by acidsex on Tue Dec 06, 2005 10:51 pm
Dear Nero,
I am writing this letter here for one reason. I have sent numerous emails to tech support and routinely receive a canned response if any at all. Definitley not a way to win over your customers in terms of tech support. Heck, I have gotten better responses from Adobe and they have standard at being the absolute worst when it comes to tech support and user issues.
More on this later.
Now, I, like everyone else waited with such great anticipation when Nero 7 was announced. Having been an avid user of Nero since 1998, I have come to expect a certain level of quality in your software. When Nero 6 was launched, there were plenty of bugs but you were quick to release patches quickly to address any bugs/errors. Then came Nero 6.6 Reloaded. Some of the same bugs remained (low audio AC3 for example) and we have been told on various forums that it wa being addressed. Update after update came and no fix was ever given. Naturally you decided to carry on that fine tradition with Nero 7.
Here we are, a month after the web release, two months after retail release and just what exactly is being done and when can we, your loyal customers expect a properly working program that we paid for? Other than new user interfaces (which I dont like by the way) and a few new apps that continually crash my system (scout is a major pos) what did I really get for my money? I can answer that for you. An app that spent exactly 4 hours on my system and a license that I am still waiting to use on your real program after you are satisifed using the public as your beta testers.
How Nero developers could have releaseda program that breaks systems and other company's software is beyond me. How the marketing department waited an entire month after the first day of retail sales to even offer an upgrade price to previous users is also beyond me. Now I am no stranger to marketing and hyping of a product. But man, the program you are currently selling to your customers comes nowhere near the cute little brochure you have on your site. All of your programs are supposed to offer ease of use and more functionality yet seem to do the exact opposite.
Oct31 is when you posted Nero 7 to the web. Since that time, you have updated other programs, some more than once (SIPPS) while many of us are left with software that we are waiting for you to fix before we try installing again. So now, I have $130 invested in your Nero 7 package (1 retail and 1 web license.) and still cannot use either unless I wish to have an unstable system. What happened to the old Ahead company that use to release updates every month on schedule? Have these people been reassigned? If so, please bring them back.
Even without all the new programs, how come features that worked totally fine in 6.6.x.x dont work the same in 7? Why are some audio files I encode to HE-AAC fine in 6.6.x.x but when the same files are encoded in 7.0.1.12 they chirp or skip? Who screwed up the code? Also, how come under Recode (6.6 version), encoding videos to ND I could get nearly 1000fps on the first pass (mpeg-1 352x240) and sustain 120+ fps on the second pass while under Recode (7 version), the most I can obtain is 300+ fps on first pass and start at 100+ fps on second pass only to watch the fps slowly go down all the way to 2.5 fps until I became fed up and cancelled.
Now I am going to offer my opinion on what Nero can do to avoid this kind of crap in the future. First, when you announce a product, please try to support those who are your loyal customers first before trying to garner new sales. Yes, I understand you stand to make more on retail sales than on web upgrades. Furthermore, heres a novel idea, how about when you release a product and start accepting money for it that it does what you claim it does from the start. I am not talking about some bugs here and there which everyone has come to expect. I am talking about all of the programs you bloated the software with working the way you claim they do in your PR hyping. Next, when you know there are issues which is apparent by some on this very forum, do not take over a month or two getting a patch to fix functionality and crash issues. Last, prevent users from having to go to a forum that has no association with your company to voice their opinions or to report bugs and for the love of God, get someone who knows how to answer tech support emails rather than someone who knows how to select the appropriate canned response.
Address and fix the issues and procedures now otherwise you will end up the way of Roxio/Adaptec did with a crappy reputation for putting out a bloated product that always fails to meet the marketing hype.
Sincerely,
Many Severely Disappointed Nero Customers
