Native Instruments Ranting...
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  1. #1
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    Default Native Instruments Ranting...

    Is it just me or does NI have some of the shittiest planning, management, and customer service out there?

    I've used NI products for some time now, from Scratch Pro 1 with X1s through to having an S4 and a Maschine mk1. Moving to production I decided to buy the CRG over to K9U when it went on sale during Thanksgiving and it has left a REALLY foul taste in my mouth about the company as a whole.

    While they make solid gear and great software, I've not run into such poor planning and lack of customer support (I'd call it poor but I have yet to even get a response from them) in quite a few years. To plan a 50% sale, and not realize that the demand for your product would skyrocket and allow it to run out of stock (currently placing backorders at 2 months out) suggests either that you are just about the stupidest company in existence...or, what I suspect is the truth: you just could give two shits about your customer once the money is in your pocket...

    Just wondering some of your experiences and I guess venting...all I get on the NI FB page is trolls so maybe there's some hope to have a real discussion here...

    btw: I ordered my copy on Dec 1st - 3 days into the sale, and with no warnings/out of stock notifications/etc present at the time I ordered - - - which at least now they have those up...I guess...

  2. #2
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    Even though I'm somewhat mad at NI myself (for forcing me to upgrade my OS to mavericks which has only been out for a little more than a month), I think you're overlooking some important points here..

    Quote Originally Posted by DJILLY View Post
    Is it just me or does NI have some of the shittiest planning, management, and customer service out there?

    I've used NI products for some time now, from Scratch Pro 1 with X1s through to having an S4 and a Maschine mk1. Moving to production I decided to buy the CRG over to K9U when it went on sale during Thanksgiving and it has left a REALLY foul taste in my mouth about the company as a whole.

    While they make solid gear and great software, I've not run into such poor planning [..] in quite a few years. To plan a 50% sale, and not realize that the demand for your product would skyrocket and allow it to run out of stock (currently placing backorders at 2 months out) suggests either that you are just about the stupidest company in existence...or, what I suspect is the truth: you just could give two shits about your customer once the money is in your pocket...
    I don't know for sure, but I'm quite certain NI, like every other company, uses projections of sales to forecast the stock needed to meet the demand during a sale. Those projections are usually based on historic sales figures and mathematical models including other factors.
    But no matter how elaborate these models are, in the end they are little more than guesses. Kind of like the weather forecast. They are quite reliable most of the time, but can be completely off every now and then. Maybe they did not expect so many people going for Komplete Ultimate but rather for the cheaper 'normal' Komplete and now ran out of stock of Ultimate while they're sitting on huge piles of unsold boxes of the latter.

    I ordered the Komplete 9 Upgrade (not ultimate) about the same time as you did and received it just a couple of days later.

    Regarding this:

    [...]and lack of customer support (I'd call it poor but I have yet to even get a response from them)[...]

    Just wondering some of your experiences and I guess venting...all I get on the NI FB page is trolls so maybe there's some hope to have a real discussion here...

    btw: I ordered my copy on Dec 1st - 3 days into the sale, and with no warnings/out of stock notifications/etc present at the time I ordered - - - which at least now they have those up...I guess...
    Of course it's not good you haven't received an answer from the support yet.

    Have you tried calling them? Another possibility would be to go to the NI Forum on their homepage and try to find help there.

  3. #3

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    Question: Did you open a support ticket or did you just go to their Facebook page? The people running their Facebook page are not the same people that run their sales dept. Hell they might have even outsourced the management of their social marketing to some other company. I wouldn't ever expect to get anything but spam from their FB account.

    As TC said, this happens. And this can happen with any company. If it really bothers you, then rant with your wallet and stop buying NI software. If they haven't shipped yet, you can likely cancel your order. Personally, I wouldn't though. It was a great deal and once you actually have it in your hands, you'll totally forget that it took a couple weeks longer to get it.

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by DJILLY View Post
    you just could give two shits about your customer once the money is in your pocket...
    I came to this conclusion awhile ago. I can only really talk about the Traktor side, but I've seen so much evidence that cant be argued, that it would take a big pro-longed change on their part for me to change my opinion. Their game is to keep drawing new customers in with new gimmicky features and hardware that appeal to new DJ's, and not so much to serve their existing customers by implementing what current customers actually want or at the very least they could fix the existing bugs/not creating new bugs in their software. I mean people do rely on their product being stable to make money. Kudos to them cause they are making bank, but I personally won't buy any NI product.

