This morning I received yet another email from Embarcadero enjoining me to purchase Delphi XE3, using the same email address that is already associated with the EDN account I used to activate the Delphi XE3 I already own.
Some people apparently find this to be perfectly normal and (presumably) effective marketing. I disagree.
Even more annoying, is that this email dangled the carrot of a FREE HTMLBuilder if I purchased before 31st December. Not that I think I will have much use for it, but it might be nice if those people who already purchased would be offered the same free deal, instead of being harassed by spam offering this deal to them inappropriately.
But more important than that was an interesting note buried at the bottom of that email:
STOP PRESS!
You will be saving another 10% if you buy before 31 December 2012 and beat the upcoming price increase on Professional Edition products from 01 January 2013!
Has anybody heard details about this price rise ?
Is it coincident with the inclusion of RAD Mobile Studio in the Pro range ?
Good catch Joylon!
I completely missed that little tidbit hiding in a black box off to the side. Nice to know the value equation is eroding even further…
Maybe they send you these emails to annoy you because you complain about it so much LOL. I have a Pro SA and I don’t seem to get these same emails.
Also, my Pro SA access gives me full access to download the HTML Builder.
Could be. My guess is that it’s because I am signed up for “New products and special offers” in my contact preferences. I just think it is no beyond the wit of man to combine this information with the “Products already registered by this email address” so that the announcements I get are actually relevant to me.
My choices are “Don’t tell me about any offers at all” or “Bombard me with everything”. Dumb.
I didn’t renew my SA after having been royally shafted with XE3 (*). I also registered my XE3 before the October 23rd qualifying date for registration (not purchase, or active SA) of XE3 required to get HTML Builder.
(*) My $$$’s are part of the 54% spike in sales in 2011, as I hadn’t upgraded my own personal license since D7, so to get back on the upgrade train I had to start over as a new customer. I know a fair few people in the same boat who were excited by XE2 and then felt similarly let down when XE3 arrived. I can’t help but wonder if the price rise for Pro stems from a need to offset a sharp drop in upgrade/renewal fees by attempting to gouge new customers ?
It will be interesting to see what, if anything, Embarcadero has to say about their sales performance in Feb 2013.
Old news! š
https://forums.embarcadero.com/thread.jspa?threadID=79066&tstart=30
Not entirely surprising that I missed it on the previous occasions that this email hit my inbox. I go through phases of just instantly hitting delete on these spams, and [shorter] phases of checking to see if it is one of those vanishingly rare occasions when there might be something of interest to me in it. I just wish the thing of interest on this occasion had been a bit more welcome than this. š
They can hardly sail it for current price and need to invent all those never-ending actions and discounts.
At the same time they are raising prices.
Maybe they has multiple personalities in… Well, they do.
And the personalities that are sending e-mail “offer” and accounting for registered products are different as well š
That’s just normal. Raise the price – discount it – have a higher price next time even with discount granted. Happens in the supermarket all the time.
One could say, EMB is aware that not all people can afford Delphi and except of providing different prices in different countries they simply discount.
I can imagine there are some Delphi houses out there that have a range of licenses for various versions of Delphi, some upgraded some not – In this case they might be interested in upgrades (i.e they have some XE3 licenses, but also older licenses that they may want to upgrade) – thus they might be interested in an upgrade opportunity when they already have XE3. I can imagine the SQL would get quite convoluted if you wanted to make sure that you send upgrade notifications to only those people who are interested/can benefit from them.
I don’t see that it’s that complicated at all. If the number of registered XE3 licenses is less than the total number of registered qualifying, upgradeable licenses, then I am potentially interested in an upgrade deal. If not, then I am as upgraded as I can possibly be interested in, and cannot take advantage of any upgrade deals that may be offered.
There is a specific range of versions that qualify for upgrades. Licenses that pre-date the activation regime don’t qualify for upgrade to the current version, so there is no possibility of “unknown” other, older versions that a user might wish to upgrade but which Embarcadero are not aware of.
I suppose it is possible that a customer might not have registered all the licenses they previously bought, but if they haven’t registered them they can’t be using them, and if they aren’t using them the chances of their being interested in upgrading them are slim, even if there exist any customers in such a position. š