Terrible customer service from HQPlayer

charge a restocking fee?

I have no idea how to implement something like that in practiceā€¦ :smiley:

Jussi couldnā€™t have made it clearer that people should make sure it works for them before purchasing - not sure what the issue is.

Yah, I get itā€¦ building billing and management of users, licenses, etc is really complicated and not your core expertise. Itā€™s a huge amount of effort for something that is not the primary value-add of the product. We at Roon spend way too much energy working on this. We have a person on staff whose primary job is to deal with billing support! I wish we didnā€™t, but itā€™s the only thing allowing us to grow like we are.

Anyway, if you are curious, Stripe Connect is a great way to pull off the majority of this stuff with semi-minimal effort.

There are additional business alternatives, that maybe we should talk about more seriously. For example, deeper integration of your DSP technologies as an optional component in Roon could allow you to get compensated without having to worry about billing/user-management and get you a great anti-piracy mechanism as well. Obviously, it would be more non-core-value technical work and a different product to HQPlayer. If this sounds interesting, PM me.

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Read the above posts with empathetic eyes not grounded in realism. Business isnā€™t always about the rules.

Anyway, itā€™s a tough situation. While I do not like the outcome, I see @jussi_laakoā€™s point of view as well. Letā€™s hope that either together or separately, we can do better in the future.

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Have you considered selling your license ? :grinning:

@jussi_laako

A bit off topic, but I ask anyway.

The Sonicorbiter 2.6 is arriving very soon with HQPlayer embedded included.

I bought the Windows version last year. I think there was a 50% discount if you purchase the Linux version. Is this still valid ?

Can I get the HQPlayer embedded at 50% discount if you already have a valid Windows or Mac license ?

If not, have you considered a introduction offer with this
nice Sonore SonicTransporter i5 SW upgrade ?

By the way, you normally have very good customer support and most questions quickly answered, and I think you in addition have a full time day job.
So youā€™re a very hard working guy :grinning:

Keep up the good work !

You have to invent a tool that allow (by a setting) automatically tag the folders during scan. :joy:

Then those ones can have that functionality.
Next problem then is they just wouldnā€™t understand that they have to use the bookmark function for achieving what they want, but still they should have what they was looking for. No refund !

Poor customer service costs more! Goodwill costs very little. But what suprises me is that your principles outweigh common sense. Youā€™ve probably spent more time than the cost of a licence on this matter and certainly incurred reputational damage.

Itā€™s not about being right or wrong. Itā€™s about doing the right thing.

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If a refund was given can the software be disable permanently by Jussi?

Completely agree with you. I dont know how HQPlayer is licensed specifically but the original request was just to swap a Mac license for a Windows license, which seems like it didnā€™t even require a refund.

The OP admitted that the Mac hardware was most likely the problem in the first email. So swapping the license over would have cost nothing and the diatribe about the hardware failings was completely unnecessary.

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You mean given another license for free. Thereā€™s no such thing as ā€œswapā€ of something immaterial.

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Iā€™d have thought good customer service is a universal value and has nothing to do with culture. On the other hand, Iā€™m not entirely sure I completely understood your message. :slightly_smiling_face:

So you have no way to revoke the other license? That seems like a problem worth addressing if only to save you from situations like this.

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In updates I can. But this is balance of how much annoyance I want to make for most customers. At the moment HQPlayer doesnā€™t require internet connection because I have lot of customers who donā€™t have internet access in their listening room. So far Iā€™ve opted for minimal annoyance for license holders.

Maybe you can find some answers from the resellef here:

https://secure.shareit.com/shareit/impressum.html?sessionid=3130824113&random=0f762b627558c6ea75b66d965c67977d

This is the company, and only company, that is selling HQPlayer.

Not the only one! There are number of resellers, but most others are hardware vendors who sell HQPlayer together with their hardware. But DigitalRiver is handling the online sales linked from my web page, as stated there too.

Maybe donā€™t require an internet connection but use it if itā€™s available? Then patch everything else out via updates.

Means you can be the good guy more often :wink:

Agreed!!!

Any curiosity I had about trying HQplayer is gone now. I refuse to do business with anyone or any company that canā€™t see past policy to do the right thing.

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I just find it obscure to spend a month+ or something writing a system and infrastructure to support dealing with things that are needed something like three times per year. The cost (circa 20kā‚¬) of developing such is disproportionate to the benefits.

And from other perspective I have strong personal disgust for software that ā€œcalls homeā€ for no useful reason. Iā€™m a bit sad if I need to go through that route as a result of this thread.