Free upgrade options for customers, who bought an own product less than 6 month ago

Hi,

I have a similar situation:

1- I bought a Tb4 enclosure with the XT license 

2- on 7.11.2020 I upgraded to the PRO (99.99$) and since then I have been almost unable to successfully use Mac Os (big sur) because of the known very long beta - not mention my poor Macbook AIR M1 which is still on try&fail modus with Softraid...

3- when I try to upgrade, if I enter the code for my PRO version (the one mentioned at point "2"), I actually get an hilarious price of 349$ for the upgrade!!! I hope this is a mistake. 

I don´t want to pay for the third time considering that since the last upgrade to PRO I was just able to use the SW two months.

Upgrade your XT license while I work on this issue.

Was that US currency $349? or what currency? That does seem like a error.

@softraid-support

USD.

The XT license actually costs less. Still, if we think logically, If I pay the upgrade form the old XT, it seems like the 99.99$ I have paid for the upgrade from 5xt to 5 PRO last year were/ are worth nothing...

Am I wrong?

@alecxx

I need to see your license number(s) to understand what is going on, so please email support at softRAID as I don't want licenses to be posted.

For others reading this:

This turned out to be a glitch in the matrix, a upgrade that was posted in the system as a two user XT license, rather than a Pro license.

@softraid-support I am using RAID 5, so switching to Apple RAID is not an option. I bought the Thunderbay with its inclusion of RAID 5 support through SoftRAID specifically for this reason. I have been using it with the same iMac all this time. It is completely unreasonable to expect Thunderbay single-machine licensed users to choose between paying $99 to keep functionality working and not upgrading macOS. It was bad enough that the software didn't track the Big Sur beta closely enough and have a release ready to go when Big Sur was released, and that it took over 5 months to get to a final release through numerous betas (for which many of us gave valuable feedback to you) -- only to arrive at the end of that testing to be slapped in the face with a $99 upgrade fee. I could perhaps be persuaded that some nominal fee would be appropriate, but $99 to maintain existing RAID 5 functionality due to a macOS upgrade? BS. This is a big you-know-what to your users, and your management refused to budge. So I will be compelled to seek another solution -- because I refuse to be held hostage to companies that behave this way. Incredibly disappointed.

If your price in the upgrade page was quoted as $99, then your enclosure is from 2018 or older, correct?

In the 3+ years you have owned your enclosure, there have been probably 10-15 or more updates to SoftRAID. Maybe more, depending on how old it is.

This is the first major upgrade to SoftRAID in many years.

Software products always have a challenge convincing users to pay for upgrades, its understandable. But you have no problem receiving ongoing technical support that is fantastic, software that has maintained functionality since Snow Leopard, and still works for you and your enclosure.

SoftRAID and OWC do not lock you into expensive drive replacements as disks natually fail, you can purchase any disks you prefer. We also offer a 3 year warranty on disks you purchase with enclosures. We offer to replace drives that have not failed, but have only a status of "predicted to fail". There is no other company I am familiar with that offers replacement of drives BEFORE they have failed, without a fuss. You can often do this one time with Seagate, but next time forget it. And you receive a refurbished drive.

Developing for MacOS has become challenging. We are both an independent software solution, and an integrated solution, that has additional benefits after you purchase. We want users to feel upgrades are valuable and worth it.

And as we keep maintaining and developing SoftRAID going forward, we hope to keep customers satisfied.

I don't know what else we can say. We hope you reconsider.

@softraid-support Yes, the enclosure was bought in Dec 2014. But from my perspective, SoftRAID is merely the driver that allows my enclosure to operate as RAID 5. In all of my OS upgrades, I have neither sought nor used any further functionality beyond that compatibility. I'm willing to entertain nominal maintenance upgrade fees, but I am not willing to entertain $99 past what I already paid for the enclosure and disks (one of which recently failed and OWC refused to help me negotiate with Seagate, much less just take care of it) for no further functionality other than OS compatibility. macOS upgrades are annual and natural part of life in the Apple ecosystem, and SoftRAID should know that. I understand that the SoftRAID app that is now being licensed has more features than the light one that used to only support my use case -- but I can hardly be blamed for that. I certainly have no need for or want to pay for extra features beyond the RAID 5 driver that has always worked. I believe in paying for software, but I strongly feel that $99 in this scenario is just outrageous.

@bldraid Absolutely agree!

@bldraid

Once again I completely agree. For international customers, this is even more outrages as it is next to impossible to receive hardware support when things go south with any OWC product.

Customer should not have their critical data held hostage due to circumstances out of their control.

@apple-answers-au

We are investing heavily in global hardware support and have reasonable support in most countries now. Assuming you are in Australia, I think we either have a depot/partner, or one is being set up.

We are doing our best to keep SoftRAID up to date and XT users with units up to 3 years old are generally getting a free upgrade. Apple has been making dramatic changes to their hardware, and we do our best to keep up. We are still supporting SoftRAID fully, for units that are out of warranty, its reasonable to charge for upgrades in those circumstances. SoftRAID is only needed for users running Big Sur, otherwise SoftRAID 5 will run "forever".

Without purchasing new hardware, you are getting additional capabilities and ongoing technical support.  Even if it is on a forum, you have to admit, the responses here are timely and to the issue.

I understand your perspective also. Especially outside the USA, computers are more expensive and budgets are much tighter.

Its a challenging world both to be a customer and a producer. Please try to understand our position also. I am communicating yours in house.

@softraid-support Your main web page still lists SoftRAID XT as being an available (and thus by implication maintained) version.

To add insult to injury, SoftRAIDTool 6.0.3 has been crashing repeatedly (I filed a support request with the details).

I have 5 days left on my "free trial" -- still hoping (likely pointlessly) that you guys will reconsider this excessive charge to enclosure customers with XT.

@bldraid

XT is still available as version 6, but there is now only the SoftRAID application and the license activates either XT or Pro.

5.8.4 is an end of life version, which has been supported through 35 updates, all free updates. XT Version 6 is being provided at no charge to every older unit under warranty. This is as long as 3 years for units purchased with drives.

Users have been getting free updates since 2014. I cannot think of very many software products that have ever done this. We have updated SoftRAID from Snow Leopard, through Catalina.

We are investigating the srtool crashes, not sure what the cause is, but we will be fixing it.

@softraid-support Why isn't XT version 6 at least being provided at a much lower rate than the Pro upgrade price to units older than 3 years? I believe your upgrade page was asking me to pay $99 for the Pro upgrade, which I don't need.

That seems not correct. I don't want you to post your serial online, so send it to support at softraid. i can take a look.

Did you buy your enclosure populated with drives?