denverdrummer

Godling

denverdrummer
OK this part of the FAQ needs to be clarified by CW:
 

If I choose Monthly Membership payments, can I cancel before 12 Months?

Yes, but 12 consecutive monthly payments are required to permanently activate SONAR and any updates you have received. If you cancel payment or don’t pay for at least 12 months, SONAR will revert to demo mode. This means you can’t save or export projects, however anything you saved up to that point will still open and play in the demo. Once you resume payments, you can make new edits and save them.

 
I could not find anything in the FAQ that stated how resumed payments were handled.
 

The first sentence states how resumed payments are handled... that is to say... 'they are not'! 12 payments must be 'consecutive'. If you skip a month you fail to make them 'consecutive'. Very clear.
 
However... the use of 'resume' is somewhat misleading. It implies starting from where one left off. Perhaps 'renew' would be more appropriate?

Agreed, I was confused by "resume" which I seemed to read as you were credited for what your paid.  CW might want to consider revising the FAQ for clarity.

 
That's a good one.  But don't expect CW to consider your suggestion, they are obviously not going to alter it.  Oh the irony.
 
Ooops, Karyn just might lock this thread after all.

If I choose Monthly Membership payments, can I cancel before 12 Months?

Yes, but 12 consecutive monthly payments are required to permanently activate SONAR and any updates you have received. If you cancel payment or don’t pay for at least 12 months, SONAR will revert to demo mode. This means you can’t save or export projects, however anything you saved up to that point will still open and play in the demo. Once you resume payments, you can make new edits and save them.

 



Perhaps "restart" vs. "resume" would be a helpful FAQ clarification that the foregoing payments, if interrupted, will have lost their cumulative value towards the cost of the software license. I agree that the word "resume" is a bit confusing.  In this scenario, the user is indeed resuming payments but he/she is not resuming the membership agreement as it was at the point of payment interruption.  How about something like this -
 

If I choose Monthly Membership payments, can I cancel before 12 Months?

Yes, but 12 consecutive monthly payments are required to permanently activate SONAR and any updates you have received. If you cancel payment or don’t pay for the full consecutive 12 months, SONAR will revert to demo mode upon the first missed payment. This means you won't be able to save or export projects; however, anything you saved up to that point will still open and play in the demo. Once you restart payments, you can make new edits and save them, but you will have forfeited the progress of your credit/membership agreement and will have to restart your 12 month payment obligation toward permanent license activation.

Anderton
Actually, a lot of the "knuckleheads" is just one person (currently going by "Andrasin"), who's possibly a child based his level of spelling and reading comprehension. He thinks he's clever to have figured out that he can re-register after being banned and continue making defamatory statements. His MO is to claim how horrible SONAR is, but he won't ask for help, and won't verbalize his problem in any way that would allow people to help him enjoy the same level of performance as others. His other MO is to claim the membership program is a huge screw job on Cakewalk customers created by evil people who want to extract every last penny from you and that we're idiots for not realizing that. I think we should take up a collection and buy him another DAW so he can continue being an idiot in some other forum. 

I figured as much. Maybe people like this can be banned by IP address in addition to forum account. As far as taking up a collection goes, I don't think it will do much good. For some reason trolling has entertainment value for certain people. Responding to them only serves to feed their entertainment. This is kind of like watching someone getting hit in the face by a pie.
 
For the most part I tried to stay away from threads of that nature but i found it was like watching a bad car accident. I could not stop looking.

Marcus, I think the guy in question had his own domain and thus could spoof IP's so they couldn't ban him that way.  From what I've seen that kind of thing has thinned out.  Right at the announcement, you got alot of people who either had no investment in CW, or were fairly new, that over reacted to membership, or just flat out put out false information about it, and that has slowed down now that the release is official.
 
Unfortunately there are always going to be internet trolls.  I take the car accident approach too,  it's like I can't resist watching TMZ when it comes on.  We all do stupid things now and then, but I believe laughter is the best solution,so when people come on here and post idiotic stuff like CW is going to steal their intellectual property or something, the best thing to do is get a good laugh out of it and move on.
 
 

I like the idea that the Warez crowd are now pissed because they cannot obtain a SN and reg code off the web for free anymore.. thus the trolling ..

Anderton

Living Room Rocker
...Surely it could be considered as some kind of "credit" at the end of 12 months from the date of the initial payment should no other payments be made.
 
Is what I am proposing so unreasonable or, perhaps, impossible for Cakewalk and Gibson to consider?  Is it too out of this world?

