Licensed version telling me it's pirated

[mikew]

Posting this here since I can't get anyone via Corel's support chat--tried several times, says no agent available. Anyway, I purchased PaintShop Pro X4 in January of 2012 (still have the email with instructions to activate the downloaded file). I have recently started getting pop ups that say the software appears to be unlicensed, and just now I got one that says it is a pirated version and will be deactivated!

I have not found a way to reach anyone by phone...I use this at my office, and actually have three licenses for the software, since there are two other people in my department who use it. Can anyone tell me how to successfully reach someone to resolve this? I appreciate any help on this!

[BrianCee]

Hello Mike

Unfortunately you are not alone - both in your problem with the software and in contacting Corel support.

We already have a topic running with a few disgruntled users and maybe you would like to have a read and add your input here :-

http://forum.corel.com/EN/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=49862


....

[mikew]

Thanks for the reply...I found that thread after I submitted my post. Getting this resolved without spending an unjustifiable amount of time does not look promising.

[LeviFiction]

We were told over at the CorelYourWay forums that Corel is aware of this problem, and claim it is only effecting four people and that they will be in touch with these people soon.

Whether or not this includes you mike I don't know, I would assume they are monitoring it on their end and not simply relying on people contacting them.

I would say if you don't hear anything from them in a few days, get a support ticket, call them directly to get this resolved and insist on getting your money back.

Since I don't work for Corel and can't say anything definitive or meaningful I can't guarantee that you'll get your money back but they will at least have to acknowledge the problem and help you.

[LarrySH]

I am the original poster who received deactivation from Corel and posted 20+ messages on this and another Corel forum before any real attention was received. I also complained about the totally crappy Corel support in those posts.

Since 10 days have elapsed since I posted this problem, and since I ultimately was forced to resort to disabling Protexsis anti-piracy software using instructions on the Internet from others who had warning messages, and since I have never received any contact from Corel to resolve this problem since then, I wanted to go on record that Corel has been just awful in the way they handled this. Whatever claim they make or made to CorelMyWay users that they were contacting the (supposedly 4) affected customers is a pile of B.S. as far as I am concerned. I have never been contacted by Corel with any technical support whatsoever.

On another forum, I did finally see, this evening, a post from a Corel employee saying that the problem had been fixed with an apology, and I consider these to be huge steps in the right direction.

I do consider Corel to be an extremely poor company in terms of support, and have stopped using all but one of the products I purchased. I intend to stop using the last remaining program as soon as I have become comfortable using a very good replacement from a much better company.

Corel has made a choice to maximize their profits by offering trivial upgrades with many bugs, poor software quality assurance, and a non functional support for existing customers, despite issuing updates, supposed bug fixes, and patches which often break properly functioning versions. Existing customers are left with many problems which cannot be solved on a user to user forum at all, or require huge amounts of wasted time to resolve. Even removing their screwed up programs takes registry hacks, unavailable utility programs to cleanup, and a lot of wasted time.

Corel has made their choice, and I have also made a choice, and that is to go elsewhere for my future software purchases. Companies like Serif, ACDsee, Adobe, and others have a more reliable and supported set of products for PaintShopPro users, and the list of better video products is a mile long with over a dozen vastly better solutions.

Larry


P.S. An interesting side-note:

In reply to my complaints and others starting the week before last, Corel claimed that they had disabled the PSP deactivation code days before Mike posted his original message above. Apparently they did not really disable it, or if they did, their disabling technique is as screwed up as the rest of their programming....... If they truly disabled their faulty code, Mike would not have shown up on this forum with the same erroneous deactivation.

[BrianCee]

Can we continue this conversation in only one thread please - this just seems to be a repeat topic.

please head over to the other topic where you will find a useful post made by a Corel manager.

This topic is locked.