How do I cancel our order, and delete my account and all information from Digilent's site?

[zzz]

It was very disappointing to have purchased hardware (AD3) from Digilent, and then later discover that in order to download the software required to be able to use the AD3, customers appear to be REQUIRED to create a Digilent account, which also requires the customers to enter into a legally-binding agreement. Digilent is the only test equipment company I know of that doesn’t let customers (or anyone, for that matter) download control software for their instruments, without requiring creating accounts or entering into contracts. It’s like paying for a car, and then when you want to start it, you’re told you need to create an account with the manufacturer, sign a legal document, and _then_ you can download the firmware for your ECM that will let you finally start and drive the car.

So, here is what I think would be much more fair to your customers:

1) Allow any software required to run/control the hardware you sell, be freely downloaded – without having to create accounts and agree to legal terms beyond basic software licensing.

2) If you’re not going to do 1), then make it perfectly clear to your customers – before they actually pay you any money – that you will require them to create accounts and agree to Digilent’s legal terms, before they’ll be able to use the product they purchased.

3) Make it easy, clear and obvious to customers how they can delete their accounts, request Digilent to delete their personal information, and cancel order/make returns.  It's possible all of this information is on your website, and I missed it.

While I sincerely apologize for my harsh and angry tone in the previous version of this message, I remain tired and disgusted by corporations treating their customers as though they have every right to grab and hold as much information as possible about their customers, and expect their customers to enter into agreements that _really_ should be reviewed by customer’s legal council. That is unfair to customers – especially if they aren’t forewarned about these mechanisms before they make a purchase.

Sincerely,

Paul

Edit: Further clarification

Edited December 1, 2023 by zzz
Further clarification

[JColvin]

Hi @zzz,

I'm sad to hear the customer experience is not what you wanted. The Forum here is where the Digilent support engineers, such as myself, are able to answer questions in such a way so that other customers with similar queries can also benefit from the answer.

Cancelling the order would be done through your Store account, or there's likely a way on the order confirmation email to send a message to the order support team with your order number already associated with the message. Otherwise you can fill out the form on here: https://digilent.com/shop/sales-and-order-support/.

In terms of deleting personal information, there is a form for it available in our Legal & Privacy page, https://digilent.com/shop/legal-privacy/. Ctrl+F for "Data Request Form" will jump to the form you're looking for.

I doubt you're inclined at this point to let me know which particular aspect you feel is unfair, but feel free to post back or private message me with details. I'm not on the compliance team or anything like that, but my gut feeling is that particular line items are more likely to be considered than blanket statements.

Thanks,
JColvin

[Kristoff]

You can immediately delete your Digilent account and all associated data as described here.  Keep in mind that doing so will delete your Digilent store account and order history, so please make sure you complete your refund before deleting your account.

-Sam

[zzz]

Thanks JColvin and Kristoff for tolerating me and for genuinely trying to help.  That means a lot.  I apologize to you both for my harsh tone and for not making my post more clear.  I hope my edits to my original post will further clarify what I feel is not fair to customers.  I really want to like Digilent, but the policies of forcing customers to create accounts and enter unnecessary legal agreements will continue to be an issue.  Hopefully Digilent management will examine how other test equipment manufacturers deal with these situations, and will then realize putting as few burdens and legal obligations on customers will help everyone in the end.

Thanks again for your help!

[zzz]

So I finally thought I might be able to live with my purchase of the AD3, +other_stuff, thanks to the helpful information from JColvin and Kristoff, by deleting all my Digilent accounts (hard to keep track of them all at this point), having Digilent delete all of my personal information, finally freeing me from any legally binding contracts with them, and still being able to download software updates for THE HARDWARE I ALREADY PAID FOR.  But then I did some further reading on these forums to see if I could figure out what the heck is going on with Digilent.  Sadly, it doesn't look good to me.  I've provided links to some of the pertinent threads  (posted below), so that folks can have a better idea of the possible traps that have been laid for them.

QUESTIONS FOR DIGILENT: 

Will anyone who owns an AD3 (or any other similar Digilent product, like AD2, etc.), used or new, purchased from Digilent or not, be able to freely download the latest software updates for it, without having to have any official/legal affiliation with Digilent, or fill out any information or forms, for as long as the user owns the device, and/or, as long as Digilent is still in business?  Can you please provide us with that guarantee?

You see, I'd like to have all of my information deleted from Digilent's systems, but still be able to have some guarantee that I'll be able to download software updates for the AD3 I purchased, via a simple direct download link, as every other T&E company I know allows, as long as Digilent is in business.  Or, do you recommend that it would be best for customers with similar concerns to return the product, for what I presume would be a full refund, including shipping?  (After all, how could Digilent possibly claim ANY of this is the fault of your customers?)

