Assume you’re in the market for a new car. You have picked your car: a ‘Standard’ model from car maker XYZ.
\nYour new car has everything you need. And the price is right: say $30,000.
\nThe model you chose also\u00c2\u00a0comes in a\u00c2\u00a0‘Pro’ version.
\nIt’s basically the same car, but it has some additional gadgets like a sunroof, GPS and leather seats.
\nSome of these extra gadgets are really nice, and you may even use some of them once or twice in the car’s lifetime.
\nYou briefly contemplate this ‘Pro’ model, until you see its price tag: $80,000.
\nHiding your astonishment about this strange pricing strategy you stick to your ‘Standard’ model.
\nThen you learn something else:
\nIf you have owned a car before, then, for some reason, you get a $10,000 discount!
\nThat’s a cool deal. Too bad this is\u00c2\u00a0your first car.
\nBut wait!
\nThere is more!
\nXYZ has a stripped down version of your ‘Standard’ model available as test car!
\nAs I said, it’s heavily stripped down, bare bones, but it gets you from A to B.
\nYou can test drive it for as long as you want for FREE! No cost! Gratis. All you pay is the gas.
\nNow .. if you DO borrow that car, then THAT counts towards this ‘had-car-previously’-discount!
\nSo\u00c2\u00a0you drive that loaner for a day or two, and now\u00c2\u00a0you can buy\u00c2\u00a0your ‘Standard’ for $20,000.
\nBut wait …\u00c2\u00a0you THEN find out that if\u00c2\u00a0you DON’T buy directly from XYZ, but order it through Amazon.com, they knock off yet another $2,000!<\/p>\n

You secretly wonder if the guy who came up with these somewhat odd pricing schemes will still have a job tomorrow.<\/p>\n

Strange story, you say?
\nWell, this actually happened to me yesterday!<\/p>\n

No, not with buying a car from XYZ through Amazon.<\/p>\n

It happened with buying software from Microsoft.<\/p>\n

I needed Visual Studio 2008.
\nIt’s not for enterprise or development groups purposes, so I basically have the choice between Visual Studio 2008 ‘Standard’ and ‘Professional’.
\nStandard costs $300.
\nProfessional, which is Standard + gadgets, costs $800.
\nIf you ‘upgrade’ from a previous version, Standard only costs $200.
\n“Previous versions” INCLUDE non-Microsoft, Open Source (free) Eclipse software\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0AND Microsoft’s own FREE Visual Studio 2008 Express software!
\nI 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.<\/p>\n

Who on earth\u00c2\u00a0would ever pay $300 for the full Standard version? (Probably the people who didn’t read the upgrade policy!)
\nAnd 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?<\/p>\n

They would probably be as pissed off as I was\u00c2\u00a0when, 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\u00c2\u00a0I ‘borrowed’ it and want to pay for it afterall.\u00c2\u00a0 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,\u00c2\u00a0see: link<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Bizarre!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u00c2\u00a0comes in a\u00c2\u00a0‘Pro’ version. It’s basically the same car, but it has some additional gadgets like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rip-offs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/claessen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}