Vegas 4.0 upgrade fees....

BadRadBR wrote on 2/13/2003, 1:05 AM
A couple of months ago I spent $150 upgrading from Vegas Video 2.0 to the 'latest and greatest' Vegas Video, version 3.0. Last week I got an email telling me that upgrade 4.0, the new 'latest and greatest', is gonna cost me another $150/$200. I've got a friend in R.I. who wasn't gonna upgrade to 3.0, and now he's fired up about upgrading to 4.0 for the one time upgrade fee. So now it's gonna end up costing me twice what he's paying for the same upgrade because of 2 months time difference??? I was told by Customer Service that there's only a 30 day window where they'd credit the extra fee. I'm sure they were well aware at the time I upgraded to 3.0 that 4.0 would be coming out shortly, and they still were taking peoples money for an upgrade fee to 3.0. Other companies (like Steinberg) charge upgrade fees that are based on which version you're coming from. If you're a loyal customer who payed for upgrades as they came out it was an incremental cost. If someone else didn't bother upgrading over time and decided he wanted to catchup he paid more!! That's the only fair way to do it! A loyal customer who upgrades along the way shouldn't be penalized with extra fees while someone else who may have only bought the original software ends up paying half for the same newer version. What happens when 5.0 comes out (and 6.0, and 7.0...)? The only way you can get a fair deal is to be in that 30 day window? That's insane!! I'm not psycic! Nobody told me when I paid for the 3.0 upgrade that if I wait a couple of months I can get version 4.0 for the same upgrade fee, or warned me that if I did upgrade to 3.0 I was gonna have to pay a second upgrade fee for 4.0! At least with Steinberg a loyal customer is treated so. I'm in the record business and I take copyright issues very seriously. I have never used file sharing thievery (such as Napster) and I HAVE NEVER, EVER used cracked software. But I can sure as hell see why someone would want to do it!

Comments

Spirit wrote on 2/13/2003, 1:13 AM
I can see why you'd be upset, and 30-days is quite a short period.

But Vegas 4 has been discussed in these forums for months now and the speculation has always been that it would release sometime around now.

It always costs more if you want to permanently stay at the leading edge. It's like buying the latest Pentium: six months later they're not the fastest anymore and cost half as much.

Who knows, maybe if you wait a while SF will be sold and the upgrade will be available at some special price from the new owners. Or maybe evrything will go belly-up and the upgrade will be free. Who knows ?

The only thing you can do is ask *at the time* whether the price you're paying is worth it to you. If it is then pay the money and forget whatever else happens a week, a month or a year later.



nlamartina wrote on 2/13/2003, 2:03 AM
You could also try and call customer service. They might price-protect for you. It's worth a try anyway.

- Nick
TheHappyFriar wrote on 2/13/2003, 7:56 AM
I did the math once: if you upgraded to VV3 for the $200 price 2 weeks ago, then another $200 to upgrade to VV4 this week, the total would be $400: about $100 cheaper then if you bought it. I upgrade to vv4 from VV3LE for $299, and i'm spending $100 more then I would of if I just upgraded to VV3 a couple weeks ago, but that extra $$ is worth it to me.
Tyler.Durden wrote on 2/13/2003, 8:18 AM
Hi Rob,

I agree, the way you describe would be better... you are taking a shot in the chops.


(I will let you know IMO Vegas4 is worth the money, even if you get a bit burned on the discount. )

I would also write SoFo a *polite* letter of protest. They are a very generous company and will give you some consideration, especially if you are a loyal customer of their products. Letters work; I have had many good responses from companies.

You might even pledge to buy the DVDA bundle if they honor the discount, so you both come out ahead.


