Sample Logic Fanfare

[emasters]

Hmmm… no issues here installing, updating (from Sample Logic site), or activating with provided serial number (both Fanfare and Rumble). A shame if serial numbers aren't working as expected, for some folks. Hopefully Sample Logic can help them sort it out.

Sorry to state the obvious, but did you purchase both from Musicians Friend?

Yes - both were purchased through Musician's Friend. The boxes look a bit dated, but were in good shape.

[Spitfire31]

I bought Fanfare from MF on April 9, got it through DHL yesterday, installed it – WILL NOT ACTIVATE. I get the alert that the serial is already activated "by another account". Nonsense, I only have one account with NI.

I contacted MF immediately and just now got the reply – Sample Logic doesn't allow activation any more of Fanfare sold through MF, so I'm offered a full refund against a promise to destroy the DVDs and preferably send a photo showing that the DVDs really are destroyed.

Of course I'm extremely disappointed. I could have used my time wasted on writing support requests from SL and NI more creatively. Sheesh…

So don't bother anymore.

/Joachim

[blortblort]

I bought Fanfare from MF on April 9, got it through DHL yesterday, installed it – WILL NOT ACTIVATE. I get the alert that the serial is already activated "by another account". Nonsense, I only have one account with NI.

I contacted MF immediately and just now got the reply – Sample Logic doesn't allow activation any more of Fanfare sold through MF, so I'm offered a full refund against a promise to destroy the DVDs and preferably send a photo showing that the DVDs really are destroyed.

Of course I'm extremely disappointed. I could have used my time wasted on writing support requests from SL and NI more creatively. Sheesh…

So don't bother anymore.

/Joachim

wow. This is downright horrible. Makes both MF and SL look sketchy and customer unfriendly.
so sorry to hear you are faced with this, Joachim.
I personally will have second thoughts in dealing through both SL and MF in the future.

[BBFG#]

Musician's Friend has been great through all this.
I actually have more respect for them than I did before.
They responded quickly and went out of their way with giving everyone effected an additional store credit along with a refund.

SLogic really surprises and disappoints me with this.
Extremely doubtful there will be any future dealings with them because of this.

[LGK_Dude]

Looks like I'm part of this fiasco now. "serial already registered" error - Called MF and they told me to contact the manufacturer, to which I explained they are not supporting products purchased from musicians friend anymore, so MF are now sending me out a replacement. Hopefully that one works, though I seriously doubt it will

Telephone support seemed completely obvious to the situation. Is that why you guys used to get your refunds?

[Numanoid]

SLogic really surprises and disappoints me with this.
Extremely doubtful there will be any future dealings with them because of this.

Well I can sort of understand Sample Logic. If I had been a vendor dealing through a third party seller, and the third party sellers seemingly starting to duplicate my merchandise and selling that, I wouldn't really see it as my obligation to help out those who had bought duplicates.

[Spitfire31]

SLogic really surprises and disappoints me with this.
Extremely doubtful there will be any future dealings with them because of this.

Well I can sort of understand Sample Logic. If I had been a vendor dealing through a third party seller, and the third party sellers seemingly starting to duplicate my merchandise and selling that, I wouldn't really see it as my obligation to help out those who had bought duplicates.

Maybe not an obligation. But it would certainly have been a smart customer relationship move to provide those pissed off, bona fide Fanfare buyers with a working serial, never mind the background reason.

Providing a serial wouldn't have cost SL a dime but they would have won a a loyal customer.

As for myself, I will never deal with SL in any way whatsoever after this, so they definitely lost potential future revenue from me due to their tight-fisted attitude.

Kudos to MF, though, who speedily refunded my outlay plus shipping to Sweden.

/Joachim

[Numanoid]

Maybe not an obligation. But it would certainly have been a smart customer relationship move to provide those pissed off, bona fide Fanfare buyers with a working serial, never mind the background reason.

Providing a serial wouldn't have cost SL a dime

They would have to give away stuff for free. Fanfare costs like $399 buying it from Sample Logic.

There was a warning in the Sales forum that went "Think you found cheap OEM software"? I think that is the case here.

Users need to be cautious when a third party seller offer software at like 90% off.

Kudos to MF, though, who speedily refunded my outlay plus shipping to Sweden.

Yeah, when they found out that they were selling serial numbers they didn't have, it's either to refund money or answer to charges of "mail and wire fraud"

[LGK_Dude]

This isn't some unknown "3rd party seller" here - MusiciansFriend is one of the biggest retailers of musical equipment in the world! And they often blow out old inventory at huge discounts, so this is nothing abnormal. In fact, Rumble (also blown out and a Sample Logic Product) is registering fine.

We don't have all the story, but what I do know is when a company says "we no longer support products purchased from x retailer," a retailer they supported a few months ago, and refuse to tell us why - it makes the manufacturer / developer, not the retailer, look bad IMO.

And whats worse of all, we aren’t even buying a physical product here - we are buying a license to run a sample library!

[Numanoid]

We don't have all the story, but what I do know is when a company says "we no longer support products purchased from x retailer," a retailer they supported a few months ago, and refuse to tell us why - it makes the manufacturer / developer, not the retailer, look bad IMO.

Could be that Sample Logic now prefers selling by direct download, instead of boxed material?

[hueynym]

Sample Logic apparently IS supporting Fanfare when purchased via Best Service (@$179) just not Musicians Friend/Guitar Center/Music123 (@$49-$79).

And buying downloads directly from Sample Logic has been almost as problematic. I had a problem installing a Live set in Ableton 9 (which the download said it supported) and was told by Sample Logic to take it up with Ableton - who, like Musician's Friend, authorized a new download from THEIR site, which did install.

It's going to be pretty hard to convince me that Sample Logic aren't the culprits and are wholly responsible for the trouble.

