An open letter to MAXON CEO McGavran

[3DKiwi 522]

Love your avatar Dave. Vote with your wallet is my advice. Interesting that after 20 plus years I cancelled my daily newspaper subscription as the price as been gradually going up and got to a point where it was just too much. Anyway I cancelled my subscription a month ago. I get a phone call today. How about the next 12 months for 1/2 price an not be tied into a fixed term contract. Naturally I accepted as we like getting the daily paper in my house. The point is the only thing that gets through to these companies is losing sales and sometimes you do have to hold back on your payments to them to get some attention.

[srek 129]

Maybe i misunderstood, i thought you were talking about a lower cost yearly contract that is paid monthly. That is the bookkeeping problem i was refering to.

[DasFrodo 105]

1 hour ago, srek said:

Maybe i misunderstood, i thought you were talking about a lower cost yearly contract that is paid monthly. That is the bookkeeping problem i was refering to.

 

I think we were talking about generally paying monthly, not yearly even though it's advertised as monthly price. At least that's what I meant

[srek 129]

A monthly contract that is paid monthly is currently available. The price of the subscription is something everyone has an own opinion about.

A yearly contract that is paid monthly is not available. The problem here is that if the customer does not fulfill the contract, lapsed payment etc., the bookkeeping becomes a nightmare. This can be handled, but it is expensive in terrms of money as well as work/time and needs a long preparation period. This is again a result of the Sarbanes Oxley act.

Just to be clear, many seem to think that this is some kind of excuse to just not do something, the real problem is that the act mainly targets huge corporations, but also impacts smaller companies that are owned by corporations, who do not easily have the ressources to handle this. Add to this that not complying to Sarbanes Oxley can come with criminal charges and you might see why this is a bit of a problem.

[Adrien 62]

So how come Adobe bills me every  month for the CC suite? 

Is it just a problem of book keeping?

 

 

 

[srek 129]

I'm not an adobe customer, i don't know if you have a yearly or monthly contract. Regardles, as i said both are possible, the monthly paid yearly contract just requires a lot more work and investment and is currently not offered by MAXON.

Also keep in mind that Adobe is a 9bn dollar company with a product portfolio that is basically completely subscription based, whereas Nemetschek is a 0.5bn company with a very small number of subscription offers.

And again you can get a monthly paid subscription of Cinema 4D right now, you just don't get as good an offer as with the yearly paid one.

[DasFrodo 105]

At least for me that's the problem I see.

 

If it was communicated more clearly, for example: "Get CINEMA 4D now for 750€ a year or 105€ per month".

Right now the website sells it, at least at first glance, in a different way. The plan that locks you for a year is shown in monthly cost as well and the overall price isn't shown at all. I think that's just misleading, but I can accept that. It's business, I understand that.

 

Question is, why can't you guys offer one price per month and one perpetual price, period. Why does it have to be more expensive if I only use it for a month instead of a whole year? All the other softwares I use have that option. There is no need to decide if I want a month or a year, the subscription just runs for as long as I want it to, for one price.

 

4 hours ago, srek said:

A monthly contract that is paid monthly is currently available. The price of the subscription is something everyone has an own opinion about.

A yearly contract that is paid monthly is not available. The problem here is that if the customer does not fulfill the contract, lapsed payment etc., the bookkeeping becomes a nightmare. This can be handled, but it is expensive in terrms of money as well as work/time and needs a long preparation period. This is again a result of the Sarbanes Oxley act.

Just to be clear, many seem to think that this is some kind of excuse to just not do something, the real problem is that the act mainly targets huge corporations, but also impacts smaller companies that are owned by corporations, who do not easily have the ressources to handle this. Add to this that not complying to Sarbanes Oxley can come with criminal charges and you might see why this is a bit of a problem.

 

Thank you for explaining that in detail, very interesting. This is the kind of stuff that helps understanding actions of a company that looks like greed at first.

[Adrien 62]

So this is a book keeping problem, linked to a US law that would imply too much admin for a company like MAXON. Thank you for your clarifications. I don’t see the devil in MAXON or its management but I honestly question some of your decisions. 

Anyway yes I have an annual Adobe CC subscription billed monthly. I would have never accepted forking out the full annual price upfront.

I’m quite sure this alone will cost you customers unfortunately. 

 

[DMcGavran 77]

Since the question was asked of me...

We would like to be able to offer yearly/billed monthly.  Lot of work that we are looking at.   

 

Cheers

Dave

 

[bobc4d 148]

On 9/16/2019 at 1:31 PM, 3DKiwi said:

Personally I think that's BS and just a convenient excuse. The Foundry has no problem putting out 3 versions / updates of Modo each year and I pay an annual maintenance.

Houdini drops a full version every fall and a half about 4 to 5 months after that and smaller updates/bug fixes throughout the year. so, yes MAXON can do it if they wish.