Ethical VAR Tactics?

I'm betting...... GoEngineer? Got one of those myself yesterday. Mine also says that they'll give a $250 discount for renewing for those that have allowed maintenance to expire. I'm really tempted to allow mine to expire, then take them up on the expired maintenance discount, thus saving $150. BTW, my maintenance is due the end of Jan, I've been getting renewal notices since.... late september.

The fee to reestablish lapsed maintenance is very often completely waived, especially if the time frame is lease than a year or if their are sizeable number of licenses at the site.

Matt

KMaren wrote:

Disruption of service = no help @ VAR or SW "central". Also no upgrades. Your current SW license is stll good.

So... no, they are'nt trying to threaten you with loss of SW.

I suspect your VAR is more likely referring to subscription support services. That would be tech support, the ability to download service packs, etc. I went through that once as a result of some miscommunication.

VARs can be a little short on tact. At least one well known user has all but disappeared as a result.

Do you hear that, Mr. Anderson? That's the sound of inevitability. The mid range CAD market is saturated. Alibre raised the threshold and PTC lowered the transom. What's an aged mid range cash cow to do?

I'm not sure about the experiences of others, but the VAR we use is very responsive and didn't bug us but once at about 30 days before lapse in maintenance (and maybe a week before if we forget or something). I think we've been pretty lucky with these guys, as they never got bought out (they did the buying) and have maintained a level of service that is pretty close to what it has always been. I can normally get someone on the phone right away, or at the very least a returned call with 30 minutes of my call. They offer frequent free updating training sessions, and have paid training courses that a specifically geared to obtaining the SolidWorks Professional cert.

We did have issues with them once a long time ago during a SolidWorks expo. For some reason, the owner thought it would be a good idea to have the entire staff attend the show, and it just so happened to coincide with us getting a bad doogle for are new network licencing. Both other than, it's been smooth.

One hint: any VAR will pay more attention to your requests if you are customer that has 10 or more licenses on site.

I think they are only West Coast, so if you'd like to know who they are, you can go to my site under SolidWorks Resources web links for the only VAR listed. :)

Matt

$100 + maint to renew with the same expiration date

$500 + Maint to have the expiration date change to the current month

atleast the last time I heard anything about it.

fcsuper wrote: