 2022, I can go on Google and find a hundred websites in five minutes where I can obtain your products for free. Why should I bother paying when your company acts in bad faith?

I obviously didn't mean the last part literally: everyone should be fairly compensated for their work.

However the sentiment remains, plug-in piracy is rife, and if plug-in companies are rude and dismissive to their customers, for my part it doesn't curry any favour, it only generates animosity.

I agree with everything @kidslow said:

Having done plenty of customer support in the past, I would never send a response like they sent. It's very dismissive, and to say, "good luck in all your endeavours!" is like the blow off to end all blow-offs. What benefit can come from telling a customer that?[...]

[...]Customers want to feel like they are being heard. The art is in making them feel that way without doing anything.

I was perhaps hasty in my reply - after spending 734.03 € on their products in a single month, their copypasta response angered me. In retrospect, I should have slept on it.

Btw is it even allowed to post their responses publicly?

There's certainly no law against it, at least not where I live. If I've broken forum etiquette, I can only apologise.

[...]
Anyway, I'm doing beta testing for them and they are really nice people. I did not have direct contact with customer support yet, but I do not think they would react like that, if you didn't provoke it a bit before

Perhaps they are, but I would suggest that their support staff require training from kidslow!

[dermage]

No words... their response was quite humble against your attack

[newjunkcity]

No words... their response was quite humble against your attack

I would humbly disagree with you. Part of the role of customer support is never to escalate, and to generate customer satisfaction. Although, as I've already admitted, I could have chosen my words more carefully, I am clearly a disgruntled customer.

Many marketing departments would cite Apple as a baseline reference for customer satisfaction. Apple would never reply with words that only escalate the situation, they would try to diffuse it.

Be that as it may, it still shows poor customer support.

[zvenx]

For me the threat about googling and finding their products for free, might have been the straw on the camel's back for them.
The rest of it seems for me, understandable customer frustration.

Firstly I should say, if I had to name my top five plugin effects developers, they would defnitely be in that top five....actually with their model 72 and 84, they are also now in my top software instruments short list.

I have had two issues with them over the years.. the first was the obnoxious gobbler.. I complained about it ever so often, eventually it was removed (I am not taking credit for that , well surely it wasn't me alone), and I made a commitment to them that now they have I will recommence purchasing their stuff which I have.

the second issue is still ongoing, probably three/four years ago, opengl has huge graphic issues on my macbook pro, I have gotten so frustrated with them about it. Every new update which didn't even list that as a fix I would try it, it wouldn't work, and sure enough a week or two later I would get an email from them telling me there is a new update and if that fixed it.. nope, I would tell them and send them even more picasso like screen shots of their GUI...

Sometime last year october or so, a new customer service person took it over and asked me some questions that I had answered several times before, I got upset and said so....
She said you know, I am going to really try and get this sorted but I need more information from you, she then asked me for logs etc that no one else had asked before, and I calmed down.. It was clear she was really trying to make a difference not the usual, is it perchance fixed yet even though we didn't address it that went on for years..

Thus far it still hasn't fixed and I finally gave up and disabled opengl from their plugins on macbook pro, and they have reached out to me in otherways to soften my frustration and I appreciated that.

my point is, that indeed they never took the attitude with me that the response you got, even when I said harsh words to them. But I suspect it was the threat to use cracks..
my two cents.
rsp