Previous similar request I got was along the lines “I purchased HQPlayer and used it for 4 months, and now I decided to move to Audirvana+. I don’t use your software anymore so I want full refund!”.
Customer service is one way to help win (or to help lose) customers. Up to you how you decide to implement it; by simply ‘doing the right thing’, coding failsafes in your product or even just telling people to get lost. Clearly each will have different outcomes.
Edit: if it’s just three times per year, I know what I’d do
Hmmh, let me see, from my perspective, outcome for those alternatives is: “lose”, “lose”, “lose”
Thank you, have a nice day.
And I want to emphasize that the OP didn’t respond to me if he had tested HQPlayer on Windows either. If it was going to work any better there. Or if I would be just two licenses and extra effort poorer. If I would have done the “right thing” and given one extra license for free. Would the next email have told me (after another couple of weeks) that he wasn’t happy with that either.
So you told the OP to get lost, which was by your own reckoning a loss.
That doesn’t sound at all like the OP’s case.
Anyway, you are within your right to stick to the policy you’ve spelled out. And customers have a right to choose whether or not to do business with companies that stick tightly to their policies.
I spent about the amount of license price time trying to help him sort out / troubleshoot why he was experiencing the issue in first place and not just blindly handing over another license or paying extra for refunding the current one.
Sure! No problem with that. That’s why the simple policy is written out bold on the web page. So that you make the choice before buying, not after. It is there for a reason.
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At the end of the day no matter how good your customer service is you will never make everyone happy.
Unfortunately it just takes one person on a public forum to cause a fuss and people start reaching for their pitchforks.
As a business owner myself I really don’t care if I upset/lose a few customers as they are probably not worth keeping anyway.
I don’t use HQP but from what I hear and see it has a very devoted group of followers so a few dissenters are probably not a concern to Jussi.
I think the suggestion from @danny was a good one but would have to make commercial sense. Roon and HQP target the same people but approach it from opposite directions. My experience of HQP was that it was useful, but not very usable. Roon is about being usable. Using Roon as a platform for HQP where it is integrated would give a licence framework and usability that it seems to lack.
Another alternative is just buy a computer with HQPlayer Embedded pre-installed. Then it is like many of those “streamer” devices, but with lot of extra DSP functionality and flexibility. Then you can use it in many different ways, Roon, UPnP, HQPDcontrol, Alchemy, simple analog/digital inputs from “legacy source”, etc…
Or from other perspective like dCS Upsampler devices, but with much more DSP functionality, flexbility and power.
I looked at HQPlayer Embedded because it seemed to fit my use case better than having a machine always on that wouldnt otherwise be always on. From the site it seemed that Embedded was for hardware manufacturers only - not end users (seemed the license wasn’t open to end users). Otherwise I would have installed it on my Roon Rock and tried that out.
If you are going to go into business selling anything, you are signing up to deal with these kinds of issues. If you are not willing to deal with customers, you shouldn’t be selling anything. Customer support is part of being in business. The Roon folks understand that. It appears Jussi wants to sell things to make money but does not want to deal with troublesome customers. It seems customer support is an evil he sometimes provides IF you don’t ask dumb questions…
I had thought about trying HQplayer…but no more.
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It is intended for hardware manufacturers, but available also for anybody who is ready to deal with the technicalities to get started. Kind of “for hardware manufacturers and computer nerds”… 
It has similar trial mode like the Desktop version, but the license is hardware locked.
On the web page there are installation instructions and packages available for Debian, Ubuntu and Fedora. Plus in addition full bootable custom OS image (which you can dump on a USB memory stick and boot).
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Thanks for the insight. That might be a better fit for Roon - I have Roon endpoints around the house and the appeal is sitting in any room and wanting to listen to music. Today I have to go fire up my mac book for HQP and then go back to the room I was in to listen. It’s like knocking on a front door and being told I have to go to the garage to say “hello” before going back to the front door to carry on the conversation. Having a Linux box that is small and always on would work. Buying a mac or PC would be overkill. This would sit alongside the Rock core box.
Custom bootable OS sounds very similar to the Rock idea. So that works well too.
Yep, I have considered it but what I perceive as extreme arrogance in the way Jussi deals with customers has put me off and to the extent I will never reconsider. On the other hand I have only found Roon to be understanding and accommodating and have no hesitation in recommending the product to all I meet.
But Jussi won’t care until those purchasing licences dry up and by then it will be too late.
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Have to say that if I was attempting to negotiate with someone my second comment to them would not have been “stop trying to scam me” But it is fairly standard prctice lately that no one takes responsibility for their actions even when those actions are written in bold text.
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I have worked in retail for 30 odd years and one important thing I learned was that for your self esteem you have to be willing and able to tell some people to f@ck off.
The customer always being right is the way to slavery.
Jussi is in the lucky position of having the ability to make a one of its kind product. It’s that that his business will live or die on. There are plenty of service oriented people selling crap software, Jussi is not one of them.
I’m glad he’s stuck to his guns, tells me more about the guy that he’s willing to stand up on an open forum and put up with a lot of keyboard warriors and their indignation.
.sjb
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Strong words there buddy.
I would like to remind you that all I asked for was a change of version from mac to windows. I’m my mind that’s like asking for a shirt in a bigger size. Not sure what retail you work in but at the shops I frequent that’s not an issue ever.
As was pointed out above the second email accused the vendor of scamming.
Now that’s strong words buddy.
you asked to change a shirt in a shop that had a big sign on the charging room “NO EXCHANGES”. One that had allowed and encouraged you to wear the shirt for 30 minutes in the shop before making your decision.
.sjb
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You can give a shirt back for changing in a bigger one but how to give your mac version “back”? So why not changing your mac to a ‘bigger size’?
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