Cakewalk Support Update

Hi Friends,
 
This is a good faith post to reach out to provide some updates about what's going on here at Cakewalk HQ in regards to Cakewalk Support. I'm just a nerd who helps program the website, so please go easy on me. :D
 
We recently went through some changes that may have been lost in the mix of all of the announcements as of late. Seems like many users are tripped up by the changes so I wanted to take a moment to explain what's new and different. We’ve made a lot of recent improvements you probably haven’t seen!
 
Support Workflow / Logistics
 
We completely redesigned our Support website! Here's what's new:
 

• The Knowledge Base has been completely rebuilt.
  • Search has been drastically improved. Not only is it faster, but you can now search by terms as well as tags. You can also save your favorite searches (for example, maybe you're only interested in seeing new articles related to [SONAR-Professional] and [Z3TA-2]
  • Speaking of Tags, articles are now tagged. You'll often see these at the bottom of Knowledge Base articles. Essentially this is a great way of us grouping related articles for products you care about. Here's an example (scroll to the bottom).
  • Views and popularity are factored into results based on activity and feedback.
  • You can add Feedback to articles to inform Cakewalk of whether or not the article was helpful and/or needs improvement
• Contacting Email Support has been rebuilt
  • You no longer need to enter your email address and fill out your support profile (what audio devices you own, etc.) every time you reach out to us. Your information is linked to your Cakewalk Account, so you can just send us an email and we'll know what products you own and what your setup is like without having to ask redundant questions.
• Contacting Phone Support has been rebuilt
  • We moved from phone queues where users waited on hold to a callback model of phone support where you schedule a call and support staff calls you back. Willy's announcement here explains this in a bit more detail. In short, we call you. No listening to awful hold music, no long distance charges.

 
Both Email and Phone support make an attempt to help you with Knowledge Base articles we feel may be helpful. Ultimately we're making a stronger effort to provide helpful information upfront with the hopes that having to wait for a reply from Cakewalk Staff is not necessary. To a degree, the KB stuff I mentioned above learns from itself - that way we can provide helpful resources based on real metrics, versus what we think or assume is helpful information to know.
 
In the event the articles aren't helpful to your inquiry, you can of course send an email or schedule a call. Eligibility for technical support is determined by product ownership. You can see what technical support level is given to your products with the new iconography visible on your Products page here. Pre-Sales and Account Related (customer service) email support, of course, is available to everyone.
 
If you send an email, you will be sent a confirmation email with your case number. It looks like this:


 
 
If you need to provide further information to your case, you can reply directly to the email. This will append your case in our internal ticketing system. Replying directly to the case, versus opening a new one, helps Cakewalk Support staff more quickly respond and resolve cases. It also helps you keep your place in line versus new information going to the end of the line.
 
If you need to contact Phone Support, you must choose an available time, like displayed below:
 
​
 
When you schedule a phone call, you will be sent a confirmation email as well. Here's an example:
 

 
Once the call is scheduled, the rep you're assigned to is notified and will contact you at the number and time specified. Please be aware we’re in Boston, MA, so all times are Eastern Time. You can visit https://www.cakewalk.com/support/phone to update your case with any new information or cancel the call if needed.
 
Lastly, we provide details upon call resolution and welcome feedback in order to give users like you a chance to let us know what we’re doing great at, and where we could improve upon. Here’s an example:
 

 
Disclaimer: not real call details, however not a false reality. Cheers! ;D



Customer Demand
 
"That's great, Ryan, but this does nothing for me if I'm still stuck waiting for a response or there are no callback time slots available!" - Legitimately Frustrated Customer
 
I hear you loud and clear! In fact, so do both Cakewalk and Gibson for that matter. Both companies have a strong core philosophy that great customer service is extremely valuable.
 
With that being said, there have been a few recent developments that created much more demand than we anticipated. The support queue is backed up but we’re adding resources right now to solve the problem. We think you'll like the changes we roll out and the additional contact methods you'll soon be able to use. Cakewalk prides itself in offering good quality support. To put it quite simply, it's just that the demand far outweighs the supply right now.
 
I'm well aware that this doesn't immediately reduce the frustration some users are experiencing, but I wanted to take a moment to first describe the changes and the new process, and then also acknowledge recent frustrations. As I mentioned, this is more of a good faith post to hopefully provide some transparency and acknowledge you guys. We're very apologetic for temporary increased response times as a result in the meantime.
 
We also have a lot of stuff in development outside of the typical SONAR announcements that we believe will strongly improve everyone’s overall experience. I look forward to discussing more in the future.

