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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.'"
Hello? Slashdot? Yes, I have an "Admiral Ackbar" on the line for you. He says it's urgent?
There's so much great free security software out there (Avast, for instance) that for the educated consumer, the price of Norton or McAfee should be a moot point in my opinion. Not to mention that those two products are far more resource intensive than their free counterparts.
I don't know what prices one would be looking at when it comes to commercial version of Avast, or how much actual support contracts cost a company if it wants Norton on say, 1500 desktops. But for the typical consumer, paying for security software is just a waste of money.
As for McAfee's 50% discount, the latest Norton is free with rebates at certain points in the year, so as long as you wait until then to buy it, you can even get Norton free.
Why renew a license when you can just buy a newer release in a store?
I like basketball!!1!
Lots of companies do this, and they wouldnt do it if it didnt work.
CABLE, PHONE, & INTERNET ONLY $29.99 A MONTH!!!!!!!!*
*first 3 months regular rate of $150 a month applies 4th month and on.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
If you have Comcast cable internet McAfee security suite is free. Other ISPs provide security products free of charge as well. Shop for a better ISP, not for a Symantec vendor. Also, it might be a good idea not to click on things you're not sure of and stop surfing for porn so much.
I have one odd dedicated system that is very sensitive. The only antivirus software that can be used (long story) is Norton 2001. However, Symantec won't sell you updates (at any price) for Norton 2001. You are forced to upgrade to a more recent version if you want to be current, and in this case I can't upgrade.
Oddly enough, if you install Norton 2001 on a fresh system, it works perfectly, and you get to download updates for a full year from the date of installation (which is the default).
So the updates exist, but Symantec won't sell them.
Bastards.
If all of us were wise as the Mullah, teaser rates from credit card/mortgage companies, cell phones companies, ISPs etc wont work. But in most parts of the world, inertia rules. Once you accept a monthly bill, then they got you.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Wow, I must be one of those Linux hippies...
;-)
FreeBSD is like, "Hey, dudes! Come use our free stuff for whatever you like. Just don't forget to thanks us and it's all good."
Linux is like, "You are free to join our collective but you have to contribute if you want to distribute our free stuff. Whatever you contribute becomes part of our free stuff."
See the difference? FreeBSD is for hippies and Linux is for commies. It's a subtle distinction, I know.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
My wife recently bought a new computer with Windows XP to replace her aging Windows 98 machine and asked me to help with the migration. There was really only one piece of software she wanted to migrate: Quicken. I was brooding over ways and means. When she booted up her new HP machine, she said, "Oh, look! We don't need to worry about it. It comes with Quicken."
On closer inspection, it came with something called Quicken "New User Edition." It did absolutely everything she needed to do with one small exception: it wouldn't import a file from a previous version of Quicken like, for example, the Windows 98 file with five years of our financial life in it.
But fortunately it automatically offered to sell us an upgrade. Of the alternatives on offer was something called "Quicken Deluxe Edition 2006" which could be ours at a special upgrade price of just $39.95. It did many more things than my wife needed to do, but it would import older Quicken files So I shrugged, and said, "Well, gee, I dunno, seems like a lot, I suppose, line of least resistance, what the heck."
But, when she typed in her credit card number and tried to buy it, it popped up the web browser with a message saying yes, we could get Quicken Deluxe 2006, but wouldn't we rather get Quicken Deluxe 2007, which could be ours at a special upgrade price of just $49.95? We looked at each other. My wife says, rather disgusted, "You know, I'm never going to upgrade Quicken again if I can avoid it, so I suppose I should start out with the most recent version." I said, "Yeah, I guess so, but, wait just a minute."
I hurried over to my Mac, which hadn't been contamined with any versions of the Quicken software, and when I went to their website from a virgin machine, it offered me a choice that the browser on her machine had not offered: something called "Quicken Basic," which had exactly the same functionality as "Quicken New User Edition" plus the ability to import older Quicken files. For $19.95. Full price for a brand new purchase, not an upgrade.
In other words, those bastards had not only included an artificially crippled version of Quicken Basic in the HP software offering, which was bad enough, but they deliberately programmed all the auto-update-salesware to hide the cheapest and most appropriate version of the software.
I wish I could tell you that we decided not to buy any version of Quicken, but in the end of course we bought the $19.95 version.
It's things like this that really build long-term customer loyalty. My wife had always had good feelings about Quicken itself and the company that publishes it. Now she still has good feelings about Quicken but she's quite pissed off at Intuit. (And she holds grudges. Believe me.)
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Why is this specific to software?
I wanted to by soup from a deli. I asked them why a quart cost more than two pints.
I wanted to buy pizza (that is cut into eight slices). I asked for eight slices. They asked "you mean a full pie?" I said "no, eight slices is cheaper." The idiot told me that he'll give me the eight smallest slices. At which point i threated to publicize his scam. Needless to say, i got it for the cheaper price.
In the supermarket i many times look to see the difference in prices when buying bulk. Many times the smaller amount is cheaper. Not usually, but many times.
The cable Internet company offers connections for very cheap for six months, but then charges astromically after that. When i challenged i would cancel and re-sign up, they told me that there had to be a five-month break in between the two to get the discount. So, i threatened to go DSL, and got a nice discount.
While in some cases the discrepency is by malicious intent, in most cases its because the price of software is what people are willing to pay, not what it is worth. (No, they are not the same. The latter can be calculated based on what it does and how cost incurred by not having it. The former is just perception.) Being it is harder to get a new customer than to retain a customer, breaks are given.
Had the business gone in to help the customer, and the customer in full-faith accepts this, he would accept the discount and then pay the "normal" amount during the retention period. However, in todays cut-throat society, where short-term financial goals are everything, there really is no such thing as a long-term relationship. There is no retention period. The person is in the system, unless they try to leave, it which case that triggers offers of cheaper prices.
I see no fault in all of this. It may be an example of a sad state of affairs, but its just business as usual.
Have you read my journal today?
Costs $25 for a brand new Lexmark printer complete with ink cartridges. Costs $35+ for new ink cartridges. Cheaper just to buy a new printer.
The manufacturers wised up to that one a while ago. New printers in the $0-$100 range don't come with full ink cartriges. Usually they are only 1/4th to 1/3rd full.
A few years ago, say back in like 2000 Norton went to this subscription model. After a year, it popped up saying your subscription had expired, do you want to renew? It was only like $6/year.
But as I upgraded to XP, I needed Norton 2002 so I bought that for $10.
Ok, so then after a year, they wanted $30. I figured out if I rebuilt my machine and reinstalled Norton, I'd get another year. But I ended up getting Norton 2003 to fix a bug in their bloody email scanner. Another $10.
Then I got a laptop and wanted another copy of Norton, so I found a deal to get Norton 2005 3-user edition for $15. Installed that. But now they got smarter, and the subscription was hard wired to a key that was on their servers. So after a year, I had no choice... couldn't reinstall, had to buy an upgrade. They wanted $39 to upgrade my 3-user edition.
But I found 2006 3-user edition for $15., so I bought that.
Well, a year passed again, and this time I went to see what the upgrade rate was. It was $80 for the 3-users!
Well, at the time I was also planning to upgrade to Vista, and I needed something that supported it. I found Norton 2007 3-user for $15 again, through buy.com after rebate.
But after the $80 thing, I'd had enough. I looked around and I ended up installing the AVG free edition on all three of my computers.
So Norton lost another customer, because of their playing games. The $6 subscription upgrade from the 2000 version was acceptable, but charging me twice or more the new product price is not.