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renew lapsed maintenance...

Last year I elected to NOT renew my maintenance on (2) seats of ProE, and evaluate solidworks as a replacement. We do mold design, primarily, and solidworks has proven to be quite a bit slower and not nearly as easy to use dealing with very large assemblies. There are some things that at really nice about it, but for us ProE is a better solution.

That all being said, I want to get "back in" with PTC and to do so they are telling me that I need to retroactively go back to when we lapsed. Therfore my renewal expense is nearly 14K, essentially double my normal annual renewal of 7K.

Does anyone have a similar experience, and were you able to negotiate a lesser renewal? I agree that it should be more than a normal renewal but 2X seems a little excessive, especially because there was no actual support given during the year we were away...

Any insight to this would be appreciated...

Reply to
mudman
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I personally would like to say - GFY - to your representative...

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In this day and age of competition and maintaining quality relationships, that arrogance is unacceptable. The maximum they should be charging you is a reinstallment fee for each license! They should understand your making choices for your company and they should be happy to get you back as a user/client!!

Anyhow, sorry you had to see the sad truth about SolidWorks.

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Reply to
Paul Salvador

You should have realized the mistake in September. That being the end of PTC's fiscal year they cut all kinds of deals to get revenue.

Reply to
Ben Loosli

yeah, it's called Gordon Gekko greed, freaking pond scum.

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Reply to
Paul Salvador

Am I right in assuming that, for this period of time, you still had two functioning seats of Pro/e, that you didn't just give up these seats while you were evaluating Solid Works? And, for a year, you had and used Pro/e but had no need for support? Maybe you just don't have that big of a need for support. Have you thought about how many pay-as-you-go calls to PTC's support line you could make for $14K? If you're not calling them every day and you have only two seats, you might be able to save yourself a bundle by going this route. Seems like you need a better evaluation of your real needs than you've presented here. If you need the steady stream of bug fix releases, then you probably need both seats on full maintenance. However, if you only need to be able to put in an occasional help call or just have access to the Knowledge Base, maybe just putting one seat in five on a maintenance contract would be enough support. Or, for a value added solution, take the $14K and get another full seat with maintenance. Sadly, the kind of license negotiations you are talking about, and any special deals, are played pretty close to the chest by PTC and most companies. I don't know if such negotiations are covered by confidentiality agreements, but, if they were, it wouldn't surprise me.

David Janes

Reply to
David Janes

We were interested in doing the same type of evaluation of Solidworks at our company, and we're in a similar type of situation, 2 seats etc...In conversation with the Solidworks sales rep he was very candid in saying that if you threaten to move from ProE to Solidworks, typically ProE is will to forgo back charges for lapsed maintenance if you're willing to move back to ProE.

We never actually tried it, but the sales rep seemed to be very honest that ProE would do that. ProE is loosing a lot of market share to Solidworks, try and use it to your advantage.

Ed

Reply to
emark

Leverage that, m*f*!

So did the one that sold me the Vega.

Also from conversation with the Solidworks sales rep? Your own expert analysis?

We can go pound sand.

Who do we work for? I've got a Vega ...

Reply to
ignorance is bliss

Our experience has been that PTC sees themselves to be in complete control in situations like this. Whether or not that's legally true, or fair, is another matter. They will push your head back underwater to let you back into the maintenance. I can sorta see why they do it, considering that many customers might only pay for maintenance on the years that they install a new release. Good luck.

I know some other customers have grandfathered their existing licenses and bought new bundles which of course come with fresh new maintenance bills. But PTC won't always do that. The sales reps will play "don't shoot the messenger" in any case and make a production out of the fact that maintenance is done by corporate.

I would really like to know if this inconsistent policy is legal based on monopolistic laws.

Dave

Reply to
dgeesaman

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