Total Phase, Software Options, Service Fees etc

[rfbroadband]

Today I received an email from the Total Phase sales team that my hardware/application support agreement for our Promira Serial Platform device will expire  soon and they tried to convince to purchase a new agreement at 10% of list price of the device.

The executive summary is :

Without such a hardware/application service contract the customer will 

• no longer have access to technical support (hmm maybe ok, but understandable as it can be expensive for small companies to offer  such a support free of charge...still)
  
• no longer receive bug fixes of their software and firmware (not acceptable)
  
• no longer be able to purchase new software options for the hardware you already purchased !!! (absolutely not acceptable)
  

To be very clear here: If you don't have an annual subscription at 10% of MSRP for the support agreement you will lose the right to purchase a brand new software option in the future.

To put this in perspective, below are the pricing options for the Promira Serial Platform according to their website (US prices):

- Base unit 450$ (note that I2C and SPI decoding is disabled for the base version).
- I2C up to 1MHz : 150$
- SPI up to 12.5MHz : 150$
- I2C up to 3.4MHz add another 800$
- SPI up to 40 MHz add another 300$
- SPI up to 80 MHz add another 1000$ (nope I am not joking)
for a total of $2850.
- they offer more options for a total of up to 8218$...

You can do the math yourself, they expect you to pay 10% of the list price for the privilege of buying a new software option in the future.

They really think they can force a customer that is off the annual subscription and wants to upgrade (for example) the SPI decoding speed from 12.5MHz to 40MHz with a software key to purchase a brand new hardware unit and re-purchase the software options, that were already purchased, again.

I found this policy so outrageous that I politely responded asked if they could explicitly confirm that my understanding is correct. Total Phase responded, confirmed my assumptions and re-iterated the terms of their  policy and said that easiest way for us would be to purchase the annual subscription.

So I am curious to see what kind of responses will be posted in regards to these policy terms.





 

[hendorog]

Those types of agreements aren't that unusual in the software/IT world - and include software keys which expire periodically.
You buy the license at $x and then pay $x/y 'maintenance' every year.

It's basically a subscription for non-cloud stuff. And when you think about it, this is one reason why paying for cloud services isn't a problem for many companies, as they are doing it anyway.

My advice would be go find another product which has terms that you agree with.

[rfbroadband]

I agree it is common in the software/IT world.
Enforcing an annual subscription model upon customers who purchased hardware (in this case test equipment) and preventing the customer from buying new software options in the future for hardware that was purchased ....is another story.

[hendorog]

I agree it is common in the software/IT world.
Enforcing an annual subscription model upon customers who purchased hardware (in this case test equipment) and preventing the customer from buying new software options in the future for hardware that was purchased ....is another story.

I'm not so sure that it's that unusual in the hardware world, although when I've seen it, it has been on complex/expensive machinery.

The thing that looks odd to me here, is that it is just a protocol converter. Full support and maintenance seems like a bit of a money grab for something so mundane.

Surely you can find something else to do the job without much difficulty? That is the best way to send a message.

[rfbroadband]

the product is nothing special and I already told them they lost a customer. I was just upset at the level of greed shown by the company.

I am sure if R&S, Tek, Keysight, Rogol etc. would start selling test equipment and! require an annual fee of 10% of list price per year to "earn the privilege" buying more software options in the future and receiving basic bug fixes... the outcry would be immense. 

While I am certainly familiar with these T&C in the software world, I have purchased many low end and very high end equipment/units in the past and never ran across these T&C in the T&M hardware world...independent if you spent 100k$ with Keysight or 1000$ with Rigol.

[marshallh]

Very odd as I have the top of the line Beagle USB3 Premium analyzer and the downloads have always been free as with customer support.

Sounds to me like they are trying to extract some money from what is basically a commodity SPI/i2c breakout board with fancy software. Not that there's anything wrong with those, having nice software ready to go can realy save your bacon sometimes.