Louis Rossmann deals with Hauptwerk (who seem to have f’d up)

[Kirean]

Didn’t expect music plugins to get the spotlight treatment from Louis Rossmann right before Black Friday, but here we are.

Seems like Hauptwerk decided that they don’t want good publicity, and instead would rather redefine words “downloads expire: never”.

If I was looking for an organ VST, I think I’d get one from someone else.

For those not familiar with Louis, he began his career on YT with Mac repair videos and throughout the years shifted even more towards right to repair (or right to own), consumer rights and consumer advocacy work (and content). Fights for common sense and common good.

 

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[LinkedMusicians]

Just a heads up to those who are easily offended by profanity or that are browsing LM with family members nearby (as I often do) or in a professional environment, he swears A LOT.

What he describes is disappointing and it’s even worse that Hauptwerk immediately pivots to a sales pitch if the guy wants to keep using their software, even though he is a customer who paid for software in the past. Yeah, I’m not a fan of their doing this either.

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[Kirean]

Story continued:

Video could be about quite a few plugin developers, including some that have had their cases talked about earlier on this forum. Goes more into general customer care stuff and actually treating your customers with a bit of respect and how that will earn you a good rep in the long run.

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[pseudopop]

What is really perplexing to me is that these companies do not seem to understand that every discussion they have with a customer should be treated as public. You should never write anything in an email you wouldn’t want to see on the front page of the New York Times.

As an example of how you should do things, I’ll give you UJAM.

Two months ago I bought the 10-plugin Loyalty Bundle from JRR for about €57, and less than 24 hours later UJAM discounted their Music Creation Suite, meaning I could’ve gotten all their products for about €72. Perhaps not surprisingly, I was just a tiny little bit pissed off by this.

I decided to approach UJAM with an email in the hopes they could offer me some kind of deal. My first draft was along the lines of “f*** you, you f****** f******”, but ChatGPT helped me smooth it out a little.

It took a few emails for them to get the full picture of my situation, and even though they were under no obligation to do so, they made me a very generous offer that no reasonable person would refuse. Since I’m nothing but reasonable, I accepted their offer and am now observing in annoyance as they are giving away their synths for free that I paid good money for.

Anyway, crucially, at no point did they even imply that they weren’t willing to work with me. I got the impression that they understood where I was coming from, sympathized with me, and wanted me to be happy and feel comfortable buying UJAM products in the future.

As a result, I am happy and I will buy UJAM products in the future.

But I will probably never buy anything from Hauptwerk.

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[Kirean]

Yeah. It never seizes to amaze me how much more effort some companies put into driving customers away instead of getting the free PR and good word of mouth for relatively little to no effort. But when the message is practically “Your investment is not safe with us” it’s kind of really easy to skip buying from such vendors.

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