Jeremy wrote: 

>  Yes this is right, its the big picture thing.
> The thing is, we pay $8k a year (waisted in my opionion) on 
> upgrades, so you think they might be less inclined to charge :-)

Hrmm.. Ok - that does changes things IMO.

Playing devils advocate - you are arguably paying the update
subscription (what annual %age of purchase is that BTW?) to cover
improvements and maintenance to the core code, not necessarily your
customisation.

Having said that, if it's as hefty as it sounds and you feel you're
being gouged or that they are double charging, it sounds like you have
valid value concerns. So I'd say you should indeed point this out and
attempt to negotiate with them.

If you point out to them that it's not that you're against paying for
value received, it's just that you've _already_ paid for value that you
feel you _aren't_ receiving. You would hope that a wise vendor with a
long term view would understand this position and argument more
favourably and see it as quite different from an 'I just don't want to
pay' position.

As a side-note to the 'prisoner's dilemma' - if your vendor is making
price gouging/limited product improvement and other relationship
damaging decisions - it's potentially a warning sign as it can indicate
they are taking a short term view of the product i.e. they're reducing
their investment in the platform you're depending on but they are not
telling you and are trying to milk the revenue as much as they can
before the end comes. Witness some of the Inprise Borland-era behaviour
towards Delphi (I'm talking pre-CodeGear here in fairness!) as an
example of this.

We have a competitor who has been giving their customers and resellers
very mixed signals on this front regarding a particular product line for
a while now and believe me, the savvy ones have noticed...

TTFN,
  Paul.



_______________________________________________
NZ Borland Developers Group Offtopic mailing list
Post: [email protected]
Admin: http://delphi.org.nz/mailman/listinfo/offtopic
Unsubscribe: send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with Subject: unsubscribe

Reply via email to