michaelnuzum
Audioicon-  I refuse to just live with it. 
 
I have used Cakewalk for ten years now and only needed support maybe three or four times.  Every time in the past, my problem was handled by a real person in no more than two or three days.  That was part of what kept me a loyal customer.  I don't care how good or bad other companies are.  Cakewalk used to be exceptional, I am noting and lamenting the change specific to this company compared to past performance.
 
If there is a page that says "click here for support", I expect a response within a reasonable window.  Until the day they take that link down, I will expect support if I need it.  Until they explicitly state all support will be handled by the forum, I will expect support to reply.
 
I know some other companies are moving to paid support, and I would be willing to go with that if it meant getting help in a more reasonable amount of time. But being ignored for weeks is not a business model I support. 

My friend:
I am not trying to devalue your problems and I am sorry if my statement appeared that way.
What I attempted to convey is that majority of companies have two types of support:

1. Bad Support
2. No Support at all

Let's take Samsung for example: I bought a Samsung View, when I contacted Samsung support, the person speaking with me did not know what the product was. In My opinion, Samsung has the worst Customer Support period. Yes, someone answered but the help was useless.

To save myself the headache and from going grey or bald, (hear dyes or Bosely are expensive) :).
I simply rely on communities, this Forum, Harmony Central, Gear Slutz and many more.

I think, and as you may already know, companies are scaling back support due to cost but most importantly, due to the proliferation of technology. You will find fast support by Googling than contacting a person and I think companies are beginning to say, "do we really need support?" Especially if there is a need to cut down on expenditure.

Your problems are valid but what you are experiencing is nothing proprietary or exclusive to Cakewalk, try calling Honey Well for example.

Hope you are able to solve the issue.

Audioicon Your problems are valid but what you are experiencing is nothing proprietary or exclusive to Cakewalk, try calling Honey Well for exampe

 
Absolutely logical and reasonable. the same point im going to make....
 
Im not siding with Cakewalk (as I agree with you about support) but its not only Cakewalk.
Support has slipped across the board for many company's. Its typically the first thing to go when trying to bring you a lower priced product.
 
And this didn't start yesterday, it started years ago when you placed a call and heard- Press 1 for English/2 for Spanish. Automated systems removed bodies (typically secretary's). Then when more corners were needed to be removed it goes next in line.
 
My experiences with Cakewalks support has been 50/50 so I can understand where your coming from.
But on that same token, one needs to understand how more and more company's are run now a day.
Not all of them, but more and more of them are choosing low priced products in exchange for lower priced support.
 
For what its worth, there are people willing to help here (I know we are not a substitute for support) But Im still not sure what the problem is ? (your technical problem that is).
 
 

If Cakewalk can't handle the support load that's ok. Between the forums, pm's and the like, we have a community that will try to help. But to keep this real, Cakewalk needs to get their Sonar documentation and online demos current, and keep them current. The reference manual is way out of date. How can you tell folks "hey, RTFM" if the manual is out of date and contains errors. Give us the right tools and we'll help ourselves.

ampfixer
If Cakewalk can't handle the support load that's ok. Between the forums, pm's and the like, we have a community that will try to help. But to keep this real, Cakewalk needs to get their Sonar documentation and online demos current, and keep them current. The reference manual is way out of date. How can you tell folks "hey, RTFM" if the manual is out of date and contains errors. Give us the right tools and we'll help ourselves.

Which manual are you referring to ?
Mine says (under new features) New in SONAR 2017.08, September 6 2017:
 
The documentation in Command Center is a separate download.
Possibly you haven't updated in a while ?

The online help is up to date, but the latest reference manual (~2000 pgs) is dated 2016 and has no mention of ripple edit and others. I D/L the help files every update, so this is about the big PDF reference manual. Hope that clarifies.

I have to apologize to the Bakers. I just looked at my current D/L of the reference manual and it has indeed been updated. Who knew? I'll have to go through it and see now extensive the revisions are. My bad, sorry folks.
 
How about mentioning in the release notes when the reference PDF has been updates so dummies (like me) will know?

ampfixer
 How can you tell folks "hey, RTFM" if the manual is out of date and contains errors. Give us the right tools and we'll help ourselves.

Do not confuse the SONAR Reference Guide with the local help file. Yes, this month the Reference Guide was updated. The web-based and local help files are updated with the same frequency. The Reference Guide is not. It has been this way ever since Cakewalk started maintain all three documents.

I agree it is not just CW and it is an issue across the board. Companies see $200k for 3 level 2 support people and believe that is a lot of money that could be going into the corporate coffers. But, they fail to realize that it may only be $10 per unit sold (assuming 20k units per year). Even those people wanting the lowest price would likely be willing to cough up $10 or maybe even $50 if it included some good, quick U.S. based tech support.
 
I'm not sure of where the disconnect is for them to realize tech support as a marketing point. Dell pulled their India tech support when they found it was causing them lost sales in the commercial market.

Generally, when you make use of official technical support, you are dumping your problem onto someone else and making it their problem, whereas with peer support you are asking for ideas and suggestions to help you solve the problem yourself. I believe that a quick-responding tech support team should be available to deal with issues in the "dumping" category, i.e. those relating to purchasing, downloading and installing. For everything beyond that, you need to think it out for yourself and find help wherever you can. And there is plently of help available, including the Ref Guide, help file, videos and of course this forum. Anyway, no disrespect to the guys at CW tech support, but I don't believe that they could offer better solutions to your problems than you could find elsewhere.

Bug reporting has been mentioned in this thread, but that should be treated as a separate issue, i.e nothing to do with tech support.

Well, if things are becoming overwhelming for Cakewalk in terms of resources, maybe they should start the "Pay support model."
A lot of companies do this. This way users looking to pay for help are having serious issues not just trivial stuff.

Another big issue here is expectation, I think Cakewalk has set the expectation and impression that they have support readily available. However, given what Lance explained above, this is not the case.

To me you either have support or no support, just inform users so that they are not expecting what you cannot deliver.