[sample logic]

To all Sample Logic customers:

I have received numerous emails and forum threads from Sample Logic customers who are upset about Fanfare not authorizing with the serial number they received from Guitar Center and or Musician’s Friend. After reading every one of these emails and threads, I have some observations and conclusions to share with you all.

First, let me give you the background on an unfortunate situation that has ended our working relationship with GC/MF. A few years ago our distributor sold a large bulk of boxed Fanfare and Rumble products to GC/MF in order to clear out our entire boxed inventory. This was the last of our physical products as we went completely digital after that. At that time, serial numbers were included in each box by our fulfillment company and once a serial number had been put in a box Sample Logic no longer possessed the number nor had any access to them.

A few years later in late 2013, MF/GC decided to liquidate their remaining boxed inventory of Fanfare and Rumble at a steep discount (approximately 90% less than any other retail stores) without our permission, thus violating our industry standard retail store agreement. When this occurred we decided to end our working relationship with GC/MF and no longer supported them as an authorized dealer.

Since then, there has been an unforeseen issue with GC/MF Fanfare serial numbers registrations not working. Being that the serial numbers are in the original, we believe it is possible that someone who had access to the GC/MF remaining Fanfare boxed inventory had been opening boxes, copying serials, and reselling them. We cannot be 100% sure of this, so one other rare possibility is that the serials were some how corrupted. This therefore, is the reason why many customers have received error messages when trying to authorize their clearance copy of Fanfare from GC/MF stating that their serial has already been authorized. The standard policy for any problems with boxed units is for the retail store to handle the issue directly and in this case, GC/MF did nothing to resolve it, but rather blame Sample Logic for this incident publically, putting our company in a negative light. As these were unauthorized sales, we cannot issue them an additional serial to replace the compromised serial. It is not my intention to speak negatively about other companies, but I do feel it necessary to state the facts. We have worked hard for many years to build a strong and reliable reputation with our customers and feel it important to assure all of you that this is an isolated incident and we guarantee all of our products we sell and that are sold by any authorized Sample Logic dealers.

Secondly, there are some customers that believe Sample Logic deliberately resold serials that were originally sold to GC/MF to other customers. This is not the case. We have no record or manner of tracking which serials where built into those boxes so many years ago as they were fulfilled and distributed by a third party. Others have said that we are blocking authorizations of those serials. That too is not the case, as we have no way of doing so and would not do so given the opportunity. This is evident by the simple fact that GC/MF Rumble serials still work perfectly. We have reached out to GC/MF a number of times to stop selling the product, but received no response. Instead of them fixing the problem they decided to continue selling the product for months even after knowing most of the serials had been compromised. Fortunately, GC/MF has now finally removed Fanfare from their web store and are issuing refunds to all customers who purchased Fanfare.

Third, even though we made the right decision to end our relationship with GC/MF, we need to do a better job taking care of our customers. You have all trusted us, and we must live up to that trust with our actions in moments like these. We apologize for this unfortunate event and for disappointing some of you. We are doing our best to live up to your high expectations of Sample Logic and will continue to do so. Moving forward, we are happy to work with anyone who was subject to the misfortunes of GC/MF’s liquidation sale of Fanfare to get them an authentic working copy. Sample Logic is not in the business of scandal and I sincerely hope this open explanation resolves all of your concerns. If you have any further questions or need assistance regarding this, please email me directly at joe@samplelogic.com


Joseph Trupiano
Sample Logic CEO

[dsan@mail.com]

WOW!

THAT is some impressive customer support!



No wonder you guys are among the top in this industry!

Happy Musiking!
dsan

[yevster]

Yeah, that would have been stellar customer support had it occurred a month ago when all of us were having these issues. Only now that MF has accepted returns on all these products does SL offer to rectify any problems.

If GC/MF has violated their retail agreement, that's between SL and GC/MF. Battle it out in court. The agreement between the customer and SL, namely the EULA, states the following:

"By purchasing a copy of our products the original end user is granted a lifetime license of 2 machine authorizations to freely use the enclosed sounds for any commercial purposes providing...". The customers held up their end by purchasing the software and acting in accordance with the terms. SL violated its end by not providing the licenses, and only month (or more) later, when it was time to sell the next high-priced product, suddenly remembered it cares about its customers.

Sorry, SL, it doesn't matter how great your products are, you're still scum.

[BBFG#]

Musician's Friends attitude toward their customers on this was stellar. The same cannot be said of the developer. As they can't be 100% sure, we also now they can't even be 1% sure of what happened. As they said they can't track this and have stated they don't know what happened (just that it couldn't be their fault and that it HAD to be MF/GC to blame).
The fact that it seems to come mostly down to two lot numbers seems to have a stronger implication that the problem originated from company more than the retailer. (But as they said, they have no way of tracking or knowing this for sure - neither by 1% or 100%)
What is shown is a choice to not take responsibility on their part and we are equally faced with the fact that MF took the responsibility of their actions and did whatever they could to compensate their customers for the inconvenience. SL continues to disavow all responsibility and blame others for what they have admitted was a problem without really knowing who's fault it was.
Many are now stronger MF/GC customers because of the way they handled it. Equally, many of us are feeling the effects of how SL handled (or chose NOT to handle it.) And this points to them continuing a stance that they don't have to. Well, they don't have to, but it has effected many from ever becoming SL customers in the future.
Nicely drafted letter... yet effectively digs a deeper hole for SL IMO.
Regardless of 'blame' I still feel Sample Logic is ultimately responsible.
This is all we need to know:
What does SampleLogic propose to compensate us for this problem that occurred on their product?
And please try to be specific?
(Musicians friend has done whatever they could to appease, including full refunds and giving additional credits towards their other products).