Using EULAs To Bait and Switch

jalefkowit writes "Watchfire, the company behind the popular Web accessibility testing package Bobby, has come up with an innovative way to squeeze money out of customers: they changed the licensing terms of Bobby for the latest release, but don't mention the changes in any of their sales materials -- the first time you'll hear about it is in the EULA, when you install the software. The kicker is, the changes mean that some customers will now have to buy many, many more copies of Bobby than before -- and if the new cost is too rich for your blood, they won't refund the money you paid before you found out about the new terms, since they laid it all out in the EULA! Your options are to either pony up for the additional licenses, or ditch Bobby without ever getting back the money you paid up front. I've written up my experiences dealing with Watchfire and their "upgrade" to Bobby 5.0 -- consider it a cautionary tale for people considering upgrading their own copies, or for anyone who's concerned about how EULAs let companies dodge responsibility for being honest with customers."

Comments

Well....

[Neck_of_the_Woods]

I heard someone say one time that EULAs should be 100 words or less. If you can't tell someone how not to use your product in 100 words or less then you either have not made a good product, did not secure it well enough against misuse, or are trying to slid something by the end user that you don't want the end user to have a good handle on.

I found that idea very interesting..

No surprise

[an_mo]

Believe it or not, disabled people are great source of of profits and companies are not afraid to exploit their monopoly power. Braille pads for the blind cost thousands of dollars, now bobby behaving like an ass... I sincerely hope w3 takes the lead creating a free, open source validator that checks their own specs

Re:at least can you downgrade?

[jalefkowit]

Thankfully Bobby Desktop doesn't "expire" or require renewal to keep working, so I can still use my old Bobby 4.0.1 and, as you mention, just be out the $99. However, my impression of Watchfire is sufficiently low after all this that I'm inclined to go shell out for Cynthia Says or some other alternative just for the pleasure of scrubbing all traces of Watchfire from my PC :-)