WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE

[Balafre]

I congratulate Capture One!
They replied to my query of 6 August on 2 Sept! It was only a licensing issue, so should be easily resolved. But, no.

What sort of hatred and disgust do they have for their customers? ( And to be fair I'm only a long time user of C1 from v6, and owned P1 backs from the H5, and now run a IQ3/100 w/extensive SK BR lens collection - if I don't rate as their target customer, who are they trying to cater for???)

A month!?!?!?

YOU DAMN LAZY (*insert Danish word for children of unmarried parents!!!*)

[Ray Harrison]

I congratulate Capture One!
They replied to my query of 6 August on 2 Sept! It was only a licensing issue, so should be easily resolved. But, no.

What sort of hatred and disgust do they have for their customers? ( And to be fair I'm only a long time user of C1 from v6, and owned P1 backs from the H5, and now run a IQ3/100 w/extensive SK BR lens collection - if I don't rate as their target customer, who are they trying to cater for???)

A month!?!?!?

YOU DAMN LAZY (*insert Danish word for children of unmarried parents!!!*)

That’s too bad to hear  . I have opened maybe 4 support tickets with them over the last 18 months (one in the last couple of weeks) and they have always gotten back to me within 24 hours on weekdays, occasionally a little longer on the weekends. That said, I think us Phase customers are less a target market now that they are separate companies. Their major revenue comes from people who purchase for other manufacturers, I think.

[rabanito]

YOU DAMN LAZY (*insert Danish word for children of unmarried parents!!!*)

I thought that in the XXI century there is no special word for that anymore.

[Pavel]

I heard that they were bought up by a Chinese conglomerate ( don't know the details or if it's true - but that was on their forums) and since then they have had a lot of customer complaints of poor service and have lost a large number of formerly very faithful customers - including myself - over their licensing seats downgrades.  I've used their product since version 2 and won't buy another upgrade to neither of my licenses. 

They have become horribly arrogant and don't fix little snafus ever, but just pile on new features. And the prices keep going up.  No thanks.

[mtakeda]

After this many insults I now hesitate to send e mail support request because it only result in bitterness and disappointment.

[TechTalk]

I heard that they were bought up by a Chinese conglomerate ( don't know the details or if it's true

Why post it when you don't know if it's true? It isn't by the way.

[Ray Harrison]

I heard that they were bought up by a Chinese conglomerate ( don't know the details or if it's true - but that was on their forums)

Hasselblad is owned by a Chinese company - DJI - who builds drones/gimbals. Phase One and Capture One are owned by a Dutch investment company. All of it is easy enough to verify by simply looking it up rather than relying on forums.

[Ray Harrison]

After this many insults I now hesitate to send e mail support request because it only result in bitterness and disappointment.

Can you share communications from Capture One where you feel you were insulted? That’s the opposite of my own experience.

[myotis]

Hasselblad is owned by a Chinese company - DJI - who builds drones/gimbals. Phase One and Capture One are owned by a Dutch investment company. All of it is easy enough to verify by simply looking it up rather than relying on forums.

I think you mistyped "Dutch" for Danish.

It's a Danish Investment company (Axcel) which jointly owns the company along with the employees. Axcel bought their 60% of the company from a British company Silverfleet Capital in 2019.

[Ray Harrison]

Yes, my mistake and my embarrassment 

[myotis]

Yes, my mistake and my embarrassment 

Easily done :-)

[StephaneB]

When I was using C1, it was on Windows and the way the database slowed down once containing more than 20,000 pictures was really frustrating. After a few exchanges with tech support, they offered as a solution that I store everything on SSD to help the problem. That is when they started to lose. They completely lost e when the next version added features in the edit tools, which was already their strong part, and improved nothing to the database behaviour.

I went back to Adobe's subscription and I am really glad I did.

[nemophoto]

I have had an awful time with Capture One CS as well. It will take weeks, even months, to get an answer... if they bother to respond at all. However, C1 is not the only one these days. I don't think anyone offers quality CS support these days. The folks at Skylum suck. Topaz is a modicum better, but not like before. ON1 Photo is not responsive at all. Alien Skin was really great. But as "Exposure", they are slow to respond as well. Adobe is, of course, almost non-existent half the time (unless you chat with India).

I have largely stopped using C1 because it's become slower. awful to tether with. On a shoot a couple months ago, the computer bogged down becuase it was hundreds of files behind in creating previews.

[Paul2660]

Can't say I find any of the companies very responsive currently, Adobe included. The days of picking up a phone and speaking to someone with knowledge and command of you language are gone.

I also agree that with larger camera files, P1 3100, 4150 or GFX100 files, C1 does bog down and can end up taking much longer than I would like to see for working on a single file with multiple layers and masks.  If you keep the number of layers under 3 then it seems to handle things fine.

This is on a older MacPro, Xeon box, 64Gb of ram, and 4 processors.  Windows is about the same unless you are on a i9 machine or newer.

The initial reports of C1 on the M1 Macbookpro are encouraging, especially the M1 max, but supply of those currently is 0.

Paul

[mtakeda]

After this many insults I now hesitate to send e mail support request because it only result in bitterness and disappointment.

I agree with that stressful situation. They have not responded to my help request almost one month.  I am seriously going back to Lightroom although they are not any better.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... What sort of hatred and disgust do they have for their customers?...

YOU DAMN LAZY (*insert Danish word for children of unmarried parents!!!*)

[Ben Rubinstein]

I just had a (canned) response over 2 months after I put in my support ticket. They're requesting screen shot video of a bug they could check themselves if they took 30 seconds to actually bother. They're blaming the situation in Ukraine for 'some delay'. Over 2 months is not 'some delay', it's a catastrophic customer service let down. My thoughts are with those in the war zones but after two months, it's simply not an excuse for a company not situated in, or anywhere near Ukraine.

[myotis]

My thoughts are with those in the war zones but after two months, it's simply not an excuse for a company not situated in, or anywhere near Ukraine.

Are you aware that Capture One  technical support is situated in Ukraine?

[Balafre]

...and what excuse did C1 have a year before the war started?
Ultimately, in my opinion, C1 allows an exponentially more refined RAW manipulation model than Adobe does, and whilst C1 may ignore customers at least they aren't so blatant about farming us like livestock and siphoning off our futures. Adobe's business model abhors me.
Yet colour is very important to my work and business, and C1 allows me eminently more latitude to adjust it than any other current algorithm.
Sometimes the least-worst option is the best way forward.

[myotis]

...and what excuse did C1 have a year before the war started?

I was responding to the assumption that technical support was in Denmark and therefore no where near the war zone.

I have no idea why some people have such bad experiences with C1 support. Personally, while it's not as good as it used to be (when I would often get a response within an hour or so of raising a ticket), I'm not experiencing the problems that others are having. Over the last few years i have usually had to wait until the next business day, and on one occasion I think it was couple of days before I got a response.

On one occasion I waited longer than this, but that was because I complained about them dropping High Sierra Support at a point release. This triggered an over the weekend discussion with Senior Management, before they got back to me to say that support for High Sierra had been reinstated for the duration of the current version, but dropped at the next full release.   That was Release 21.