Security Software Costs More to Renew Than Buy New

Matt Whipp writes "In a story I wrote for PCPro, I explore a tip submitted by one of our readers. They pointed out how much more it costs to renew security software, rather than buying it new. In fact it cost less than half the price to buy it new than it does to renew the license because of heavy discounting. He feels a bit cross that, as a loyal customer, he is the one penalized. From the article: 'ZoneAlarm may have tripped up on this discount issue, but it's not alone. It highlights just how cynical companies can be in relying on customers' assumptions that a renewal should be cheaper than buying new. McAfee's Internet Security Suite costs just £24.99 with the current 50 per cent discount. However, should you be fool enough to already be a customer of McAfee, you'll have to pay £39.99 to renew your licence.'"

Comments

Re:Why buy in the first place?

[networkBoy]

Really the computers were to be a loss leader. I was planning on using SunFires and charge a buck an hour, one hour incr. and $8/hr for gaming machines.
The real goal was to make it a "cool hangout" for the 16-24 crowd and sell them high margin junk food and energy drinks/fountain soda... basically the theater model.
-nB