As always, I want to thank everyone for their support, their patience, and especially for their outreach to one another in this community. I know myself and other Cakewalk staffers have expressed it before, but the helpful and knowledgeable members of our community are an incredible asset to us and I don’t think we often get a chance to thank you for all of your support.

Thanks Ryan, best news this week for many customers.

OK ... I understand that you do not have enough people to provide the demand for tech support. However, I think that your update process should run without bugs since you can not provide support. I just upgraded to the latest version of Sonar Professional. In the middle of recording project after the upgrade, I tried to save the project and the software now tells me I am running in Demo mode and that I need to purchase the product. What the Hell? When I go into my command center account it tells me that I have to install the product (which would include numerous upgrades since I first purchased professional about six months ago). Plus it tells me I am on an annual subscription when I purchased the product at full price. This is unbelievable. Plus I have sent three requests for email support in the last month and a half that remain unanswered relating to other issues with the software. Congratulations Cakewalk for such a fine job with your longtime customers.

Well thought out and presented post Ryan Munnis.  Thank you for taking the time to update us on the support status.  This demonstrates just how difficult it is to change business practices sometimes.
 
Hopefully there will be frequent status updates until an acceptable level of live support is available once again.
 
I find it very interesting that many threads have thousands of views while this thread has less than 500 even though the thread heading specifically discloses the thread is about support.  Does the low number of views mean most forum members are not concerned with support issues?  The low number of views surprises me considering how vocal some forum members have been about the lack of support they have received.

 
I am trying to purchase ASS apps before end of sale today. First there was an odd credit card number in my account...why? When I try to pay by Paypal via the email link which is sent after ordering I get the following. 
 
File Not Found
The page that you requested cannot be found on this server. This might have the following reasons:

• The link you are using is not valid anymore or wrong.
• You have not entered the URL correctly.
• The page does not exist anymore.

If you have gotten to this page over a certain URL, please inform the owner over the page that offered this link so that he can update his page.
 
You are my last resort as I have already spent too much time on trying to figure out what to do since there is no more real immediate support right now. Can you direct me or move this to the correct thread please.

So... I've lost days of time trying to get nectar authorized with my new Platinum install. I don't have a valid serial number to enter... no serial number at all to enter actually. It gets installed with platinum but I have no listing of it nor a Serial Number to use to activate it. I had a similar problem with Melodyne. Of course I went to the support phone number to get help... no longer taking calls. In fact the main number is no longer taking calls. In fact no number at cakewalk seems to be taking calls. Are you even still in business? You got my money over a year ago for this upgrade, I just installed the upgrade to work on a project and I can't get everything working. Latency issues, plugin issues melodyne is missing it's undo feature, and when you try to drag a note up or down a tiny bit, it shoots octaves up or down... never to be found again!, activations issues... no help... oh, wait, you'll call me back? Not great but if you are like T-Mobile and call me within 3-15min no problem... Oh, you'll only call me back if I schedule an appointment (The exact reason I refuse to go into an apple store - I'm going into buy something or get help with something that they make that is broken... and they want to treat me like patient in a broken health care system. Its' more than a little arrogant, but I digress ;-), Oh, there are NO APPOINTMENTS AVAILABLE... EVER!
Seriously? Guys... either you are the most successful company in the world, and don't think that you need to support your customers... because they hand you money faster then they can run out the back door to another product, or you are going out of business and just haven't made the announcement yet.
I really hope I'm wrong, I've had great support experiences with cakewalk in the past... this is not just a bad experience... it's the one of the worst imaginable. It single handedly rips the legs out from under all the good experiences I've had with one giant, deafening, zero.
Bruce

Had purchased cakewalk platinum since 9th of August. Few emails exchange with them still cannot solve the simple purchase issue and cakewalk support keep asking me for verification( i did not received any download link and serial number in my account),  i received an email confirmation about the purchase and i forwarded them with the invoice and email from Cleverbridge which show it was fully paid by pay pal. But they still won't provide any link for the download in my account.
 
