Dear SDL,

this is the second time my license has arbitrarily been set to "expired". Why do you do that? I bought a full freelance license, it says "no expiration date", and still you manage to reset it, again?

At least, when you insist on doing so, tell your programmers about it. They obviously didn't know about that particular use case when they wrote the license manager. I can easily activate a license when there is one available, and I can deactivate it from inside the software - as long as it is still activated. What I'm unable to do is deactivate it when you decided to let it expire (despite the fact that it has no expiration date). Then it is impossible to reach the license manager since it is integrated into the software, which doesn't even start without a valid license. So basically you feel like resetting licenses at will, leaving your paying customers with no direct and simple path to reenable it. Thank you very much.

The last time that happened, I had to open a support ticket since even the offline deactivation didn't work - the most online "offline deactivation" I ever came across, by the way. Support simply told me by email that they had reset the activation status so that I had one activation available again. I used it to reactivate my old installation and thought that was it.

This time I tried the offline deactivation, again, but now the website shows another screen with a filled in "Deactivation Authorization" field, the date of my last failed attempt to deactivate "offline", and an empty field named "Deactivation Certificate". Apparently this would have been given to me by the software, had I carried out the offline deactivation. Which I didn't. Now, I can't confirm an offline deactivation that never happened, so clicking the "Confirm" button gives me an error message and sends me an email with exactly the same "Deactivation Ticket" in it that is shown on the confirmation page as "Deactivation Authorization". This thing has to be used within the license manager of the software, according to your instructional video, which I can't start without a valid license. Seriously? So, looks like it's a support ticket, again. That's (up to) two days I can't use the software I paid for.

Some suggestions: First of all, don't disable the lifetime licenses of your paying customers. I don't see why that would be necessary at all. If you must do so, however, reset the activation count whenever you let a license expire. And if that's impossible, for whatever reason, at least let the license manager start with or without a valid license.

Dear SDL, please tidy up this ridiculous mess.