It’s not that simple. There are dos and don’ts in marketing that either create a positive customer experience or pee people off. The latter is to be avoided.
I have not seen such crude tactics and the reason is probably that most companies follow the best practices as they want happy customers.
There is a period before a new release where you can get a free upgrade to the new release. I am not sure what that period is for PL but you can ask the question.
I think the Black Friday sale was for full copy rather than upgrade.
No, the full 50% discount is applied to new and existing customers. This is how you make people feel taken for a ride.
It is an unfortunate set of timing and other circumstances, but no one forced you to upgrade to PL 5 and FP 6 so soon after purchasing PL4 and FP 5.
There are only a few new features in each. The major new features in PL5 include the local adjustment control line tool and the Chroma/Luma sliders, support for Fuji X-Tran sensors, and the new metadata management features.
A number of PL 4 users have opted to wait until PL6 to upgrade. If I had been in the same cicumstance as you I would have held off until PL6 is released next October and then I would have purchased it and FP6 next Black Friday.
Mark
Bad business practice to have someone buy PL4 and two weeks later release PL5 without any notice that a newer version would be available soon.
He actually purchased the previous releases of both two months before PL 5 and FP 6 were released. If he had purchased them two weeks before they were released he would have been entitled to free upgrades to both.
Mark
Even if purch in the “Release Discount” period (in my case PL5) DXO did NOT offer the further discount, refused it when asked and only agreed when I persisted.
Richard
@Rich-1 when did you purchase your upgrade (date) and what discount did you get after persisting?
I purchased the upgrade October 21st.
The fact that FP5 was already 5 years without an update and then not offering a heavy discount for someone who just bought the software is beyond me.
The age of the software is irrelevant. The main difference between FP 5 and FP 6 is the Time Machine feature which emulates various photographic film from the beginning of photography and 15 new film types bringing the total number of film emulations from 82 to 97. It also added some additional frame types. In the scheme of things, the updates are not that significant for many, if not most, users.
Viewpoint 3 is also five years old but works so well it is not really in need of an update, although new functionality will always be welcome.
Mark
Lighthunter…
I bought the PL5 upgrade [from PL4] (I’ve been using DXO Optics-Pro/PL since 2005, v3…) in the “Launch sale” (near end).
After pushing I got the BF rate.
Richard
Greetings from Sri Lanka… Agree fully … Hope this is remedied in the future and existing uses are offered a better price on upgrade…
Panduka
Totally agree with Rich-1, it certainly seems the loyal posters on here are quite happy with the situation so I would expect no change. This kind of poor business practice will a longer term negative impact via lost sales / repeat business and I for one will not be upgrading Photolab/Viewpoint/Nik in future. No doubt that will cut no ice with the ‘fan-bois’, nor with DxO but loyalty cuts both ways.
We still have 23h to upgrade a PL4 license to PL5 for USD 49.50 (or whatever comes up in other currencies)
Log into your DxO shop account to see what’s on.
I’m also into the group of fooled by launch upgrade discount. I went for the extra discount in the bundle PL5 + FP6. It is unbelievable to see people defending this practice based on “you should have waited”. We are not talking about new customers, but customers coming for an upgrade. The timing of the pricing difference is very bad and disrespectful to regular customers.
As a new customer who also bought pl5 after release because of the sale, but not being in the know of the true sale, I’m not happy either. Been using rawtherapee since you could actually purchase lightroom so I wasn’t aware of how things have apparently always been, I’ve never ran into other software that got extra double discounted so soon after release discount though, so yeah it still feels like a slap in the face here too.
I didn’t bother with support, seems like I expected after reading you can’t return after activating. Which is all fine, they have every right to do all of that but, I won’t be upgrading, buying plugins or recommending it going forward.
Was just going to give dxo a slow clap and let it go until I saw this thread in an email summary, and all the silly defenses.
Agree, I learned the lesson too, and well. So well, that I’ll remember it next year for sure. Wait until end of November in any case.