The saga continues…
The reinstallation of my main desktop continues. It’s always such a chore to restore. One thing that really frustrates me is all of the different methods of registration/activation that my software has. For some, it’s pretty straightforward and all you have to do is enter in your registration key and then it works. The ones that really piss me off are the ones that have to do with activation. And guess what? Microsoft’s is perhaps the easiest one to deal with. As much as Microsoft is maligned about their activation scheme, I find it to be a reasonable compromise and in most cases, there’s no hassle at all. Yes, you can be hassled if you’re trying to activate multiple times within a short period of time but otherwise it leaves you alone.
The ones that piss me off the most are the ones that are time limited. Basically, you are sent a key after purchasing a product and then you can immediately register the product. However, if you need to reinstall it later (even on the exact same hardware) the key they send you fails and you must request a new key. Ok, so that alone isn’t the problem.
The problem is that there’s no automated way to get the key. You have to manually send the company an e-mail with proof of purchase and then wait for them to send you a new key. This might not be a problem if the company operates 24/7 but in most cases, they do not. So, as a paying customer, you’re forced to wait days for a new key. That’s ridiculous! The longest I should have to wait is 24 hours. Anything longer is unacceptable. It makes me want to search out a way to hack the software so I can just get working again.
I understand the need to keep piracy at bay but ruining the experience for paying customers is not the way to do it. I think there needs to be some sort of automation so that a user can automatically look up their own registration keys (even if they change). There are plenty of other good models out there on the market so a lot of these companies just need to get a clue and stop alienating their customers.
