An update on my Fusion problems. This is long, but if you want an idea of what the e-****tification of the economy in search of ever higher earnings looks like on the ground, here you go, read on.
BLUF: Be extremely careful when its time to renew your subscription.
I've been unable to access Fusion since early November. I got a Fusion update and a MacOS update simultaneously, and it broke Fusion, it wouldn't launch.
First I tried a de-install/re-install. If you have the latest version it actually has a repair function, but mine did not. This install might have actually worked, but something else went wrong. When launched, my license was shown as "expired". Now this may have been correct, because looking at old e-mails my license tends to expire around the end of the year, but then something else went very wrong behind the scenes at Autodesk.
I hit the "expired" tab and it took me to the part of Autodesk that allows you to re-establish your license. Went through all of that and got a message that I was flagged for export control issues - which was odd. I established my Fusion license in 2017 when working for the USMC. There should be no export control issue.
You should know that if you have a free personal license, your ability to get support is extremely constrained. You have to start with their AI Chatbot - which is pretty stupid - and if it can't solve your problem then it starts a case where you will get support via email. They say in 48 hours, but in practice it takes about a week.
The first guy that contacted me actually arranged a call and with a great amount of trepidation I shared my machine and allowed him to control it. He decided that I had a problem with multiple licenses and the authenticator was confused. The problem should clear up in a couple of weeks when the second license expired. It did not.
I tried to find some help on the Fusion subreddit, and I have to tell you that the folks there are the worlds biggest *******s. A bunch of guys that have their licenses paid for by their employers, or lone ranger consultants that get a tax write-off for it decided I was both a technological idiot that didn't know what I was doing and besides, I don't deserve any support for a free product.
Back to the Fusion Bot, another de-install/re-install, and another case. This time a guy decided that there was too much info missing from my profile and that caused the export review. Added all new info, declared the problem solved, and it was not.
All this time I kept getting e-mails from Autodesk sales trying to get me to buy a subscription, from a woman who turns out had helped me solve a similar problem two years ago. But she could not help this time, don't know if it was an internal policy issue or what.
Another two de-installs and re-installs, another two cases, another run through the export control issue. I copied and pasted all the FusionBot suggestions into a document so I could refer to them later and found another interesting problem. For one, all the things the bot told me to do were to be done in the Account section of the Autodesk website, and none of them, absolutely none of them, existed. I'm guessing that this was because the AI pulled results from the support forums that was for earlier versions of their website. And, if I did a search on Google, found a topic in the Support Forums, and tried to access it, as soon as the page loaded it would send me back to the forum home page. Trying to scroll down to click on Fusion forums resulted in the page immediately hopping back to the top, and if I was quick enough to click on the link, as soon as the page loaded it re-loaded back at the home page. This page also didn't recognize that I was logged in. Most of the Reddit *******s thought this was some settings issue on my machine, yet the fact that I have browsed literally hundreds of thousands of web pages and never encountered this issues seemed to be lost on them.
Next I tried the Fusion Facebook Group. In comparison to Reddit, a helpful bunch of guys. One of them, a professor at a university in Florida that has a full commercial license, did a zoom with me sharing my screen. We walked through all the Fusion Bot Suggestions, explored the Forum problems and he was gobsmacked at both the fact that none of these support issues were capable and the interesting problem with the Forums. It was obvious to him that I wasn't some wanker that didn't know what he was doing.
So next, I pulled the pin on the grenade. Wrote sales again, with this:
"I’m now three months without access. I have a racing season coming up, and NOTHING I need for that operation has been accomplished.
It's obvious that nothing traditional is going to get my account to work again. I have 300 designs being held hostage.
So here’s my request. I plan on writing Elizabeth Zornes directly - snail mail, because there’s no direct line to Customer Service. She probably knows what a **** show her side of this enterprise had turned into, but she needs to hear directly from someone who has been badly treated here. I know it will get intercepted by some underling, and might go right to the trash, or it might generate an actual helpful response.
So I ask, is there any specific person I can get an e-mail address for that would hear my plea? I would of course, make no connection to you, although I acknowledge that there are digital footprints here."
Elizabeth Zornes is the VP of "Customer Experience" at Autodesk. This "experience" of mine is essentially her fault. There's no way to e-mail these people, I even tried LinkedIn, so snail mail was going to have to do.
Sent that at 10:52 AM yesterday. At 11:31 I got an e-mail from someone who was an "Escalation Specialist":
"Thank you for contacting Autodesk.
I am an Escalation Specialist at Autodesk. I apologize for the inconvenience, I understand that you have not been able to access your Fusion program for several months.
I don't want to get ahead of myself but I may have resolved your issue, I could see there were some inconsistencies on your backend profile that I have reconciled. Can you try and open Fusion now?
If you are still getting an error can you please send me a screenshot of the error you are getting when trying to access the program? The more of the screen you can include the better as this will provide context for troubleshooting.
If you would like to be contacted by phone, I can call you this afternoon, please provide your phone number."
I launched Fusion, and yup, it was fixed. When I asked what was wrong, here was her reply:
"I am so happy it worked! Yes! I saw the several attempts to resolve your issue. I looked through your case history before I reached out because I wanted to make sure I had the full picture.
The reason it took us a longer to figure out was that there were multiple issues, you had an export block on your account AND there were a few things missing from your backend profile. You've had an Autodesk Account since 2012 so there is a bit more data on your profile than most people.
I fixed your backend profile and had to reissue you a new license because your old license was based on the messed up backend profile.
This is NOT something you could have fixed on your own and you did not cause the issue.
I just reached out to our forums team so they can re-sync your profile because the old messed up backend data could be interfering with your ability to access forums. I will update you as soon as I hear back from them. "
All of that, just because the 2nd, third, and 4th support guys couldn't be bothered to listen, and a completely flawed support concept in the first place.
And, for all you fusion guys, here's a tidbit that the Florida Fusion guy taught me. You can launch the web based version of fusion and go in and select a design, and then it will allow you to export it in formats you are not allowed to use in the free license. You can even export in Inventor format, which some other CAD programs can use, although IGES and other full-featured exports are not available. This was my ultimate backup plan - to go through my designs, pick the most important ones, and export in inventor and then jump to Freecad or another program. It sends you an e-mail with the file attached.
