Very special specials

[Dave A]

Two weeks ago I asked if business software renewal deals are taking advantage of a captive market.

At the time I was bleating about a 50% price increase year on year after I got this invoice:



So this week, from Monday, Quickbooks has been telling me about a special to be offered today on Quick Payroll renewals.

The special offer came in today.



Thanks for the special offer, but I think I prefer your standard pricing

[IanF]

I often wonder about the ethics of "sale" prices. The worst is sell at the normal price for sale price and say push up the normal price in the ad.

[Dave A]

I've had the following response from Quickbooks:

Good morning Dave,

I hope that you are well?

The R1499 that you were quoted is for the renewal of your annual maintenance plan which is applicable to our payroll software that you have already purchased – the special offer that we are currently advertising is targeted mainly at new users and for those existing users that would like to increase the amount of employees on their existing package.

As a new user you would normally pay R3999 for the package, with an annual renewal fee of R1499. As an existing user, if you wished to increase your number of employees by 120 you would need to purchase 12 brackets of 10 employees for R400 each which would work out to R4800 if you purchased them separately so it would make perfect sense to take advantage of this offer if you were looking to increase your number of employees any time in the future.

If you are not a new user or are not looking at increasing the number of employees that you currently have then you are correct, this offer would not be of any real benefit to you, but, if you do fall into either one of the previously mentioned categories then it would indeed be a massive saving.

I trust that the above has explained the “thinking” behind the special offer.

Kind Regards,

Nick

Thanks for the explanation, Nick.

And just to let everyone know - I had a look at what I paid for the original purchase of Quick Payroll in March 2011, and that was R3999 (incl VAT) too.

So it's a pretty good offer actually - basically half price for one day only.

Now Nick, any special offers coming on licence renewals