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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!simtel!news.kei.com!news.mathworks.com!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!agate!reason.cdrom.com!usenet From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@FreeBSD.org> Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: disgruntled.. not a flame.. to cdrom.com Date: 15 Sep 1995 10:44:23 GMT Organization: Walnut Creek CDROM Lines: 107 Message-ID: <43ble7$nco@reason.cdrom.com> References: <439eta$gbq@mark.ucdavis.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: time.cdrom.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 1.1N (X11; I; FreeBSD 2.1-STABLE i386) To: ccjason@quadrophenia.ucdavis.edu,tech@cdrom.com X-URL: news:439eta$gbq@mark.ucdavis.edu ccjason@quadrophenia.ucdavis.edu (Jason Gabler) wrote: >I wrote the following PRIVATE letter to info@cdrom.com, now over a >month ago. I was agitated enough originally, but now its a month and still I am not on the info@cdrom.com mailing list as it goes to an admin type who generally forwards all the weird "help I want to call you on the phone but I have no fingers - what do I do?" sorts of questions. Clearly, this one went astray as I would most certainly have replied to it, as would have several others here. Your lack of a response was due to error, not indifference. Now that we have that out of the way, on to your questions: > Yesterday (Sat Aug 12) just before closing time I walked into the >front office there at 4041 Pike Ln. and purchased the FreeBSD 2.0.5 RELEASE >CDROM. I was quite surprised at the the $38 some-odd dollar price. But I >surmised two things: 1) well, its fairly new maybe its still expensive and >I want it to day , especially since 2) I drove a little road trip from S.F. >to Concord to purchase this little piece of platic and aluminum, I was not >going to go home empty handed. And that's why we have that store. A lot of people want their gratification NOW and are unwilling to wait for it. To tell the truth, in fact, that store is actually more of a pain than it's worth since we're not actually set up to do much beyond mail order sales but, like I said, it's a convenience to the customers so we keep it. > So today a friend called me who went to a small (!) computer show >in the Sacto area. She bought the same CDROM for $12 (yep! TWELVE!). Boy, >do I feel duped. I've had this mystical-aura feeling about you guys at WC >CDROM, mostly because of the most superb job you all do with FreeBSD. But >usually, when you take the time to buy from the source, you pay less than >people who go thru the source, the wholeseller , and then the retailer. I Nope! I mean, I'm really sorry to burst your bubble and all but that's just NOT how it works in the CD business and you can ask anyone in it, from WC to Infomagic, just how it really does work. Here are some facts for you to chew on: For a given title, you sell anywhere from 20-40% directly to customers and the rest through distributor channels. These distributor channels are your lifeblood (no surprise there, considering the percentages involved) and they are VERY fussy about what they'll pay! They order those kinds of volumes because they can sell them, and they can sell them because: A) They sell them cheap. B) They can still make respectable volume profit margins and are therefore _highly motivated_ to sell as many as they can. That's all distributors do, after all, they don't make things or do any sort of R&D investment, they just sell stuff. Therefore, it hardly requires an MBA from Yale to very quickly figure two things out: A) If you want distributors to sell your stuff, you need to give them good deals. B) If you undercut your own distributors and take their customers away, they'll drop you like a hot potato. It is not hard for someone to sell you a CD for $12. We give very good deals to our distributors and if they order enough CDs from us then they can still make a profit at even that low price. We can't sell it to you at anything near that price or we'd soon have no distributors at all, and that'd be suicide. However, it's also false to say that you don't get _anything_ extra for your $39.95. For one thing, WC is pretty darn good about fielding tech support calls, even forwarding them on to ME when they can't answer something directly - they don't just hang up with a shrug! If you can't figure out how to install FreeBSD on your machine and you call your distributor, he'll probably just tell you to call WC - he certainly won't be able to answer your question himself! We provide literally thousands of hours of tech support every month and I can assure you that many people have received well over and above their forty buck's worth! So there's the tech support and we're not exactly making money on it, if you get my drift. Then there's the unconditional return policy. Believe me, we are VERY good about this one! If you buy a CD for $12 at a swap-meet and then later go back for a refund because it has some minor defect like a scratch on the jewel case, the dealer will probably *laugh* at you! Trust me! You won't get your $12 back, that's for sure. In our case, we'll refund your money without question. Don't like the color of the case? Wrong shade of white? We don't care. Unconditional means unconditional. You don't even have to send the product back! In fact, if one version doesn't work for you because of a clear shortcoming in the software (e.g. it doesn't seem to run on your machine) we'll send you the next version for free. No problem. You keep both CDs. Or how about the 24 hour order line, 7 days a week 365 days of the year? Those people who work at night don't work for free, and it's unfair to compare us with a dealer who's only got to staff his shop from 9am - 5pm, Mon-Fri. For that matter, how many dealers will respond to emailed tech support questions? Or put patches up for ftp (to say nothing of almost their entire product line)? We may be forced to charge a certain margin over our distributors with our retail sales, but I'd certainly say that we go the extra mile and then some to make sure that something extra is provided in return. Finally, I can't say that anyone here has ever made any attempt to "dupe" anyone over this issue. We sell subscriptions for $24.95 for those who want a better deal and want FreeBSD updates regularly, and if you ask us how to get an even better deal than that then we'll more than openly refer you to one of our distributors. No attempts to hide anything here, it's just the way the business works. I hope this at least goes some way towards answering the points you raise. If you remain disgrunted, it goes without saying that we'll be more than happy to refund your money. We do not want unhappy customers! Jordan Hubbard Walnut Creek CDROM