One of the post from the link ,
Customers who have purchased one of these Vista cards should consider filing a complaint with your state's Attorney General's Office. Creative has not provided the advertised product. Their support is intentionally lacking. And they have knowingly sold a substandard product.
Here is a full contact list for all states. Tell your Attorney General what you have experienced as a Creative customer.
and another,
I don't usually bother posting rants on forums because usually when people say "I will never buy from company X again!" it's just a hollow threat. I also haven't got any time for online petitions as they never achieve anything.
The above said - I'm not going to be buying another Creative sound card again.
I bought an Audigy 2 ZS Platinum a few years ago, along with a Cambridge Soundworks DTT3500 5.1 speaker system, both of these have served me well to date. I don't believe in replacing hardware "just cos" when there is no justification for it.
When the X-Fi came out I was hugely disappointed to find out that Creative had effectively obsoleted the DTT3500 speakers by changing the protocol for the digital DIN port. There was apparently no logical reason for Creative to do this, and the net result simply was that the DTT3500 speaker set would not work with X-Fi cards, if I wanted 5.1+ sound I would have to buy a newer set of speakers (Gigaworks no doubt). This change annoyed a lot of DTT3500 owners as it seemed like Creative had changed the digital DIN output for no other reason than to deliberately obsolete the older speaker system and force users to upgrade.
Since I had no intention of paying £hundreds for a new speaker system when my DTT3500 set worked perfectly fine (not to mention that my Audigy card did everything I needed it to) I carried on using my Audigy card when I switched to Vista. Like most people I soon found out that the Creative Vista drivers were buggy, and it wasn't long before Creative stopped providing Vista driver updates completely.
Then I found Daniel_K's drivers, which fixed a whole host of problems for me and also provided features that were apparently impossible to provide on Audigy soundcards. Let's not forget - Daniel_K isn't even a Creative employee, he's hasn't got access to the source driver code, etc. The fact he was able to achieve what he did is hugely impressive.
I had assumed that Creative turned a blind eye to this, maybe they figured that they didn't want to commit resources to developing drivers for older cards anymore. I can live with that, I wouldn't expect Microsoft to be providing updates for XP in 2015. What doesn't sit well with me is threads like this because they show categorically that the problem Creative has with Daniel_K is not that he is infringing copyright (which he isn't), it's that he is providing functionality that Creative has deliberately omitted from their Audigy Vista drivers, or has flat out lied about whether features were even possible on the Audigy cards.
This single thread proves that Creative just cares about their bottom line - they want people to upgrade their hardware simply because they want to milk more money from their consumers. They could provide the functionality Daniel_K has enabled in his modded drivers themselves, and probably more besides (since they have direct access to the source), but they choose not to because they don't want users to be able to carry on using "old" hardware like Audigy cards.
I am disgusted by Creatives attitude to their consumer base. There is NOTHING wrong with my Audigy soundcard, and there is NOTHING wrong with my DTT3500 speaker system. I will be damned if I am going to pay Creative £hundreds to upgrade to whatever their current "supported" gen is simply because they refuse to provide functionality, or worse still - will only provide deliberately crippled or buggy drivers to older cards. This is a disgusting business practice.
Creative will never seen a penny from me again, and that's not a hollow threat believe me.
and another,
This is not the first time Creative chose to underhandedly destroy competition to cover up their own incompetence and/or greed. I didn't forget what they did to Aureal, whose A3D technology was VASTLY superior to EAX in positioning and reflections, and Creative has not surpassed A3D 2.0 TO THIS DAY. They bought up and muted Aureal's technology. I still have a state-of-the-art Aureal SQ 2500 in my drawer, and I am waiting for the day of Creative's demise so hopefully the IP will be released and someone will develop XP/Vista/Linux drivers.
On March 5th, 1998
[1],
Creative Labs sued Aureal for patent infringement. Aureal countersued because they believed Creative was guilty of patent infringement. After numerous lawsuits Aureal won a favorable ruling in December 1999, which vindicated Aureal from these patent infringement claims, but the legal costs were too high and Aureal filed for
bankruptcy. On September 21st, 2000, Creative acquired Aureal's assets from its
bankruptcy trustee for US$ 32 million. The purchase included patents, trademarks, other property, as well as a release to Creative from any infringement by Creative of Aureal's intellectual property including
A3D. The purchase effectively eliminated Creative's only competition in the gaming audio market. It also eliminated any requirements for Creative to pay past or future royalties as well as damages for products which incorporated Aureal's technology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aureal
And another ,
Hi there,
I just registered to tell you that this story's spreading all over germany now, too.
http://www.pcgameshardware.de/aid,6...eiber-Modder_loest_Welle_der_Entruestung_aus/
Additionally i want to say thanks to Daniel_K, for his great work made many people quite a bit happier with their creative-products.
And finally,
Just returned 2 X-Fi cards and got my money back...
Think about what you are doing to youre customers.
If you are not willing to see what problems you are causing of this type of behaviour.
Well then you probably should start to make Matcbox cars or something.
I have been a customer of your products since 1996 and used a lot of money on your products.
But I can ashure you that I will never buy a Creative product ever again.
But the best post of all was this ,
Creative,You got a small part of the message..... let me reiterate what I said in message 153 on point number 11...
11. Best way to win back your customers
a. Admit you made a horrible mistake
b. Apologize to your customers
c. Donate cash to Daniel K for his time for FIXING something you should have. As you have
obviously made extra money due to his free work repairing something you refused to.
d. If you do not donate to his cause, then at hire they guy, as he seems extremely capable.
e. Make it known across the Internet of your willingness to eat the crow on this one, and beg
people to help you out in this.
A few other aspects I would add...
Huge point here is to apologize to your customers.
Once done, then come up with a step by step plan as to how you plan to FIX the issue going forward of how you treated Daniel_K, then how you are going to actually IMPROVE customer service, and finally how you are going to FIX how you deal with your drivers and support.
This would go a long way of winning back your customers, as you have let so much water go over the dam of damaging your relations with them, that you hardly left any reason to have the dam in the first place.
The more people who stand up to big companies who sell stuff that does not work properly the better the world will be . No one minds paying for goods and services that work . Fight back against the rippof artists .
feedback... "Uh, that didn't come out right" in action?
