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New subscription punishment policy here 5

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Then you were lucky. Your VAR did not have to do that. If more/all of them did that, the current anti-subscription movement would not be flourishing.

[cheers]
 
CBL,

I was told that supplying all the service packs for the purchased version was SW policy. Others (on this forum) have told me that they had to complain about some bug and then they got the service packs. If what you say is true, and SW will not supply service packs for legitimate purchased copies, then I am indeed lucky, although I know several people around town who are on support and I bet they would be willing to help out if I needed it. Another solution would be to buy only one year of support which would most likely get you all the service packs to a single version and then drop the support.

Timelord
 
Ok, if you look at this forum and the many other forums and the blogosphere for SW, and the podcasters and the SWW presenters and then calculate the hours put in by non-SW people either on their company's time or there own time to provide quality answers to paid and non-paid subscribers the whole raison d'etre of Welch's email becomes moot. Wouldn't it be nice if we could put a click through charge on our answers like advertisers do? I mean people are actually paying money these days to find out what size fuse goes in a 20 amp fuse holder. SW answers should be worth something. Of course the difference between replacing a fuse at home and SW is that SW should work right from the get go.

The only reason I pay for subscription is to a) have the most recent release b) get bug fixes because I can't fix them myself. And to be fair every once in a while the VAR helps with using some new feature or installation issue that is beyond me.

For day to day I go to the forums.

TOP



TOP

 
so i sent an email to my VAR with a simple question.

Day 3 and still no phone call, no email reply, no acknowledgment. Nothing.

I am very tempted to throw out the name of the VAR but I wont.

SW2008 Office Pro SP4.0
Intel Core 2 Duo CPU
2.2GHz, 2.00GB RAM
QuadroFX 3700
SpacePilot
 
^ ditto. I have been trying to get some questions answered and an official price quote for a week now from my VAR.
 
I believe getting unlimited upgrades and a maintenance/tech support for the price I am paying is good value.

If I have a problem I e-mail or call and always get a prompt response. Access to the customer portal area inc forum has given me many tips and other info. I also get free web info via webinars made available by my VAR.

The price paid initially for the Solidworks programme included a fixed price subscription for a number of years forward.

I know this won't be popular, but the current system is fine by me.

Regards

WP
 
Why are people complaining about 'corporate America' in this thread? Vive la France, dudes.

--
Hardie "Crashj" Johnson
SW 2008 SP4
Nvidia Quadro FX 1000
AMD Athalon 1.8 GHz 2 Gig RAM

 
Whitney,

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion whether it is popular or not. I am pleased that you are happy with the status quo.

I assume by "unlimited upgrades" you actually mean updates (SPs). An upgrade being a new version of SW. (eg. 2008 to 2009).

In my opinion, the SPs should be free. If you bought a brand new car (or any product) and then discovered it had several defects, would you expect to (and be happy) pay for the fixes?

Also if you are using the VAR tech support, then you are getting value for your subscription cost. For those who do not need (or want) Var tech support, the VARs portion of the subscription is a waste.

I believe it is fair practice to charge, and am quite happy to pay, a yearly SW licence renewal fee providing it entitles me to a new version of SW whenever it is ready for production release; not necessarily yearly.

I would be very happy if, instead of a major yearly release, SW released incremental updates/upgrades to the existing version ... similar to (but hopefully better than) Microsoft does for its products.

[cheers]
 
I can see you're point, but my view is that I like having the latest version and also like access to resources that improve my ability with the product.

I also genuinely think that a lot of effort has gone into the functionality of the SW product and that has cost money. I guess, that I may be unusual in that I negotiated a long term price for the subscription so it is not too big a deal for me.

From SW's point of view, I can't see how it would be economic to deal with loads of versions. Encouraging people to get the latest version, would probably save them money and improve customer satisfaction.

To use the car analogy, you buy a car and it is as it is for the duration of your ownership. After 1-5 years depending on your warranty you are on your own. SW gives you a new car every year if you pay a small proportion of the purchase price.

Also, SW files stored in the newest version will not work on the old. I have never been in this position, but would that not start causing collaboration problems the older your version is? I know that works both ways, but I would not like to ring up a client who has the latest version and tell him that I cannot help because I have got an older one.

Just my view.


WP

Regards

WP
 
Just thought of another point that may help square this particular circle.

I used to have to pay a subscription to a specialist insurance computer software/hardware supplier. Their prices went ballistic, but they had us over a barrel so we had to pay. I looked up their accounts and my suspicions were confirmed when I found they were making over a 110% profit.

What is Solidworks profitability? This may give a good indicator as to whether they are profiteering to whatever extent.

Regards

WP
 
User complaints seem to go far beyond the subscription itself to other, more tangential items. Sure, the value of the subscription is still an issue, but there are also these:
I'm forced to pay for that which I don't use--why? I'd like other options.
Often support cannot/does-not answer my questions at all.
Often support cannot/does-not answer my questions on time.
I've got "free" alternatives to support, such as this forum.
Version 2008 was a terrible "upgrade" for many users.
Why meddle in the business of customers who don't find upcoming versions a good match for their business models? Why the punitive treatment? It's an odd thing to bite the hand that feeds you.

For those who find value in the combined services/goods model from SolidWorks, why change anything? But looking at the backlash from customers, there seem to be many, many customers who do not find value in this static model.



Jeff Mowry
A people who value security over freedom will soon find they have neither.
 
Victory.

The humans defeat the Zentradi.

SW2008 Office Pro SP4.0
Intel Core 2 Duo CPU
2.2GHz, 2.00GB RAM
QuadroFX 3700
SpacePilot
 
I don't really consider that a victory. They repealed the part of the subscription policy that affected the least number of people.

Dan

 
i consider their backpedaling victory enough.

SW2008 Office Pro SP4.0
Intel Core 2 Duo CPU
2.2GHz, 2.00GB RAM
QuadroFX 3700
SpacePilot
 
Whitney said:
I also genuinely think that a lot of effort has gone into the functionality of the SW product and that has cost money. I guess, that I may be unusual in that I negotiated a long term price for the subscription so it is not too big a deal for me.
Click to expand...

No doubt SW has added functionality, but for me that functionality has been unasked for and largely bypasses the things I do day to day.

It is also no doubt that SW quality and performance has sunk proportionately. And that does affect me on a day to day basis.

But what you are forgetting is that SW has had an ever increasing customer base year by year while the cost of development remains fixed. Not only that but the cost of fixing bugs remains fixed too because there are only so many. The only part of support that increases is the cost of logging the same bug more times as the customer base grows.

Not too many years ago SW was crowing about having 100,000 seats. Now they are over 1/2 million. So just in new software sales they have seen their revenue increase far faster than inflation. 400,000 x 3,995 = 1.6 billion dollars for new seat sales and 1/2 billion dollars a year in subscription fees for the same. A lot of those seats were sold in Europe where prices are double the USA. You can do a lot of bug fixing for those kind of dollars especially when outsourcing the work to India.

I hope you got your subscription deal at some kind of discount.

TOP

TOP

 
Not implementing the penalty is good news for users. It shows that SW are listening to its user base. And while the penalty was the catalyst which started this whole debate/uprising, its repealing is only a partial victory.

We will have to patiently wait to see the result of how SW "are carefully weighing this input and reviewing our overall subscription policies".

[cheers]
 
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