So I had a customer come into our work shop in quite the predicament. She had to rebuild her machine and she wanted to run Pro Tools 10 and Komplete 9.0 and that's where things get complicated. Pro Tools 10 only run on Windows 7 and Komplete 9.0 could run under windows 7 but the scumbags who sold it to her decided to disable any method of actually registering and using the software she paid an average weekly paycheck for. Offline registration? No longer available? Service Center? No longer supported. Legacy version of native access? Tries to needlessly update itself and refuses to run. An afternoon of searching and consulting AI's came down to you can possibly open a ticket and send the support your offline html file that Service Centre generates with a valid serial number and they can process it and send you a file to complete the process. There's even a grateful message on this forum from someone who used this process. Unfortunately I didn't get a competent employee, I got a mouth-breathing DEI hire called Jonas who sent me some completely irrelevant drivel that was "automatically generated using AI." Further requests to actually address what was asked for have gone unanswered.
Anyhow fast-forward to today and it seems we can run Pro Tools 10 in win7 compatibility mode on a more recent windows and the customer is sorted but then comes the belated email from NI support asking if I "need a little help?" Better late than never right? Well no they're still not concerned about enabling customers to use the software they've paid for - they've just added my address to a spam list despite me clearly selecting no promotional emails! What absolute pieces of human garbage you are Native Instruments?
And to anyone thinking of doing business with this company let me just point out it doesn't have to be like this. Yes this customers software is old and things get depreciated but it would cost NI nothing to manually process the handful of offline registrations they would get using systems they already have. Keeping legacy servers running to deal with old versions of service center and native access would be neglible effort and cost for a company this size. Having your marketing department act with integrity and not spam people for opening a support ticket? Completely free! Hiring at least one competent employee who can be bothered to read tickets instead of mindlessly clicking the AI button would cost a little more but still pocket change for a company of this size.
There are open-source tools that will let you make music for free and they'll give you better customer support than NI! Are they comparable in features? I don't know I'm a tech not a musician but I know anyone thinking about giving their money to this contemptible company that's feels entitled to disable software they've sold you needs to take a good long look at alternatives and ask how much is really worth investing in a product that won't work in a few years from now because NI thinks you're a sucker.