Best, mph
FuTz wrote on 2/13/2003, 8:46 AM
BadRad, I agree with martyh: write a letter. I'm alomost sure you'll find a way to sort it out with Sonic Foundry... we're not talking about A**b* here, we're talking about REAL support...
JackHughs wrote on 2/13/2003, 10:29 AM
Not to be a perfect contrarian here - hey, nobody's perfect. However, I think that Sofo's marketing and upgrade practices are, if anything, overly generous. For example, I purchased the Production Tutorial book with VV 3.0 LE for $50.00. By itself, LE blows away the competition's full-featured consumer products and will satisfy the editing needs of most hobbyists. I then upgraded to VV 3.0 (c) for $200.00. I'm in for a total of $250.00 and I have a bound book, a bunch of useful tutorials, and one of the best NLE's available.

I never expected SoFo to offer a free upgrade to VV 4.0 to those of us who purchased within 30 days of VV 4.0 release. I personally have never had an offer like this from any other software company and I bet that no one has ever had an offer like this from a hardware supplier. I was so pleased by SoFo's generosity that I bought DVD Architect even though I don't yet own a DVD burner.

Now, everyone is entitled to his own opinion. This just happens to be mine. SoFo is a superb company with excellent customer service that offers at least one product that is, competitively, worth a whole lot more than they charge for it.

I do have one negative comment. VV is incredibly easy to use. In fact, it's a beginner's dream. So, why then isn't VV LE or Video Factory mass-marketed?

JackHughs

Jimco wrote on 2/13/2003, 10:51 AM
I don't really agree with you. If they moved the window to to 60 days (which would cover you for the upgrade), there would be people out there who purchased 80 days ago who would be upset. If they moved it to 90, there would be the 100 day people and so on and so on. I think the software companies have to place a limit where they feel it's fair.

I also purchased VV3.0 a short while back. I'm just outside of the 30-day window. No problem for me. I think the upgrade price is still very fair for the product you are receiving. You just have to determine if the additional features are worth the money for your upgrade.

When I bought VV3.0, I knew from this forum that VV4 was in the works and would likely be release the first half of this year. I gambled on hitting close enough for a free upgrade, and I lost. It's a bummer, but that's the way it goes. :)

Jim
BadRadBR wrote on 2/14/2003, 9:09 PM
I tried customer service; 3 emails and 2 phone calls, all before my original post here. Emails all passed the buck to phone customer service, and twice from them the same crap about the '30 day window'. That's about the time I started fuming! Maybe I wasn't clear about this. When I (or anyone else) ordered the 3.0 upgrade they should have told me that I might want to hold off because 4.0 was coming out in a couple of months, and if I bought the 3.0 upgrade I would have to pay again for 4.0 in a few weeks. Then if I didn't want to wait it'd be my choice to pay 2 fees, not theirs!! To be fair to their customers they should at least inform them about the upcoming upgrade, which is what we all want when we upgrade, to get the latest version and newest features. The 2 people I talked to in customer service weren't concerned about me being a happy customer. One actually said that I should have waited for the 4.0 upgrade, which is when I snapped! Neither offered anything along the line of looking into it or getting back to me, or showed any kind of understanding of why I might be upset. Companies like Steinberg have the only fair system, where the upgrade fee you pay is based on what version you're upgrading from. So those people that 'invested' in the program along the way don't have to pay the same fee as those who didn't!
jsearles wrote on 2/14/2003, 10:18 PM
I agree with Jim. ANY window is too short for somebody. Everybody has known about the impending 4.0 for months. I don't see how as a business they could say "Don;t buy our software because there is a new version coming out in X number of months." That would be really foolish.

I personally think the SoFo upgrade policy to existing customers is more than fair. This is incredible software at a bargain price.

I also found their customer service to be very responsive.
rstein wrote on 2/14/2003, 10:28 PM
I have to add that their technical support has been non-existent. I'm now at THREE DAYS without a return email for a problem with Vegas 4.0.

If I knew how buggy this sucker was, I wouldn't have bought it till 4.01.

