Disappointing Experience with Ableton Support

[Infriad]

I'm reaching out to hear about others' experiences with Ableton Support. I've had a truly frustrating encounter, and I’m shocked that they would treat loyal customers like this.

My Experience: I’ve been using Ableton for several years, primarily for mixing and mastering and some composing, with Ableton Standard and Push 2. This year, I decided to go all in, upgrading to Ableton Suite and investing in the new Push 3 Standalone. I was excited; Push 3 quickly became my main tool in the studio. However, from the start, I noticed an issue with one of the top encoders —it would jump erratically between values when turned, often continuing to change values even after I stopped turning it. Hoping a firmware update would resolve this, I ignored it for the first few weeks. But the problem persisted, so I reached out to Ableton Support. They were initially very helpful, confirmed it was a hardware issue, and arranged a replacement Push 3 unit.

The replacement arrived, and the encoders worked as expected. However, I immediately noticed that the jog wheel felt loose and wobbly. In my first unit, the jog wheel had been sturdy and precise— and one of the key reasons I upgraded from Push 2 to Push 3 SA was because of this jog wheel, which was perfect for scrolling through presets and notes in clip-view. In the replacement-unit, the looseness not only felt bad but also interfered with functionality, as it didn’t always register turns properly.

After reporting this to Support, they sent me a replacement jog wheel to install, but it didn’t fix the problem. They then informed me that the looseness was “within tolerance” yet offered to replace the unit again if I was unsatisfied—with the caveat that they couldn’t guarantee the new jog wheel would be any better.

At this point, I requested a replacement, as the jog wheel issue was significantly more disruptive than the original encoder problem. Since then, however, I’ve heard nothing. I’ve sent seven follow-up emails and even opened a new support ticket, but have received no response.

Current Situation: It’s been two months, and I’m honestly appalled that a company of Ableton's stature would treat it's customers this way. This experience has soured my view of Ableton products to the point where I’ve stored away my Push 3 and switched to Logic Pro, just to distance myself from the frustration.

I’m curious —has anyone else experienced this level of support issues with Ableton? Would really appreciate hearing if others have gone through something similar.

[dcjams]

First and foremost, yeah that sucks. Anyone reading your post should empathise and feel your pain.

I feel your pain.

Next, sounds like support were great up until they weren’t. So there’s that, at least. It could’ve sucked from the beginning. That would be worse.

On a practical note, every time you email them you go to the bottom of the list, that’s how their ticketing works. This has been mentioned many times on the forum. So don’t keep emailing.

There were lots of issues when Push was first released. Lots of people had the same experience as you. Some are a little dismayed they released a new product, Ableton Move, without sorting things out.

There’s been a support backlog for months.

Don’t hate on the support guys and girls, they’re doing a great job. There’s just not enough of them.
Hate on management and the bean counters who decide what resources to allocate to support.
Spolier: not enough. It’s their fault not the poor chumps on the end of our angry emails.

Finally, they will sort you out in the end. It’s not right you have to wait as long as you do but that’s the state of play, right here, right now.

[[jur]]

Did you hear back since then?

[billpayer]

I had an issue with my Push 2 last year, and although the process took longer than I expected, I have to say when I interacted with support they were fantastic.
In your case, it sounds like you’ve been let down by poor quality control, and not support as such. Although in the last part of your post, it does feel like you’ve fallen down to the back of the support queue. Which is unfortunate.

[Infriad]

First and foremost, yeah that sucks. Anyone reading your post should empathise and feel your pain..

Thanks for your response! I did not know that their ticketing worked that way.. I can see that my ticket is still in Open state so maybe the will get back to me some day but I seriously doubt it.

I'm worried what will happen if I get more issues with push 3 in the future. It feels like I'm blacklisted in their system now. I'm actually considering selling P3 just to get rid of this feeling.

[Infriad]

Did you hear back since then?

Nope, their latest reply is from September 13..

[Infriad]

Update: So I finally got an answer from Ableton! There has been an issue with their inbox so they have not seen all my responses. Anyway they will send me a new push 3 so hopefully it would work better.