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  • How long does reseller fulfillment usually take?

    I ordered several VSL libraries from an authorized reseller two days ago. Since these are downloadable products, I expected to have the product keys in hand relatively quickly. It's been 48 hours and I've only heard that "This should be going through here very shortly.  We're just waiting on the VSL people to do the last step and we'll be good to go." But if that's true, it's already almost 3:00 PM in Vienna on a Friday. Ideally, I'd like to be able to download these instruments by the weekend.

    Does it usually take 48+ hours for resellers to process VSL purchases? I would ask the reseller for an update, but as of this morning, their firewall is bouncing my emails. [:(]


  • Dear Symfoniq,

    Thanks for your purchase of our products at an authroized reseller!

    I'm sorry to hear of this issue. May I ask where you placed your order?
    All our authorized resellers can process orders right away by ordering in our dealer intranet, so any hold up is not the fault of the Vienna Symphonic Library. With resellers, it unfortunately can take some time until the order is approved by the purchasing department of the shop itself.

    So please do try to contact your reseller, this is the best way to ensure that you'll receive your VSL products as soon as possible.

    Best regards from Vienna,

    Stefan


  • Thanks for the response, Stefan.

    The reseller is Sweetwater. I'm having a hard time getting in touch with them today. They are having a "GearFest" right now so maybe that's affecting the availability of their staff.

    One of the VSL products I ordered was Dimension Strings. I'm concerned that Sweetwater hasn't submitted my order to VSL yet, so will I still qualify for the early bird pricing if the cellos are released before Sweetwater processes my order?


  • Symfoniq,

    I constantly purchase Vienna products through Sweetwater.  I actually just got off the phone with my sales engineer, and he said that GearFest will probably take away some of the promptness their known for.  I placed an order for Woodwinds II (Standard Library), andmy sales guy said he'll put it through, but it might take an extra day because of GearFest.  I'm sure everything will be fine.  I've been buying through Sweetwater for a couple years now, and they have yet to let me down.  I've gotten download codes fulfilled with them from a couple hours to one day, so they're pretty decent when it comes to the time.  I hope this info is of some help!


  • Thanks for the reassurance, jhstrong. This is my first buying experience with Sweetwater, and I was starting to think I'd made a mistake.


  • I understand that.  Sweetwater is great.  You'll get the right price, trust me.  You haven't made a mistake or anything.  GearFest is just a big ordeal for them, so getting orders out might take a little longer than usual. 


  • Sweetwater just got this squared away for me, and yes, the chaos of GearFest was (understandably) taking a bit of a toll on the staff.


  • I've ordered VSL products through Sweetwater before and I love it.  I am pretty sure they can refine their system a bit since according to VSL their buying is automated, so VSL sends their authorization codes instantly.  But often the price or the payment options are more than worth the extra day.

    One word of warning though, I tend to come online on Fridays and purchase things on that day of the week.  It's payday and the most convenient day to budget and make money-related plans, such as large purchases.  I've never yet received a VSL license purchased Friday earlier than Monday, since they're very much a "closed-after-6-and-on-weekends" kind of company.

    Great service though and well worth that minor inconvenience!  Glad you're up and running!


  • I knew who the reseller was before I even opened this thread, lol... I'm sure they used gearfest as an excuse, but Sweetwater has given me problems with digital downloads and I no longer will purchase from them. When I tried buying VEP5 through them last year, it took several days to get my license. They blamed VSL, when they knew full well that they had not processed my order. VSL assured me that there is never a hangup on their end when an order goes through as it's pretty much automated. They also didn't sound so surprised that Sweetwater was throwing them under the bus. When I tried to inform the "sales engineer" of this he just said "They are like, half way around the world, dude." These guys don't know how the internet works, I suppose . On the flip side, I just ordered VSL woodwinds I, Solo Strings full, and Dimension strings, all from Best Service. Not only are their prices better for me, but I got each of my serial numbers via email almost instantly. Pretty crazy considering how they are on the other side of the world and all /sarcasm. If Sweetwaters sales team was actually as good as their marketing team, they could actually be an outstanding company. Not that Sweetwater is all bad, they are local to me and so I've done enough business over the last couple decades with them to have had both positive and negative experiences, but the negative ones stick with you longer. If anyone is interested in buying through Sweetwater and never have before, you can PM me and I'll give you the names of a couple sales guys over there that are really good and won't BS you. When you buy from Sweetwater your sales engineer will be the one who you do all your future business with, so it's important to get a good one! I'm glad to hear they got you up and running, though!

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    About the weekends, they are actually only open on Sundays during the holiday season (unless something changed recently). Thats the thing about Sundays here in Indiana, can't buy beer, and can't play around at Sweetwater, 😛 As far as Sweetwaters digital downloads go, you get hit with sales tax if you are in Indiana (for some reason I have this idea that you are in indianapolis or close too, I could be wrong though...) People in other states don't have to worry about that, but it's something to think about. Thats how it ended up being so much cheaper for me to buy through Best Service, and it actually looks like Audiodeluxe has some awesome deals going on as well. I was thinking about picking up dimension brass from them as they have it marked under $500!

    @Casiquire said:

    I've ordered VSL products through Sweetwater before and I love it.  I am pretty sure they can refine their system a bit since according to VSL their buying is automated, so VSL sends their authorization codes instantly.  But often the price or the payment options are more than worth the extra day.

    One word of warning though, I tend to come online on Fridays and purchase things on that day of the week.  It's payday and the most convenient day to budget and make money-related plans, such as large purchases.  I've never yet received a VSL license purchased Friday earlier than Monday, since they're very much a "closed-after-6-and-on-weekends" kind of company.

    Great service though and well worth that minor inconvenience!  Glad you're up and running!


  • Thanks for mentioning Best Service and AudioDeluxe. I'll be considering them for future VSL purchases.


  • I am in Indianapolis, actually, it's cool to meet someone else nearby.  As far as sales tax, technically everyone's supposed to pay it for downloaded products from other states, just most websites don't have that automated and you're trusted to declare it while filing taxes.  So the tax thing doesn't really bother me.  For me, they've been pretty reliable in the sense that they're never later than "next-business-day" and their prices are lower than BestService.  Plus most products will take a while to download and install anyway so I know I won't really get instant gratification.

    I'm kind of surprised to hear they've taken that long for others though.

    Edit: I'm glad someone else mentioned Audiodeluxe too, they have some of the lowest prices I've seen, especially now during their sale.  Anybody know how long their fulfillment normally takes?


  • I had a coupon for BestService so it was cheaper, lol. Unfortunately I didn't check out Audiodeluxe until the next day and I would have saved $100 more bucks on Dimension Strings...owell! For me, sometimes I'd pay little more for instance access, but I'm an impatient fellow! I actually bought Dimension Brass from Audiodeluxe on Friday at around 5 or 6pm hoosier time, and I was downloaded and playing with it at around 8pm. Not bad since they manually fill their orders. Also got a really good deal on a EZdrummer to Superior Drummer 2.0 Crossgrade from them, and they shipped the discs super quick (I just chose the free shipping). For Sweetwater, my main gripe is with the digital download and the fact they didn't have the manhood to fess up that the hold up was on their end. Instead they tried to insult my intelligence. I've bought much other gear from them though, and you can usually get a deal if you ask, the only problem is that it's sorta like russian roulette when you're assigned your sales engineer...gotta hope for a good one if you want to have a real genuine conversation about gear.