All I wanted to do was to purchase a product and be able to use it, unencumbered.  Ideally, I wanted to be able to trust and appreciate Digilent as a business partner.  I didn't want to be forced into completely unnecessary life long legal agreements with yet another grabby corporation that just wants its customers to "trust" them.  Surely you've heard that trust is something good companies earn?  From further reading on these forums, I now have suspicions that NI is the cause of much if not all of this mess.  What a terrible shame.

And, by the way, these sorts of policies make integrating Digilent parts into any of our product BOMs absolutely impossible.  We have to be able to fully trust our partners, and Digilent will have to make significant changes to the way they treat their customers before we would even dream of any such dependencies.

The other thing that really sucks about this all, is that I'm responsible for a number of other folks purchasing Digilent products.  Now I have to explain to them how Digilent's policies are different than every other T&E provider I know of, because Digilent tries to force customers, WITHOUT ANY FOREWARNING,  into legal agreements in order to download software necessary to use the products they have already paid for.  Rigol, Siglent, R&S, Nikon, Keysight, etc., etc., let ANYONE ANYTIME ANYWHERE download the software and support needed to run the instruments they own (or even don't own).  This helps their sales in many many ways, including making it possible for purchasers of even ancient equipment, to easily download the resources they need to keep their hardware running.  It also allows customers to easily and quickly download the software, just to test it out.  Digilent is making this all untenable now, because every download requires capturing "customer" (whether you're a customer of not)  information, and forcing customers to deal with many pages of legally binding contract terms, including forcing them to create user accounts.

Yep, I feel like 2x an idiot now, and I have to apologize to to these people because I recommended products before I knew the full ramifications of Digilent's customer policies.  And yes, I'm very embarrassed for wasting their time, and possibly, their money.

I hope this information can help anyone else, before they end up wasting their precious time dealing with the very upsetting customer experience that we've had to go through.  I also feel so bad for the good Digilent employees who really do care about their customers.  I strongly suspect they don't agree with these apparently rather new policies, and they are so right -- they don't deserve this either.  I wish them all the best, and thanks in advance to any Digilent representative who can answer my questions above.

 

 

[Kristoff]

Hey Paul,

Here are some responses and comments.  Sorry for the formatting, there is a lot to cover :D

I'm hesitant to provide any future looking blanket 'guarantees' here because this is a very broad topic.  Digilent's current model for our test and measurement equipment (AD2/AD3/ADP, etc) is that the software necessary to use the device, specifically WaveForms and the WaveForms SDK, is included at no additional charge.  Moving away from this model would be a huge change for Digilent and not one that we would take lightly.  If, at some point, we sell hardware that requires an additional software purchase for base functionality, or has hardware features that are firmware locked and require extra payment to unlock, we would make that very clear to customers during the purchase process.  To me, this sounds like it would be confusing and disappointing for a lot of our customers and I don't see Digilent ever doing this.

A more likely scenario is Digilent offering paid software that provide advanced functionality or services on top of our existing software offerings.  For example (and I'm just making this up) a paid add-on for WaveForms that does advanced analysis on biological signals like EKG, ECG, and EEG.  Since this is is a niche feature and would likely not be used by most customers but requires a significant amount of engineering work, we'd justify our effort by charging customers that value this functionality rather than building it into WaveForms directly.

If we go down this path, Digilent has a responsibility to make it clear what features are part of the 'base package' that is included with the hardware purchase and what features are only available through additional purchases beyond the hardware purchase.  

Regarding the official/legal affiliation with Digilent, all of Digilent's software (and virtually all software in general) has an End User License Agreement (EULA) that you must comply with.  I don't think that is necessarily what you meant, but just throwing it out there that one way or another you do have to agree to the EULA to use the software.  

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You can download WaveForms here without creating an account.  We plan to migrate this to our main download repository at https://files.digilent.com/ where you can download all of our software without creating an account.

Once you install WaveForms it has an optional auto-update feature which can be used to get updates without an account as well.

The WaveForms installers can be saved locally and do not depend on a connection to Digilent servers to install or use, so worst case, even if Digilent disappears you will be able to continue to use the software you're using today.  This is also useful if you're working on a machine without internet access.

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Not saying this makes Digilent 'right' to encourage a login to download the software, but it is very common practice by T&M companies (keysight for example) and companies in general to require a login and require users to agree to terms and conditions before downloading software.  I'm no fan of lawyers and legalese, but they are a huge part of the world we live in and that means companies consider T&C's and EULAs a requirement.

As I mentioned above, you can download our software without a login, but we created and promote the flow that uses a login and My Products because we think it adds value for most of our customers by providing an easy way to collect your hardware and software in one place, find the latest downloads, documentation, etc.  I appreciate that you don't find that valuable and would prefer to access the software without a login, which is why we decided to leave the alternate options available.

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I'd appreciate any feedback you have on specific concerns regarding Digilent's data privacy policy and the terms and conditions if you have any.  I also understand if its just a pain to read through them and you don't feel comfortable agreeing to them until you do.  

 

Lots to unpack here, so let me know what I missed or if there is anything you'd like me to elaborate on.

-Sam