1) Why did you decide to introduce the new Vienna Protection Plan as a subscription based service instead of just charging users with a one time fee for the needed services when the key is actually lost/stolen?
Wouldn't that be like buying auto insurance AFTER you get into a car accident?
If you had just a quarter of the possible licenses that VSL offers it will still cost them much more to replace those lost licenses than it would cost you for the protection plan.
No. It would be like paying for the necessary repairs of your car yourself instead of having an insurance at all.
Probably a more realistic scenario would be people who don't buy health insurance, but have to cover doctor's fees themselves in case of illness.
So in other words: If lose my USB key (and ONLY in that case), I would be more than happy to pay for the additional work caused for the VSL support to replace my licenses. Until now, that fee was an outrageous 50% MSRP, due to the fact that VSL feared people would sell off/pirate the key and get a cheap replacement.
But as I have written above, this has changed with the new license system - stolen/lost licenses can now be deactivated.
So important questions are:
- How much does it actually cost for VSL to replace a license?
- And I would still like to know, why I have to pay an annual fee, even if there is no problem with my USB key - thus causing no additional work/costs for VSL at all.
If I were to play the devil's advocate, I could argue that VSL just created a comfortable new revenue stream for themselves, because:
a) VSL decided to use the USB licences copy protection. In comparison, other popular companies such as Spectrasonics and Fabfilter just hand me a serial and demand an online activation, which (though admittedly less secure) are obviously vastly superior in every way for the customer - because there is no danger of license loss whatsoever if you are registered.
b) Only due to the choice of VSLs copy protection, until now users were in danger of losing 50% of their investment in case of key loss/theft.
c) In order to remedy this obvious disadvantage of the chosen copy protection scheme - which again has no benefit for the customer at all - VSL wants me to pay them extra money to offset the risk caused solely by their choice of said protection?
See the problem there? With the new possibility of deactivating keys, it's like a car dealer, who says: "Hey, if you lose your car key, we will not authorize a new key, unless you pay 50% of the car's MSRP. Otherwise, we will repossess the car.
But fortunately for you, we have this shiny new "Car Key Protection Plan", so if you lose your car key now, you can buy yourself a new key and we will reauthorize it, so you are still able to use the car.
I am not unreasonable, I can understand users who have have spent +$10,000 on VSL instruments and use the software in their daily work on tight deadlines. These people might just see the protection plan as a negligible business expense and are happy their investment is safe and they can get quick replacement licenses.
Heck, even I am grudgingly thinking about purchasing the protection plan, because I recently got the Cube with the Mir Pro roompack and I know I could never afford to pay the 50% replacement fee.
But the more I think about it, I believe this new protection plan was not the best choice from a PR standpoint. IMHO, it would have been a lot smarter to offer at least an unlimited one time license replacement for free with every key.
I would have even been ok with a little more expensive USB key or a few percent price increase on all libraries if VSL has new additional costs that need to be offset. Going this way would have invalidated the #1 argument against USB keys: Potential loss of licenses. Now if you read through neutral forums, opinions are much more divided because of the recurring cost.
