musicnotes.com

Good library, tempered by the not so good

I've been using music notes for years. I enjoy their extensive library and the ease of transposition -- however, when printing you have to be careful it doesn't revert back to the default key. In fact, everything has to go just right in printing because you've usually only got one shot to get it right -- and so many things can go wrong during the printing process.Music notes is aware of this because there is a giant tutorial on solving printer problems. Even so, I've had browser issues, garbled music, key reversion issues, etc. There is a question at the end: "Did your music print OK?" After 5 or so prints of garbled music and a totally useless message to customer service with screenshots, the rep responded by berating me for trying too many times and treating me like a liar/thief. He even got mad that I bought the music twice and had still not been able to print it. Anyway, after help from three people in my family, including two tech-savvy kids in their 20s, we finally got one version of the music to print through one of our phones. The other problem people have mentioned is that you can only see the beginning page, which is not too helpful as this page is often just the intro to the song, and you can't tell if the song changes key later or the level of difficulty it might get to. (They rate songs for difficulty, but that's rather subjective.)Customer service is hit or miss. The last exchange I had was so bad it prompted me to write this review. It could not have been any more condescending, disinterested, or unwilling to help. Even with screenshots, the customer service rep. asked me what was wrong, indicating he had not even comprehended or looked at my message but dismissed it out of hand. Even after I told him I'd bought the music twice because of problems, I got lectured for being unable to print correctly and given canned answers like "try another browser" DUH already on their tutorial. Now I just go into the experience knowing that I'm not going to get any help from customer service. My kids are my customer service and we actually have a saying in our family called "a musicnotes problem" -- which means a problem that is going to take you at least 20 minutes to resolve and involve a bit of frustration. I have given music notes plenty of extra money for stuff -- whether music hasn't printed at all, has printed in the wrong key (because of the default) and I hit "yes it printed OK" too soon, has taken subscription money but not really allowed use of credits, has turned into a song that looks nothing like the first page and/or changed key (sometimes several times!) so I've had to buy another arrangement.Also, the bombardment for the pro service and their surveys and such after purchasing is just so annoying and time consuming to click past. I just feel like printing music should be a simple process, and shouldn't come with all of this rudeness and drama.But yes, the library and ability to transpose is nice.

Date of experience: Aug 22, 2022