My Xojo subscription expired yesterday. Saturday before the expiration, I was online looking at my account. Auto-renew wasn’t turned on, so I turned it on. Yet I got the notice today that my subscription was out.
So I started a conversation with Alyssa Foley since purchasing a renewal from the website will not get you the auto-renew discount. Well, guess what- THERE IS NO AUTO RENEW DISCOUNT THIS YEAR!!! Since Auto-Renew wasn’t around before Xojo had no provision for it. So they have no stored credit card info, etc. So they basically force you to pay full price wether you want to auto-renew or not. Yet Auto-Renew was one of the big upgrade incentives Xojo pushed when they came out with the new pricing scheme. It seems disingenuous to offer auto-renew discounts for out years yet shaft a user who has been renewing for multiple years.
I asked Alyssa to send me a discount code anyhow since if she did, I’d order the renewal today. After all, money today at a discount is far better than money promised tomorrow. I’m really under no hurry to renew my license otherwise. 2015r1 just came out so there won’t be a major upgrade for several months. And I have no need yet for compiling for iOS so that’s not an issue either. So I have no incentive to spend my capital today. It’s better for me to spend it tomorrow. But it’s not better for Xojo.
Too bad. They lose out on revenue from me right now. Money tomorrow is worth less than money today. And it’s only a promise. But that’s what you get when you hold out an offer of a discount for long term users but then don’t allow them to have it but say, “You have to wait until next year.”
There was a lot of discussion. However, the fact that you can’t get the discount the first year is especially grating. I don’t know if that was ever discussed as no one really knew it.
So bottom line -you can’t auto-renew your first year. So bottom line = Xojo waits for my money until I need to spend it.
[quote=171888:@Jon Ogden]There was a lot of discussion. However, the fact that you can’t get the discount the first year is especially grating. I don’t know if that was ever discussed as no one really knew it.
So bottom line -you can’t auto-renew your first year. So bottom line = Xojo waits for my money until I need to spend it.[/quote]
No, I don’t recall THAT ever having been discussed.
[quote=171889:@Markus Winter]No, I don’t recall THAT ever having been discussed.
And yes, I’m not too impressed by it either.[/quote]
Exactly. It wasn’t. I was shocked when I was told I’d have to pay full price this year even though I want to auto-renew. Here’s what Alyssa said:
And
So this was definitely a bait and switch offer. It’s a minimal amount of money yes. But it’s the principle of the thing. Xojo told us we’d get a discount of we auto-renewed. I turned it on for my account. I am not getting the discount.
Seems like what was offered is NOT what was delivered.
Again - my money remains in my bank account for now. It’s better for my cash flow. Worse for Xojo’s.
I think this forum post title is not very helpful, IMO. “Buyer Beware” sounds really too bad. Don’t know about the discount offered is worth this kind of message? Maybe language barrier, but I think you don’t know very much about making a customer and developer software, huge differences. I mean, Cocoa, LLVM, 64 Bit, MAS Problemas, Apple new february 64 bit new thing, etc, etc, etc… Compatibility among frameworks, 32/64 bit Universal Builds… Arf… Just thinking about them I’m exhausted…
This is a major, major step and I don’t thing your tittle message is the best. But I respect your opinion in any case.
The problem as I see it is that Xojo don’t have our payment details, so can’t ping our cards for the renewal.
I would welcome a one time opportunity to spend $1.92 (being $699/365) to extend my existing maintenance by one day. This would then switch on the auto renew & I would get my loyalty discount. I would only expect this to be available once and as an extension to existing paid maintenance.
If this is too hard I’d be happy to purchase a pen, coffee mug or t-shirt to give Xojo my payment details.
[quote=171893:@Tim Hare]Alyssa posted this last Dec 10[/quote]Yes, I remember that and thought no more of it but now I’m curious again. I bought (the new) Pro a few weeks ago. And auto-renew is turned on. For good measure, I just turned it off and on again. It didn’t offer to store my card details. So… not that it’s a huge deal, but am I set up for the auto-renewal discount or not?
Well, I’ve decided not to use Auto-Renew at all and this is to Xojo’s detriment but my benefit.
1.) I manage my cash flow. So if I don’t need to upgrade when my renewal is due (since it’s between versions, etc), then wait. Spending tomorrow’s money is better than spending today’s money.
2.) Since the discount for auto-renewal is fairly limited, it’s not much. So it’s better for my money to just hold it and manage it and spend it when I need to rather than some arbitrary date.
3.) Since new purchases and renewals are all the same cost, I can then take advantage of purchasing a NEW pro license whenever they have their next sale. So that purchase during the sale gives me a much bigger discount than the measly $25 or whatever it is with auto-renew.
So Xojo could have had my money in hand today. Alyssa could have given me the discount. They would have had my money - NOW. But they messed up. Now they have to wait until when I want to give them my money. That may be in a week, might be two months, might be 6 months. I don’t know. But that’s revenue they could have had today. And I would have been an auto-renew customer guaranteeing my auto-renew business for the future. Now, forget it. The opportunity cost of holding my fungible assets myself is far better than the measly discount for auto-renew.
Thanks for posting this info! I read all those lengthy posts about the pricing changes before they occurred and never interpreted them to mean this. I couldn’t agree with you more about waiting for a major reason to upgrade/renew anymore.
Can you clarify? Do you mean it needs to be ON, at the exact time your account expires? From what Jon posted above:
“Saturday before the expiration, I was online looking at my account. Auto-renew wasn’t turned on, so I turned it on. Yet I got the notice today that my subscription was out.”
I just turned auto-renew on just to make sure I don’t miss anything, not because I know what it means in terms of a purchasing decision. I’ve come to the conclusion that trying to figure what the hell the rules are, is far more painful than the price increase was.
It needs to be turned on, not by you, but in response to a purchase. Only then can they acquire your payment details, which are required for auto - renew to function.
Huh? Tim, I realize you don’t work for them, so I’m not barking at you, but what is the point of having that option to turn on or off the auto renewal in my account settings if it doesn’t do anything? I have had an active license without a lapse for about 5 years now, but have no idea if that is the same thing.
Note to Geoff: You guys could not have possibly made this any more confusing.
“You may enable or disable auto renewal at any time- just change the setting and click Save.”
by “You” I assume they are talking about me, since I am the only one that can get in there. But above you wrote, “It needs to be turned on, not by you”. As I said, very confusing.