  5. #5
    Tech Guru DarioJ's Avatar
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    Could be worse... You could of bought a DB:Series mixer. As of late, NI is at least "active" compared to A&H.
    The MUSIC is what matters!
    Everything else is _________

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    TCMuc
    Even though I'm somewhat mad at NI myself (for forcing me to upgrade my OS to mavericks which has only been out for a little more than a month), I think you're overlooking some important points here..
    Just curious - how did they force you to update? And what is not compatible with Mavericks - still the X1?

    DarioJ
    Could be worse... You could of bought a DB:Series mixer. As of late, NI is at least "active" compared to A&H.
    What? A&H went under? Is that right?

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by Chelan View Post
    What? A&H went under? Is that right?
    Not necessarily, but if you were to look at their forum, specifically the DB:mixers forums, you might think they did. I was making a comparison to NI who is actively still giving user updates (at the very least) verbally (media wise). I love the mixer, but the DB series is just not what I thought it would be, as far as digital support and updates...
    The MUSIC is what matters!
    Everything else is _________

  8. #8
    DJTT Moderator bloke Karlos Santos's Avatar
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    I have said this a hundred times before, there is only one place to get help with NI products and that is with NI support and/or communicating with a Moderator on the forum.

    You may as well write a letter to the Pope for all the good it will do posting on DJTT or the NI Facebook.

    It is totally beyond me why people don't use the NI forum if they cannot get anywhere with Support. NI Support is no worse or better than any other product company. I hear horror stories and praise in equal measure.


    On the point of Mavericks. If I read between the lines (maybe I'm wrong) you have an older Mac with Leopard that could not be updated to Mountain Lion so you had to go to Mavericks??? And this is the fault of NI...how??? If I misunderstood then I am happy to be corrected.

  9. #9
    Tech Mentor Jane's Avatar
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    Tbh I also was dismayed about having to leave Snow Leopard and update to Mavericks for Maschine 2.0

    I didn't want to leave that (or get latest itunes) but eventually gave in and started updating everything. Turns out I actually was rather fine with them, so much so same night I updated to iOS7 for my 4s which I'd also vowed not to do and apart from a couple of icons I love that so much too.

    I know that having to go to a new OS tho there's many good reasons why you'd prefer to wait but happily this has worked good for me and am loving Machine 2.0 even tho have only scratched surface of the new things
    CDJ 2000s : DJM 900: Reloop RP-7000s : Mixvibes Cross 3+ : HPCompaq : iMac: Maschine 2 : Traktor Pro2 : XDJ-AERO : RMX1000
    facebook.com/djanedalton / and my DJ alter-ego, The Imperatrixx

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by Chelan View Post
    Just curious - how did they force you to update?
    It's a little complicated, but here we go...


    First thing I got myself in this years' Thanksgiving Sale was Discovery Series Cuba.

    The sytem requirements for Cuba said "Intel mac and Kontakt (Player)", without specifying any particular version of the latter. Since I have an Intel mac as well as Kontakt installed I thought I should be fine...

    When I had installed Cuba and tried to run it within Kontakt, I suddenly got a notification that Cuba required a newer version of Kontakt to run. I'm almost 100% sure my version is at least less than a year old so it's a little surprising it's not supported any more, but hey, no big deal, I'll just update again...

    When trying to install the update I got another notification saying the update needed at least OS X 10.7 to run...

    Since I was still running Snow Leopard (10.6) I found myself forced to chose between the options of a) not being able to use my newly bought plug-in or b) update my whole system (which was running perfectly good and stable, and I hate to change systems that work) to a new OS that had been released just over a month earlier.


    I haven't experienced any major problems with mavericks yet, expect for two crashes of Live which may or may not have been linked to the new OS.

    Talking about Live... 9.1, which is the first version that is stable under Mavericks, was released only 10 days before the NI sale. If it had taken Ableton a little longer to release 9.1 I would have had to chose between a new plug-in that's not running and a DAW that's probably not stable....




    TL;DR

    I had to update because NI decided to

    a) not support versions of their own software (Kontakt) that are less than 12 months old

    and

    b) not support an OS, that in its latest Version (10.6.8) is little over 2 years old (and still supported by Apple)

    any longer.

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