It’s shocking that there are still companies that exist in today’s world that are off-the-rocker stupid. With social media giving companies the ability to broadcast a message far and wide, there are so many brands that are so forward thinking — the ones that get it, and understand it — and then there’s Native Instruments, with the most pathetic excuse for customer service and management I have ever seen. Let me take you on a journey of pain and mental anguish. Walk with me, my friends.
Native Instruments makes both software and hardware for music production, DJing and more. I want to focus on the software aspect of things. I bought a copy of Native Instruments KOMPLETE 9 software for $500 at a Guitar Center to use with Apple’s Logic Pro. It came on 12 DVDs. Oh yeah, 12 DVDs. That’s strike one, because in today’s world with Internet speeds as fast as they are, and content delivery networks being so inexpensive, there’s just no reason to ship 12 physical DVDs in a booklet with plastic packaging and two boxes, especially without a digital only option.
But, I bought a DVD drive for my iMac from the Apple store, and started installing all 12 DVDs to my computer and an external hard drive. It failed about a day and a half through the installation, at DVD number 10. It seems that one of the DVDs was bad, but I was able to find a complete copy of DVD number 10 that could be downloaded, so off I went.
But then, I realized that I had thrown the box away, and unbeknownst to me, there’s a tiny piece of paper that comes in the box that has your serial number so you can activate your software. It looked like a registration form, so I didn’t think much of throwing it away along with the outside box.
It turns out, however, that’s the only serial number you get. It’s not printed inside or on the 12-DVD booklet like every other piece of software you buy, it’s on a piece of paper that’s loose in the box.
No worries, let me call the company and see if they can help since I obviously bought the software and I didn’t know. Well, it turns out that even though Guitar Center was nice enough to send me a digital copy of my receipt to send to Native Instruments, Native Instruments still wouldn’t issue me another serial number. There’s no way of tracking the old serial number, they told me, and they refuse to allow me to activate the software I paid for.
The reason Native Instruments is a stupid company, is because we’re talking about software here. It costs them absolutely nothing to issue me a serial number so I can use the software I bought. This is not like a physical item. It’s a string of numbers for them to do the right thing, and help out a customer who didn’t know the serial number was on a tiny piece of paper in the box, and who showed them a receipt with my information on it. But they’ve firmly told me no, and they refused to help me out.
So here we are, with a dumb company that just received some bad press because it didn’t have the decency to do the right thing for a paying customer.
The Boy Genius Report is a periodic column written by BGR founder Jonathan S. Geller. It offers insights and opinions on various products, companies and trends across the consumer electronics industry and beyond.