Going to ask for refund soon, a cakewalk user since DOS. What happen to the support? It took so many days to wait for reply but without any solutions. Disappointed big time
 
Eric Wong

Stephanie Polek
Hello. Although I've been a CW customer since @ 2007 (before that as well... but I don't recall registering those early products... was one Digital Producer?! so many I can't remember them! so I'll leave them out) I've never needed to contact support and I've never needed the forum. The reason for this is simple for me: the GREAT PRODUCT I bought! I have used Avid and Cubase and still found Sonar 8 Producer preferable. Recently I decided it was time to upgrade to a new computer and Sonar edition. I tried to log onto my account and I got a message the account doesn't exist. I realise 'Oh no, that's the account that was hacked in 2009... I no longer have the account!' and then I began to wonder if I had the wrong email address. But that wasn't all... I then read that in 2014 accounts were restructured and so I'm wondering if I would have had access to it anyway. I contacted pre-sales to check on the price of Sonar Platinum with my current product but alas, I 'have no current products'. (Of course, in order to contact anyone other than pre-sales I guess I needed a new account anyway... which I made. But NO PHONE SUPPORT for me since they can't see my old purchase!) I then thought I may need to contact account support since pre-sales likely has nothing to do with accounts. NO RESPONSE AT ALL for a couple of weeks now. BUT pre-sales did reply that they would look into my account problem and get back to me. Not even their job I would submit, yet they at least replied. Still, I have yet to receive a reply.... I'm not particularly skint and can purchase new at full price but why would I when support is a major decision in this purchase? Especially since I've now seen so many with similar problems or my same problem who've received no help for weeks and even MONTHS? Since someone suggested leaving our ticket numbers I will, however, just in case through some miracle an account specialist can give it a go from here. Pre-sales: Case 324793. Account support: Case 325061. This isn't something a forum can answer but I was told I might get a quicker response if I posted here. ONLY CAKEWALK ACCOUNT SUPPORT can provide the fix, but they are apparently unavailable. I'm *HOPING* this is a temporary problem for Cakewalk and not a sign of the more general trend in corporate mismanagement (with which I am WELL familiar). As to the person suggesting flooding administrator PM boxes, I would love to but I don't know how. :) And as for the suggestion of a weighted queue, I respectfully disagree, as that is how we lost general phone support, or at least this is what I'm told. I just want my product to show up in my account so I can purchase Platinum with the discount I'm entitled to. That's all. If or when my account problem is taken care of, then... please, TAKE MY MONEY! Otherwise, I suppose it may be back to Avid or Cubase, providing their support is there. :) Thanks! 

Hi Stephanie,
You may have tried this and so just going to ask this but when you created a new account were you able to add your Sonar 8 serial number or any of the other software serial numbers to your account? I don't even know if this is an option anymore since they changed everything but thought I would ask.
 
-John

It seems to me you have a couple of issues. First, is getting help or understanding about installing 32/64bit SONAR 8. This can be handled in the SONAR forum above. There is no reason SONAR 8 32bit, 64bit or both will not run on a new PC running 64bit Windows. Second is getting an updated product list in your account. This will take Cakewalk support. As I mentioned in the other thread, appending to existing threads is not the most efficient way to handle issues. It is generally better to create your own threads. Appending to threads which cover a variety of subjects rarely result in resolution of the individual issues brought up in the thread.

Your best solution is to create a new post in the SONAR area. Click the "Post New Thread" button at the top of the SONAR area to create a thread asking for installation help/recommendations regarding installing SONAR 8 32 and/or 64 bit on Windows (whichever version you have). You will get a lot more help there. You still need to get your account corrected but that is a separate issue.

Big-John
 But scook sometimes makes us feel like if he had a spoon he would wack us! You can post where you feel it may help.

Then you are reading too much into my posts. I recommended questions regarding the SONAR program go into the SONAR area. Questions regarding user accounts and store issues go in this area. I also recommended avoiding appending specific issues to threads which have a lot of marginally related "me too" posts if one seeks a solution. It is that simple.

Hello,
 
I purchased (I thought) 1 licence for Sonar Professional. I am being charged for 9 licences! I cannot contact support to resolve this. Email isn't working, phones are never available. Finances are an urgent matter - I can't wait a few days/weeks for answer.
 
Please help!!!
 
Thanks -- Roger

Thanks,  just did that and they are working to resolve it.

Stephanie Polek
Hello. I am updating my previous posts to let folks know if they had lost faithas I about had that the account people have indeed just corrected my account and now I can finally upgrade to Platinum. I don't know whether my post here helped that along or not but I'm so grateful to Cakewalk for fixing me up! The forum folks here have been most helpful in the meantime and I wanted to thank y'all again. -- Stephanie

Great News Stephanie! Enjoy!

I'm sorry that you didn't get a response earlier. I just responded to your support cases about your membership and your membership status looks fine. Our support backlog should get resolved soon and response times will return to normal after that.