Anyone considering VSL products ought to read this before going ahead! I had a dead dongle on Saturday meaning I had to stop work on an urgent project. It contained both Steinberg and VSL licenses.

Steinberg just asked me for my account name and said they'd email a new Activation Code. Great! Back up and running quickly.  VSL - well, they *did* give an 180hr demo license which is very helpful. But THEN I got an email saying they had to see the broken key in Vienna before getting new full codes.  Hmm, a bit of a hassle but ok.  BUT - they also said they need €70 because my key was over 10 years old. Er, what? They don't want the €70 for a new USB key - I already have one - but just for their 'work' looking mistrustfully at my broken key and sending me a new code.  I can't believe this!  The cheek of it!  

Here's the emails, my reply first:

haha you seriously want to charge me €70 for the inconvenience of losing work and having to send the dongle back to you? That's hilarious.

Steinberg by comparison just agreed to send me new activation codes by email. Maybe you want to consider copying their policy. Activation codes can't be re-used so you have very little to lose just by trusting your customers and sending them new codes quickly by email, let alone making them send you the key and THEN actually CHARGING me.

I find this almost impossible to believe!  And yet, my system is reliant on VE PRO so I have no choice. I can only take it that the world economic downturn has hit you so hard that you have to scrape little bits of money from your loyal customers, without worrying about losing their loyalty.

Enjoy your €70, I won't forget this!

All the best for 2012 
Dan





On 2 Jan 2012, at 18:31, VSL Support wrote:


As the broken key is a very old key already (almost 10 years old), the 2 year warranty will not apply, so I'm afraid that you won't get the permanent replacement licenses for your VSL products for free. After we've received and checked the key you can purchase replacement licenses for EUR 20 per VSL license and a handling fee of EUR 30. In your case I see that two VSL licenses are on the key (Vienna Ensemble PRO 5 and Vienna Instruments PRO), this would result in a total of EUR 70 (EUR 40 for the two replacement licenses + EUR 30 handling fee).
I'll get back to you once we've received your broken key. Let me know if you decide to send it to Steinberg instead, and I'll connect with them regarding the replacement licenses for your VSL licenses.

I hope that you find this information helpful.
Please don't hesitate to contact me if you've got any questions!

Kind regards from Vienna,

Stefan Steinbauer

--
Vienna Symphonic Library
Sales Manager

Visit us at http://vsl.co.at 

OMG yeh I never even thought about what would happen if my other (main) key went with almost the entire VI library on it. Yeah - the only way to avoid this miserly, mean, money-grabbing, mistrustful, small-minded policy is to transfer all your licenses every 2 years.

I'm going to protest by making sure every new collection of samples I buy is from a different company. This way:

(a) If my USB key breaks again I won't need new codes, and

(b) VSL will lose as much money as I do. It's only fair for them to be penalised.

Well, I think it's time to spread the news! People on all the other music forums need to be warned about the danger of buying into this bullsh*t.

Ah a peaceful resolution.  The pain, the joy, the pain, the joy.

So here's what happened - I WASTED £7 sending my broken USB Key to VSL this morning, because just now Steinberg sent me, free of charge, as a matter of policy, all the lost licenses, INCLUDING the lost VSL licenses.

The moral of this story? Make sure you put a Steinberg product on every USB key you have, then you get free activation codes, DON'T send it back to those money-grubbing fiends in Vienna.  ESPECIALLY if you have a lot of VSL products - their cheating policy could cost you over a thousand £, $ or €.

Actually, maybe Steinberg did this because the broken key was theirs, not a Vienna Key. In which case, the moral is that you need to transfer your VSL library onto a Steinberg USB eLicenser instead of the Vienna Key. So, without knowing, it's hard to know exactly *what* the moral is, except Steinberg = hooray, VSL = boo, hiss!

:) 

DG - have you thought about the fact that if VSL knew this they could have told me to contact Steinberg instead of offering to waste my time and take my money?

Just a thought:

Doesn't the eLicenser Control Center synchronize and backup all your licences?

Maybe there's some way to restore from their database?

I don't like the harsh words directed above to VSL. They are incredibly helpful and supportive in general, particularly when compared to other companies like EastWest and Native Instruments. This suggestion of a huge cost of replacement does disturb me though.....

Yeh I know, it's easy to throw out harsh words when you're annoyed.  I think though if *you* got an unexpected obstacle while under work pressure, then charged money with no justification offered, and then a different company solved it quickly without asking for money, you'd be annoyed at the policy of the first company.

As for this not being Steinberg policy DG, you might be right. Maybe I just got a trainee who did something generous without realising it, who knows.  

SO anyway yeh I'll calm down and shut up and get on with my work now.  But before you blindly worship VSL, you'd better cross your fingers and hope you don't lose your whole VSL collection on a dead USB Key - it might be a pricey fix if you have to pay their generous 'handling fees'.

As for Money Grubbing DG, it's American for Money Grabbing. Don't ask me why I said that, I'm from the UK. Perhaps, it's the 'grubby' implication.

Ooh, good info. I now have almost the entire DVD collection and lots of download licenses I got along the way on one 5 year old VSL dongle. I also have a spare Steinberg dongle sitting around so it looks like I should spend some time moving house.

So... I'm sorry about your struggle, Dan, but thanks for calling attention to it for the complacent like me, especially the fact that Steinberg replaced it all.

This page seems to contain useful information about this topic:

https://www.steinberg.net/en/support/knowledgebase_new/show_details/kb_show/usb-elicensersteinberg-key-details-tips-and-troubleshooting.html#lk

Accordingly it sounds like as long as you have a registered device then the codes can be downloaded from the elicenser software.  See section 2 last paragraph where it states:

"I broke my USB-eLicenser!

• You need to buy a new empty USB-eLicenser.
  Please make sure that the defective key has been registered in MySteinberg before contacting us for any license replacement.   
  The new activation code(s) can then be downloaded to the new USB-eLicenser using the License Control Center."

hmmm, do not think it does matter here what Steinberg charges. VSL chose this copy protection so they are responsible for pricings, not Steinberg IMHO. They are not a victim, but a customer. (which in case of Steinberg -in my past experience -really seem to make not much difference -but again, thats VSL's problem. they are free to quit )

personally I consider this fee insulting. eLicenser is the key with the worsed convenience for the customer -compared to iLok online license storage etc. -and on Mac it is troublesome anyways.

knowing this I might really have to think over which products I license in the future. there are companies that have ways more customer friendly licensing policies.

best

I think it would be fair if they made an official statement - of course 20 € per license is also some kind of handling fee, however, it pretty fast gets really expensive. calculating how much that was for my current key with vienna licenses is not encouraging. Also, a span of two years warranty for the key seems quite -also considered the time it takes syncrosoft to transfer licenses from one key to another -which I would describe as painfully slow. and of course there is also risk with that super management software, to ruin something.

just my thoughts

best