On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 11:54 AM, Jay Ashworth <jra@baylink.com> wrote: Leveraging a superior bargaining position to achieve more revenue from a kind of high-risk customer doesn't sound "dishonest".... it sounds rational. Why would an agreement be denominated as "1 year maintenance" if it could simply be reinstated at will? What is meant by high-risk, is a customer inclined to renew maintenance, only at the moment that a lot of services are to be required all at once -- for example, just before a major software upgrade, likely followed by a slew of support incidents, possibly at a cost to the software vendor above the fee. I guess the networking equivalent is --- you stop paying for your OC3 with $BIG_TELCO for a few months, and you get it turned off, but for some reason the physical cabling isn't physically removed. A few months later, you decide you need an OC3 again and exclaim the unfairness of $BIG_TELCO informing you that a fee is required to re-install the OC3 they haven't removed yet. How unfair right... many thousands of $$ just to flip a switch? One chose to go without service for a few months, therefore should get a lower total cost, based on the new renewal date, right? In fact, it's not. If you miss your renewal payment for, frex, Safari
books, they actually slip your cycle date to when you renew -- since you don't *get*
It's a standard practice for _Software_ _Maintenance_ agreements; where a product is purchased, with an annual charge for updates, support, sometimes warranty, and other services for that product. If you let the agreement lapse, usually no warranty. Most extended warranties can't be renewed 6 months after they lapsed, because you found the product just broke and you would like to renew a warranty, so you can RMA it for a repair/replacement. Safari books is not a software maintenance agreement; it's a subscription service, and they allow members of the public to start a subscription any time, the cost to renew's basically equivalent to the cost to sign up; it's not as if there is a higher price for new subs. But, effectively, he's a new client, and should probably be treated that
way.
Yes. Software maintenance / subscription update services are not usually sold to just anyone on the street; they are normally sold with software. If you allowed your maintenance agreement to lapse, then You may now be in a position to negotiate a new agreement, but this most likely consists of asking what costs/terms are available for re-upping the maintenance, and having to accept in order to re-up. This likely means one of these scenarios... 1 o One time upgrade fee 2 o Pay delinquent maintenance bills, and then renew from anniversary date. 3 o Have to re-purchase product at brand new product cost, no 'upgrade' discount, since maintenance lapsed. (1) and (2) are most popular ways vendors offer to redeem expired maintenance. (3) Is not dishonest. It is the simplest thing to do, and justifiable if the product's price is low. One-time upgrade fee is very common with consumer software. When you buy "Windows 95" retail, you don't even pay an annual maintenance for free lifetime upgrades. Chances are you buy each upgrade, or get forced into (3), since Windows' cost is basically built into each new computer nowadays. But imagine if no computers came with windows.. and Microsoft offered you $25 a year for annual maintenance, for your Windows '95, and issued a new release every 2 years. If you allowed your maintenance to lapse in 1995, and then decided to renew in 2011... do you really think a reasonable software vendor would give you the 1 year windows '95 maintenance re-activation for $25 and the free upgrade to Windows 7? Nope... chances are you'd to pay $150+ before the vendor would consider re-upping that. -- -JH