It Only Takes One Bad Experience...

Last fall my laptop started having some major problems. CPU utilization hitting 100% when nothing was actually happening, shutting down when not plugged in even though the battery was full, just all sorts of flakiness. In the end it turned out to be a motherboard issue, but I didn't know that and I did a full Windows reset in November. This meant having to reinstall all my apps and it was mostly painless. Some games from Steam, some apps from the Windows Store, some websites where I had to login and download a new copy of the installer. Tedious and annoying, but survivable.

The problems continued, despite the fresh system install, and I was able to determine that it wasn't a software situation, but hardware. So, last month I cut my loses, traded in the old laptop, and went through all the new system rigamarole again. This time I ran up against one software vendor that had one jaw dropping policy: they would only allow you to do a reinstall once a year. The license to your machine was locked, to that old machine, for a full twelve months and could not be reclaimed. I had been forced to "reclaim" the licenses for myself when I reset my system, because a new Windows installation on the same machine is the same as getting a new computer as far as their policy is concerned. So, in November, without really realizing what I was getting myself into, I reinstalled the software and started a new 12-months. When I wiped the old machine and got a new machine, they wouldn't let me use my software.

I reached out to the technical support folks and explained the situation. The response was "that's our policy, but you can buy new licenses for your existing products and install those". I.E. - That's just too bad. Give us more money.

Had their initial response been "we are so sorry you've been going through this extremely annoying ordeal, we have reset your licenses, thank you for being our customer" I would have reinstalled their software. The fact that they essentially said I was out of luck and then tried to sell me new licenses? That made me mad and I told them so. After my rather strongly worded response they replied again and said they would be willing to grant an exception in my case and allow me to reinstall the software I bought and paid for, if I were to provide them with a proof of purchase of a new machine and some other supporting documentation.

So, naturally, I fired them. I told them I would no longer use their products because I no longer trusted them. They can keep their licenses until November and even when I can install them, I won't. You see, a cat could knock a cup of coffee on to my shiny new laptop tomorrow. I could drop it. There are any number of random things that could force me to reset or rebuild my computing environment. It unforeseeable. If I use their software and depend on being able to do so but I require a special exemption from their standard policy (an exemption I have to essentially beg for via multiple interactions with their support team over the course of several days) in an unanticipated need to reset the system, well, that's a headache I don't need. I would rather use a competing product, which is exactly what I am now doing.

I liked the software this company provided. I have used their products for many many years and routinely purchased new licenses and upgrades, but out of the dozens of software vendors with applications installed on my system, they were the only company that made this a problem, the only one that tried to squeeze new sales out of me to fix the problem, and the only one I fired. One irony here? I probably wouldn't have been so upset if I hadn't truly liked their product and truly relied on the functionality. My own reliance on their software made me extremely unwilling to risk this happening again. Some things just need to be there when you need them and if you can't rely on that, you need to find an alternative.

Lesson? If you are a software product person, give serious consideration to how your policies treat your customers. If you have a policy that presumes the customer to be dishonest and you treat your customers like criminals or potential criminals, they may decide that they don't trust you either. If you have a policy that allows for reasonable protection of your own assets while also allowing the customer to recover from an unexpected situation, you'll gain loyalty. This particular software vendor could offer me their entire product line for free right now and I would decline because I won't make myself reliant on them again. This stuff matters, customer loyalty is hard won and can be easily lost.