It would create an overlay of complication for a membership program that is supposed to be straightforward. What if they come back in 2018 and say "Well I paid for three months in 2015..." What if they stop after one month - why didn't they just download the demo? What if someone pays for two months, then gets re-instated for another two months, then drops out...how many "drops" do you allow? An unlimited amount? A limited amount?
 
And it opens up plenty of ways to game the system. Someone could buy for a month, drop out for two, then buy for a month and get the software that he missed - unless Cakewalk modified the installation so that people didn't get what was given to members during the months they didn't pay but got updates for a single month. Basically there would have to a zillion custom installations generated by Cakewalk to cover a zillion different scenarios. It would be a technical, logistical, and accounting nightmare for a small company that wants to simplify the process, not make it more complicated - and the people who didn't game the system would be penalized by the higher prices Cakewalk would have to charge to cover all the additional effort and overhead.
 
Bottom line is the membership program is not designed for incremental payments or a la carte program updates.

At the risk of Karyn locking this thread...
 
Yeah, I can understand the complication introduced on CW's membership program.  Considering that there are pirates ready to tear into any likely weak spot in a companies internet security.  And perhaps CW's answer to that is the membership program.  So that "overlay" does sound like a bad idea after all.  I can see that effect else where.  After all, IK multimedia and Universal Audio, to name just a couple, are bursting at the seems with their "credit plan."  Won't be long until they are reduced to nothing but a memory from all the "gaming the system".  Not to mention all those zillion of custom installations.  There again more than a zillion users would be entering into the membership plan at all different dates along the calendar.  To simplify that potential problem, all users and CW can agree on the one day each year to begin a new membership.  How about January 21 each year?
 

Anderton
Bottom line is the membership program is not designed for incremental payments or a la carte program updates.

 
And that's the most confusing part.  A loan is paid in incremental payments like a monthly payment plan toward ownership.  A la carte program updates, let's not go there.  Why would any one want that?  That's like out of nowhere.
 
Well, we covered the bases.  Whew!
 
Kind regards,
 
Living Room Rocker

denverdrummer
 that over reacted to membership, or just flat out put out false information about it, 

That is the issue we were trying to quash,  false information.   Many, if not most, of the over-reactions were due to the false information.
 
 
Can we consider this thread done and finished with now before any further false information is inadvertently spread around the internet?

Marcus Curtis

Anderton
Actually, a lot of the "knuckleheads" is just one person (currently going by "Andrasin"), who's possibly a child based his level of spelling and reading comprehension. He thinks he's clever to have figured out that he can re-register after being banned and continue making defamatory statements. His MO is to claim how horrible SONAR is, but he won't ask for help, and won't verbalize his problem in any way that would allow people to help him enjoy the same level of performance as others. His other MO is to claim the membership program is a huge screw job on Cakewalk customers created by evil people who want to extract every last penny from you and that we're idiots for not realizing that. I think we should take up a collection and buy him another DAW so he can continue being an idiot in some other forum. 

I figured as much. Maybe people like this can be banned by IP address in addition to forum account. As far as taking up a collection goes, I don't think it will do much good. For some reason trolling has entertainment value for certain people. Responding to them only serves to feed their entertainment. This is kind of like watching someone getting hit in the face by a pie.
 
For the most part I tried to stay away from threads of that nature but i found it was like watching a bad car accident. I could not stop looking.

Sounds like your average GS poster

Karyn

denverdrummer
 that over reacted to membership, or just flat out put out false information about it, 

That is the issue we were trying to quash,  false information.   Many, if not most, of the over-reactions were due to the false information.
 
 
Can we consider this thread done and finished with now before any further false information is inadvertently spread around the internet?

Lock it already
 
the horse has been dead, long ago

Living Room Rocker

Anderton
Bottom line is the membership program is not designed for incremental payments or a la carte program updates.

 
And that's the most confusing part.  A loan is paid in incremental payments like a monthly payment plan toward ownership.  A la carte program updates, let's not go there.  Why would any one want that?  That's like out of nowhere.
 

Before the thread gets locked...technically Cakewalk does do incremental payments, but they're consecutive and last for a defined period of time. This is very different from treating each payment as a separate entity rather than as part of a continuum.
 
The a la carte concept was mentioned because some people would like a stripped, core program that they can accessorize, which Cakewalk has already said will not happen for a variety of reasons. Having a situation where people pay for one update, skip a month, decide they like the next two updates and pay for them, etc. is very similar so I assume Cakewalk's response would be the same.
 
Just FYI, updates are priced on the assumption that not everything WILL be useful to everyone. For example, with X3, even if you already had Addictive Drums the other updates/additions would justify the price for most people.