Bob.
jetdv wrote on 2/14/2003, 10:57 PM
So, what are the bugs? Do you have a list? It seems to be working great.
rstein wrote on 2/14/2003, 11:22 PM
Yeah,

1) Capture from Sony TRV-17 camera is unreliable from tape - corrupt video and/or dropped frames. Same tape/scenes capture perfectly with VV3.
2) Rendering an .AVI goes off into the ozone - preview window is black for first couple of minutes, then preview OK, then render (and Vegas) go belly up (no error, just non-responsive).
3) Tech support is MIA on my problem, which means my 30 days of "free" support isn't worth squat.

Note: I was extremely happy with VV 3 since I bought that in 11/01, and found it to be exquisitly stable. I *wish* that were the case for Vegas 4.0, but alas, that's not been my experience so far. I'm concerned that the product was rushed out to catch a wave of upgrade $$$, but leave us holding the bag. I *hope* that is not the case.

While I heartily recommended VV3, I can't in good conscience do so at this time with Vegas 4.0, based on the above factors.

Bob.
BillyBoy wrote on 2/14/2003, 11:41 PM
1. SoFo has some of the most generous upgrade prices of any software. Somebody always gets the short end of the stick and buys version 3 45 days before version 4 hits the street. You got to draw the line somewhere. Thirty days is pretty standard.

2. Version 4 has been talked about for months. If you read this forum at all its hard to believe you didn't know version 4 was coming.

3. Version 4 is a MAJOR upgrade. Lots of new really great features like scopes and color wheels for precise color correction, plus they threw in the previously sold plug-in pack worth, what was it $149, plus surround sound, plus, plus, plus.

4. The beta was free. You could have and should have downloaded and tried it before buying. I also noticed the they also have a demo version of version 4 on their web site.

Finally beefing here isn't going to help you. Call customer service. If you're only a day or two over the thirty day, maybe more, give it a shot. Ditto if you have other problems.

pb wrote on 2/15/2003, 12:09 AM
Howdy from Canada.

Vegas 4 is running on an old Athlon 1.2 with 1 gig RAM, Raedon 8500/Audigy Platinum (don't know if that makes any difference) and a WD 100 gig 7200 with 8 mb cache (no clue what that does). Anyway, I use Vegas pretty well only for audio editing and encoding short MPEG1 and MPEG2 clips, using hardware for anything more than a couple of minutes. Also for exporting to WMV a lot. A BetaSP or SX -> DVCAM avi to DVD compliant MPEG2 encodes about a 2.5:1 ratio, faster than version 3 for sure and I must say I have not had a single glitch yet. Main reason we sprang for the upgrade is DVD A to replace DVDit SE, PukeIckle Impression and reliable but limited DVD Complete. No problems at all and as you can see, I am running a very old PC.

It cost us 450 Canadian for the upgrades and we like it enough I think we'll upgrade the third license as well. Not sure what you guys can get rate wise down there but up here gross profit on two commercials more than covers the three upgrades. Maybe I look at cost a bit differently because one box of DVCAM 40s costs us almost 500 Canadian Dollars, 50$ more than the upgrade to an editing tool we use daily!

Peter
rstein wrote on 2/15/2003, 1:29 AM
BillyBoy,

The beta wasn't full function, and I really didn't want to put beta code on my production box. I don't think that's a fair assessment to imply that because one didn't load the beta, they have no expectation of problem-free operation.

Anyhoo, I have tried a couple of things tonight - I've updated my video drivers (to nvidia WHQL 40.71), and confirmed that my DirectX version is current (it's 8.1, which is current enough for Win2K). After doing the driver update, I'm doing a capture again in Vegas 4.0 and it seems better (lower CPU usage, no dropped frames). I'm capturing the full 39 minute tape and I'll then check if the corruption is gone.

Hopefully, my issues will be resolved with the driver measures and we can move on. I'm really generally pretty easy, but I have little tolerance when vendors don't reply to emails. Especially with the standards we hold SF to, based on their excellent past history with Vegas. Maybe that made my posts a little more crabby sounding than they should have been.

Thanks,
Bob.