copied and pasted from Matt Lombard's blog ( hope he doesn't mind )
--------------------------------------------- Hey guys Let's address the two issues raised here individually. First, the issue of the late fees. There is a very small handful of customers who let their subscription support lapse, but continue to take advantage of the benefits of paid support for weeks, months, or even years before renewing their service. These late fees have existed since SolidWorks was founded in 1995 as a way to recoup some of the money that we lose by providing ongoing support to these customers while the vast majority of customers continue to pay for support on schedule. Again, these late fees are nothing new-they've existed since the subscription support program began, and have historically been applied only to those very few customers who opt to stay on a specific version of software for an extended period of time. If you take a look at the document Matt posted, you'll notice that it's not discussing a new policy, but that the late fee is simply increasing by $350 for people who go past a new time threshold. Like Matt has said himself, this only affects people who have been using subscription support but have not paid for it for more than 120 days/3 months.
As to the second issue regarding the increase in the fees themselves, there are a few reasons why the new tier and price was added. There are major improvements in the product itself that warrant ongoing investment in both core functionality (performance and quality) as well as new functions. These new functions require more support in order to make our customers as productive as possible. And, all of the revenue generated from these subscription program fees is 100% dedicated to improving and enhancing the software's functionality so that our customers can be more productive and efficient. It costs SolidWorks money to continue to provide subscription-level support to people who aren't paying for it. There's also the fact that things just cost more over time. And again, this late fee increase doesn't affect the overwhelming majority of our customers-only those who continue to take advantage of support past that 120-day/3 month period. Does that make sense to everyone?
If not, let me know.
Rich Welch - VP Customer Services SolidWorks
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and another post:
Let me try one more time to be VERY clear.
The policy of charging a fee has existed since the inception of SolidWorks as a corporation. Additionally the price of subscription service has never increased.
In general, our customer community (over 90%) has found the services rendered for the subscription price to be extremely beneficial with all of the services that existed and more that are being offered each day. SolidWorks and its reseller network provide these services and updated software to enhance and improve your effectiveness and efficiencies in completing your jobs by continually providing improvements in both areas at a tremendous cost.
We continue to invest in making you more productive. The original policy was constructed when there was only one product and with one specific price point. We now have several families of products that have varying price points and the 13 year old policy does not make sense given this new product construct. Therefore, we have modified the pricing of the existing fee structure to take in to account the product portfolio and pricing as well as the unfair burden the old policy placed on the over 90% of those customers.
I find this medium of communication not very beneficial and if anyone on this blog would like to have a live discussion within the next few weeks, I would be more than happy to host a conference call to explain the changes to an existing 13 year old policy and answer any other questions you may have.
Best regard, Rich Welch - VP Customer Services - SolidWorks
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As expected this new policy isn't very palatable to users Less impressive is the tone of arrogance and condescension of Mr Welch's explanation
Let us be VERY VERY clear sir your policy is offensive.
Several people at Matt's blog have already commented on the detail of these posts being BS What are your views?