A matter of Economics and Fairness

Any American dealer who sells Steinberg products to a Canadian resident does a grave, horrible and heartless disservice to that customer. Any Canadian resident who buys Cubase or other products from a USA or other foreign based retailers do themselves a great disservice. These customers are all ineligible for Steinberg Canada technical support and product upgrades sales.

You won't be able to register in Canada

When Steinberg Canada imports Steinberg software into Canada it defrays all shipping, currency and imports costs for our authorized Canadian dealers. We resell these products through our dealer network and generate profits from these transactions. A part of these profits is used to fund technical support personnel who are available during business hours for live, telephone technical support for registered users. We take pride in taking care of our customers and frankly our customers deserve this level of care since they paid for it.

When you buy a Steinberg product from USA based retailers, the profits generated from your purchase contribute to technical support staff in the USA. That’s where the profits go and therefore that’s where you will get registered and supported. Although this is a terrible inconvenience, few, if any, retailers in the USA will tell you this when they happily take your money. Some of them don't really know, others don't really care, but many US retailers know exactly the headache this transaction will cause. They do it anyway for the love of money.

You won't receive Technical Support from Steinberg Canada

The prospect of calling another country, to sit in a wait cue, as a foreigner, asking for technical support is not a palatable one for most Canadians - especially, when technical support services are available right here in Canada and have been available right here in Canada since 1991.

What happens when you call Steinberg USA technical support and they discover that you are Canadian? They will tell you to call Steinberg Canada. Of course, you can’t call Steinberg Canada because you are not registered here, since your US purchase contributed Zero to our service center. Now you are stuck in an uncomfortable limbo – not wanted in the USA and not eligible for Canadian support, although you live in Canada. A call to the USA retailer for support may be your only lifeline - good luck. Most of these operations are established for selling not for support.

You won't be able to purchase Upgrades from Steinberg Canada

Upgrades are another heartache that awaits anyone who buys from US retailers. All our upgrades can ONLY be sold to people registered in our Canadian database. That means people who buy their Cubase in Canada from one of our authorized dealer.

For example, the upgrade to the brand new Cubase SX3 is only available to registered Canadian customers. If you bought your product in the USA, you will be forced to contact Steinberg USA for upgrades and deal with the shipping, brokerage and GST charges you will incur. Of course, you will have to do this for the upgrade to SX4, SX5, and so on. Meanwhile our Canadian customers can simply call up and order their upgrade pay the GST and a UPS shipping charge.

What you can do now?

If you bought a product from the USA recently, there is some slight hope. We suggest you return the product for a full refund. This is your best option. USA retailers should know that the practice of shipping Steinberg products across the border into Canada is tantamount to a "sentence into the wilderness" for the end user. They do it anyway because they can’t resist a few dollars of profit and Canadians do it because they incorrectly believe that they will save a penny here or there. You won't. The result is heartache for you and for us. The only winner is the US retailer who has your money and provides ZERO service to you. In fact, they are in no position to provide any service to you.

This is our nightmare also - a resident Canadian Steinberg customer reduced to a user-without-a-home, unable to get the full service and support they deserve and paid for. At the same time, Steinberg Canada is a business and not a charity service. We need to make money from the sales of our products in order to continue to deploy technical support and upgrade services. It’s only fair.

US Retailers Do The Right Thing

We ask that all US and foreign based retailers do the right thing and not sell Steinberg products into Canada. And for customers and potential customers, we can only ask that you think twice. The prices in Canada are the same or lower than in the USA, so there is nothing to save by buying from a US retailer. There is absolutely no short or long term advantage to buying from the USA. On the contrary, buying in the USA is a guarantee of headaches with new updates and when things go wrong.

You buy Canadian and we take care of you. That's been our deal since 1991. It’s worth it.

The Steinberg Canada Team