Nuance Communications Reviews 94

Appalling customer service. I purchased Dragon dictation software which did not work brilliantly on my computer, but was passable. A few weeks after buying it though, it crashed for good. Nuance refused to provide me support saying that they didn't provide support for my system (even though they had been providing support prior to the crash), refused to give me a refund, the nuance technical team leader refused to escalate the matter and then ignored my subsequent communications. No response from their Group CEO either. They also ignored the Ombudsman. Be wary about giving your hard-earned money to these people: you risk never getting it back if something goes wrong.

I am having a lot of trouble getting Dragon naturally speaking to work in word (latest version). I have done everything I know to do and looked up a lot more, and although I have got as far as getting it to work in its own little box, it won't work on a Word Document which is the whole point of having it!
The last thing I tried was getting word to un-disable the programme, but it wasn't there to disable! I am a very patient person, (Driving instructor in the heart of London for 35 years) but this is driving me up the wall. Nuance should tell people, "This software may not work, so don't buy it, if you intend to use it!
The only real help I found was from Nuance themselves (an add- not human) Apparently the software that will work has a price tag of about £250.00 and if this is the only one of their range that will work, then why sell the others to people who haven't got £250 to spare but are hoping to make their lives a little easier but spending money on the cheaper programmes? Or should that be 'wasting' money on cheaper programmes'?
Unless someone comes up with something in the next 24 hours, this goes back to amazon first thing in the morning. I am 70 now and sadly I don't have enough life left to mess about trying to get things to work!

Since I wrote this review, I had a notification from Nuance that there was an update waiting for me. This was as soon as I opened up my computer, and before I'd even opened chrome or anything, I clicked on the update thinking it was in reply to my review. It wasn't, it was a bug, and a bad one at that. The thing is, with this Dragon Naturally Speaking, you got a bar across the top of your screen. The notification of this update came in from one side of my screen but in order to open it, I went to their bar and from a drop down list, selected, 'Messages or updates'. So this was internal, it did not come from a third party, this was directly from the Dragon Naturally Speaking bar at the top of my screen. Luckily, I have a years subscription to Microsoft remote assistance and they confirmed that there was a particularly nasty virus present. However, it then took them 3 hours to get my computer back to normal.
I am not technically minded enough to understand where and how viruses behave but I do understand logic and if there is a pile of dog crap in a corner of a room, and there is only one dog in the room then logic says that that crap once belonged inside that dog. This virus hitched a ride on an update belonging to Nuance...I will say no more.

I purchased voice dictation software from them about 6 months ago. I purchase their special ear piece about a moth later. It worked for a while but the ear piece disconnects about every 15 minutes. I called after 2 months of emails and calls back and forth, they final sent a used replacement. It didn't work. I let them know 3 weeks ago the replacement didn't work. They just keep asking the same questions over and over by email. They take days or weeks to respond. They never apologize, I have sat by the phone for them to call me 3 times for a block of 3 hours each time but they don't call me to resolve this. I email 4 times a week they respond 1 time a week with the same repeated questions.