Paul's blog

Assume you’re in the market for a new car. You have picked your car: a ‘Standard’ model from car maker XYZ.
Your new car has everything you need. And the price is right: say $30,000.
The model you chose also comes in a ‘Pro’ version.
It’s basically the same car, but it has some additional gadgets like a sunroof, GPS and leather seats.
Some of these extra gadgets are really nice, and you may even use some of them once or twice in the car’s lifetime.
You briefly contemplate this ‘Pro’ model, until you see its price tag: $80,000.
Hiding your astonishment about this strange pricing strategy you stick to your ‘Standard’ model.
Then you learn something else:
If you have owned a car before, then, for some reason, you get a $10,000 discount!
That’s a cool deal. Too bad this is your first car.
But wait!
There is more!
XYZ has a stripped down version of your ‘Standard’ model available as test car!
As I said, it’s heavily stripped down, bare bones, but it gets you from A to B.
You can test drive it for as long as you want for FREE! No cost! Gratis. All you pay is the gas.
Now .. if you DO borrow that car, then THAT counts towards this ‘had-car-previously’-discount!
So you drive that loaner for a day or two, and now you can buy your ‘Standard’ for $20,000.
But wait … you THEN find out that if you DON’T buy directly from XYZ, but order it through Amazon.com, they knock off yet another $2,000!

You secretly wonder if the guy who came up with these somewhat odd pricing schemes will still have a job tomorrow.

Strange story, you say?
Well, this actually happened to me yesterday!

No, not with buying a car from XYZ through Amazon.

It happened with buying software from Microsoft.

I needed Visual Studio 2008.
It’s not for enterprise or development groups purposes, so I basically have the choice between Visual Studio 2008 ‘Standard’ and ‘Professional’.
Standard costs $300.
Professional, which is Standard + gadgets, costs $800.
If you ‘upgrade’ from a previous version, Standard only costs $200.
“Previous versions” INCLUDE non-Microsoft, Open Source (free) Eclipse software  AND Microsoft’s own FREE Visual Studio 2008 Express software!
I double checked the price with Amazon, since I have free 2-day shipping with them, and they listed Visual Studio 2008 Standard Upgrade for $179.99.

Who on earth would ever pay $300 for the full Standard version? (Probably the people who didn’t read the upgrade policy!)
And how would they feel if they learn, that they could have had it for $120 less, LEGITEMATELY! By first installing (I doubt you actually need to do that) either the free Eclipse software or the free Visual Studio Express version?

They would probably be as pissed off as I was when, after buying a full version of Windows XP, I found out I could have gotten it for half the price by first simply ‘borrowing’ it, and then fessing up to Microsoft that I ‘borrowed’ it and want to pay for it afterall.  Granted, this is not QUITE the same, because in this scheme there IS some illegality involved. NOT so in the Visual Studio case! (For this XP story, see: link)

Bizarre!

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