UA’s HIC Discounts, Danexit and counseling

Lucky you:) I wrote to Drew volunteering ,as this was what I spoke about on UA forum two year’s ago, not that it was supported at the time, never heard back, but I don’t own any hardware now and just Signature bundle, so didn’t meet selection criteria

Well, it will do something, and everyone can take advantage of current sales.

I thought it ironic, that even initially UA is trying to incentivise more sales, if you have less than 80 plugs and it launches a special deal at 80, peeps may buy more plugs to qualify?

I said 2 year’s ago, the solution was simple, since UA was selling Ultimate for under a grand to people whose subscriptions just ran out, then anybody who had already spent mlre thsn though on plug ins should be given the plugs to complete the Ultimate bundle.

Crickets !

Sure, but no one would have bought them individually at full price.

To UA’s credit, it has been increasingly offering more aggressive discounts over the last 5 year’s or so.

An artificial threshold shouldn’t be used, it should just be prorated based on the percent that you currently own.

I think I will happily continue onward without UA. I am still getting plenty of value out of purchases from them by bartering with a certain drummer who frequents this forum.

I want to say this as gently as possible… maybe don’t treat hardware and software ownership as some sort of club. Whatever tools you deem worthwhile, you should feel like the use justifies the cost, at the time of purchase.

Also, if you think a company is playing favorites with some users, you don’t have to buy their products.

UA just can't get out of their own way. It's been impressive to watch how much they've bungled all of this.

Why UA can't figure out a simple concept like prorating, based on already owned plugins, is beyond me. Instead they continue to hamfistedly divide people up into groups, which will only ever satisfy the minority of people that happen to be a perfectly sized "round peg" for that particular "round hole". Otherwise, everyone else is just a square peg, endlessly looking for a hole that they will never fit into, and will thus be pissed off about it.

Honestly, I think UA should just dispense with all of this never ending sale nonsense and stick with a permanent lower price model that meets their desired revenue/profit goals. Every plugin is $75 (or $50 or $39 or $100 or whatever), and be done with it.

No waiting around for sales or anticipatory, carrot dangling bullshit from the UA marketing team. Just simple, clear, and devoid of any ambiguity. A huge part of UA's problem right now is that they have created a trust issue between themselves and their customers. Customers don't know what is going on, or how to even sort of anticipate what might be coming down the road.

Should I buy now? Should I wait? Will old customers be taken care of? Will the half baked product I just purchased (or am thinking about purchasing) ever go back in the oven to finish cooking? Will I be able to actually talk with anybody at CS about these half baked products or other problems I'm having? And on and on. Who fuckin knows...?

When presented with complaints on these sort of matters, such as those related to ambiguity about UA's marketing and customer uncertainty, Drew often likes to respond with something along the lines of "you, the customer, might have some complaints about it, but this kind of marketing WORKS".

That sort of response is very illuminating about how UA views its customers these days. Yeah, it apparently works for UA. But what about the customer? What about any of this is working for the customer? This is a central point I've been making for a while now. UA doesn't respect their customers to the same degree that they once did, and it shows.

Exactly the strategy we see over and over from the wireless device/network and internet service providers.

Oh man:)

I’ve been buying UAD since UAD-1. Spent a load of dough on their DSP and plugs. Due to their asinine plugin resell policy, I’ve sold my entire plugin library more than once. Will I get cut out of any future “deals” for long term loyal users? Meh, I don’t really care anymore. Does UA even have 80 plugins that I actually want?

I've got enough UA to where I didn't even get anything from the last sale where it would have cost me $80 for any 2. If the newer plugins had DSP releases, I'd be more tempted. What would be better is if UA released hardware with either way more powerful DSP chips or with triple or quadruple the number of Sharcs that the Octo has but for $299 max. At this point, I'd rather get some Wesaudio pieces for a Titan over time than to buy lots more plugins. UAD lost some mystique going native, though it's good for us. It just turns UAD into another plugin company in the eyes of many. If they could also somehow break new ground in emulations by using DSP hardware that can exceed the single core capabilities of modern cpu processors, then they'd be back on the cutting edge. Still lots of ground to break.