Less than a month ago existing users were offered a 30% discount to upgrade to PL 5… Now it’s 50%.
This is a really poor way (disrespectful, despicable) to treat your loyal (since 2005 in my case) customers.
How about an automatic refund to these users???
Richard
Hello,
yes that is annoying, but is also every year the same and in the forum you can read it’s best wait until the Black fridays. Affinity does similar and at time there are again BF offers at Affinity.
Yes, it is really disappointing that many businesses resort to these deceptive “Sales” tricks.
Just because others do it does not make it right.
Richard
As already stated, this has happened every year for many years. I made the mistake of buying ‘early’, i.e. when the new version first came out, only once. Since then I’ve only ever parted with my money during their Black Friday sale.
As for a refund, if you gripe to DxO via their support email address you might but only might, get somewhere. I didn’t get a refund but I did get a discount on my next purchase. The discount was equivalent to the difference between price I’d paid and the Black Friday price.
Hope this helps,
stuck
Any user of any software product from any software company who buys a software upgrade just before Black Friday pricing is risking the same issue.
It is not incumbent upon DXO to make up the difference in price to people who decide to purchase their products just before Black Friday. The concept of waiting for a sale is to be able to purchase things at a lower price than you might otherwise might be able to. When you purchased it, PhotoLab was not on sale, now it is.
Mark
Mark, I am very well aware of sales. And, when I purchased it on release it was on “sale”.
My point should be quite clear, the “release sale” was made in the deliberate knowledge that it will go on sale again very shortly thereafter at a significantly lower price. In other words, a deliberate ploy to get customers to pay more than they needed for it.
Notwithstanding that “everybody does it” this is pure deception and despicable. One should not have to wait and trust that it will go on sale again a couple of weeks later.
Richard
There was a new version released discount and now a Black Friday deal.
Same thing every year, if you can’t wait, buy at launch of new release, if you can wait then it’s a guess if they will offer a better deal for back Friday. Noticed that other software are not so much? adobe 40% , exposure 15%, Capture One 20%. No guarantee PL comes down to 50%.
Unfortunately, the timing of new PhotoLab major releases is almost always the 3rd Wednesday of October, only a month before Black Friday. When it’s released, DxO initially gives users a reasonable upgrade price which many of us take advantage of knowing full well that Black Friday prices will be much lower.
However, sInce there is a 31 day trial period, other people opt to download the trial when PhotoLab is released and then purchase an upgrade license when Black Friday prices become available.This is not new. We go through this every year. Some people wait, and some people, like myself, purchase the upgrade as soon as it is available.
Mark
Unfortunately all I see here is “defense” of DXO and “blame the customer”.
Maybe DXO needs to address the issue and do the upgrade sale 6 mo before “Black Friday/Cyber Monday” and avoid the misleading “Sale”.
So much for supporting a small company since 2005…
Richard
Richard,
I’m not defending anything. I am just telling you how it works. You have a perfect right to be unhappy about it. Many of use ran into the same issue in previous years and learned from it. I was hoping the information I provided will help you when its time to upgrade to PL6. Since you have been using DXO’s products since 2005 haven’t you run into this issue before?
Mark
Well, needless to say DXO are refusing a refund… and refusing to move it beyond the “front line” responder.
Sorry, I don’t keep track of what was offered last year or whenever for all the software I have.
DXO is the only one I have that updates anywhere close to this date.
Their practice of significantly increasing a discount after 2 weeks is pure and deliberate deception.
And yes, I know that other companies likely do it, that does not change the issue.
Richard
usually photo software sales are Spring and Fall for new releases and updates in the between, nothing new and it’s been this way for quit some time.
October 20, here’s a post of mine
if you search black friday deal top right, you’ll get quit some links from few yrs back, was just a matter of doing a search to know about this.
I understand your frustration, I’ve been there. However, I doubt very much that it is “pure and deliberate deception” on DxO’s part. Consumers always need to be vigilant before spending their money. Caveat Emptor.
Additionally, using the trial version even when you are familiar with the software is always a good idea. You may find that the new features may not be worth the cost to you, or support of your new camera may not be included, or you could run into technical issues that will give you buyer’s remorse. Additionally, in a situation like yours, the trial would have carried you through to the Black Friday sale price.
Mark
Too true Richard, the same did I. It’s the second times this happened to me. It would be really a compliment to the loyal customers as we are.
Mike
Well, today I did receive a refund…
It pays to be persistent, get beyond the first level responder and find someone who understands the real issue.
Mark, there is no “buyers remorse”. I always install demos and test them but even that is not foolproof.
In the case of PL5, I have had no issues.
NIK Coll 4 is another story… I installed the demo on my laptop. No issues, paid for it.
When I went to install it on my workstation, complete install failure. All the installer does is remove Col 3 (why, stupid), then request a reboot. On rebooting it requests another reboot… endlessly… Win 10, everything up to date on both machines. Uninstaller cant remove it.
After 3 1/2 months (including an entire month with no response) all DXO could say is “yes, we have had a number of installer issues, but yours is unique, we can not provide a solution.”… Unfortunately all that is “unique” is their code. It has never happened with anyone elses installer…NO offer of a refund for a defective product. I did eventually (see above) get a refund.
Tech support seems to have ignored (no response to) a number of suggestions I made including V3 installer works v4 does not… check the code where the problem occurs, see whats different, that is likely the problem… isn’t that simple?
All they would say was “our logs don’t show anything”, well I guess they were not looking in the right place [BTW, I have written code, debugged code, beta tested code, and written manuals for other peoples “spaghetti code” but its not my profession]
Richard
PhaseOne has a history of doing an early upgrader discount (this year too) in October and then a Black Friday sale. This year PhaseOne did not do the Black Friday sale at all (20% off only). I expect PhaseOne will be disappointed with upgrades and will offer a better discount on their New Year sale.
You are going hard here on DxO but I have to say the staff are not hiding the Black Friday Sale (references stay on the forums, Black Friday is announced here). The early adopter initial sale is okay (30%). The difference in my upgrade (two pieces) was €118 to €89. If this was the worst ripoff I faced all year, I’d be a happy man.
The Nik v4 situation is a separate debacle. I’m surprised DxO released such an ill-thought-out and buggy update. It’s the first update I have not bought in three years. I’m glad you got your refund if you’re not using Nik. I’m quite happy with Nik v3, albeit I only use SilverEfex with any regularity (any time I want to work in BW, SilverEfex has always been exceptional).
glad your case was solved. time to process some pictures =]
It is a bit naughty, in my opinion. I bought at the 30% discount price because if I decided to wait and then the BF sale did not occur, I’ve then paid 43% more than I needed to. As it turned out, I paid 40% more than I needed to. In percentage terms it seems like waiting was the best option, but in absolute dollars, considering I upgrade both PL Elite and FilmPack Elite, that’s very real money I was gambling.
Many sellers of physical products will offer to honour a new, lower price for people who bought recently. I’m not going to demand it, but I don’t like it.
who knew they would price it 50% off and not only 20% or 15% like other software? if it was only 20% for black friday you’d be saying you had a good deal and been using it for over a month.
Now that you’re aware… next year get the trial version as black friday comes a week (or two) after. That being said, it is still a guess if it will be 50% and not dropping off to the usual 30%.
*edit
I’ve been on PL3 since it’s released, skipped PL4 because of all the complaining of bugs and trala-la (sort of what happened with PL2). Since PL5 came out, there still some bugs that people are reporting but its a new released so give a month or two and most of them if not all will be fixed. yes i waited for black friday just to see if there would be a better deal (learned from the past), but there’s also been an update to PL5 already.