So today I was exiting out of Sage and a window popped up saying an update was available and prompting me to install it. No problem, I thought. I have 5 minutes.

But apparently I have to register and activate it.

Well. That was two hours ago.  The serial number they gave me doesn't work.  This has been the most ridiculous waste of time I have ever seen.  It reminds me of the late 90's when companies were just getting online and their processes were laughably complex and unintuitive.

Note the lack of profanity in this note. The profanity coming out of my mouth as I write this would surely get me banned from ever requesting assistance from Sage again, so I am deleting the expletives here as I go.

From this experience I have to wonder if "email address", "User ID", "Username" and "Sage ID" are one in the same. If that's the case I wonder why they use all these different phrases in their software and on their websites.  They are probably different things altogether.  Whatever.

Perhaps I am overreacting. But I have to compare this fiasco with what happens when Windows tells you it has an Update to install. You tell it to go ahead, THAT'S IT. You never hear from it again.

When Windows installs an update, it does not require registration, activation, an email address, a User ID, a Username, a Sage ID, an activation key, a serial number, an account on a Portal site that doesn't even work when I tell it what product I'm using. (There were are only two choices and I chose "Canadian" and gave it the serial number Sage sent me and it says it's not valid. Not valid, it says. Wow, something on the Sage site didn't work. Big surprise there.)

It's 2018. I don't understand how modern software that is running right here on my computer cannot gather all the information it needs from the computer it's running on before installing an update. If the software needs to be updated, go ahead and update it, I DO NOT WANT TO BE INVOLVED, JUST DO IT. Give me a progress bar, that's all I want.

I feel I owe it to the Internet community to spend at least the amount of time I'm wasted here, currently two hours, going online and finding forums out there in which to let people know my opinion of Sage as a company.

I could call to get this problem resolved but it's Sunday and phone support is only available during business hours, apparently. I think I saw somewhere here that Sage boasts 6 million users. Perhaps when they reach 7 million they will be able to afford phone support staff evenings and weekends.

I thought that I would ask the Sage community for help. There is a large colored notification that says that membership is required to participate in the forum. No problem. "Click here to join", it says. So I clicked there. I clicked right on the word "join" just to make sure I was headed to the right spot. The page it took me to would allow a user to sign in, but the standard form to fill in information to actually join is nowhere to be found. There is just an area for existing users to login. I have now spent ANOTHER half hour searching through help and found a link to a page that will allow me to join. So that page does exist. Maybe the link that says "click here to join" should take the user right to that join page rather than a Sign In page.

So now that I'm here and since the update process apparently needs my help, I might as well ask a question. Is there some way to get a working serial number that will work with the Portal when I choose my Canadian Sage 50 Pro product that was just updated? I chose my product out of the list of two products it gave me, and pasted my serial number in and it says it's not valid. I even tried typing it in in case "copy" was copying extra characters or something. I'm not the brightest bulb on the tree but I've been a programmer for 20 years and have copy-n-pasted a few serial numbers in my life, so I'm pretty sure I'm doing it right. So I'm not sure what number to use if the one they sent me is not correct.