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- Maybe in reply to: malkajef@@orthohelp.com: "New versions of Nat"
> Personal V1 was first sold at about $700 I believe, I considered myself
> lucky to get the "early bird special" at $300.
Yes, and you got to use it.
> Dragon kinda shafted its whole reseller group when it started selling
> the programs direct, then let CompUSA sell them, then cut the prices to
> less than the wholesale price the resellers paid for them. I sypathize
> with the resellers that took it on the chin, but I'm not sure Dragon had
> much choice against the marketing muscle of IBM.
Wouldn't it be the fair thing to "repay" the loss they caused. Yes, you
paid $300 because you "thought" it was "worth" it and I paid $165 for
the same reason. But IBM proved it was "worth" in fair market value
only, what? $79.
IMHO Dragon DID shaft the initial purchasers of the product as well as
the reseller group, unless it rebated in some way the price they paid.
The fact of the matter is that they shortsightedly mispriced the
original offering (and IMHO mislabeled a known defect) and are
apparently unwilling to correct that voluntarily.
I don't know if the L&H competing products will be any good, but I'll
bet they don't exceed Dragon or ViaVoice current street pricing when
they come out AND that they offer competative rebates. And the Dragon,
in turn does the same. For NEW customers.
Several years ago, I was part owner in a company that sold a niche
market video taped product for business for $995. Many were happily
purchased at that price, but when the "upgrade" (actually the "add on"
sequel) was produced, we decided it could get better market share by
recognizing the market's view of a PROPER PRICE for similar products
rather than our own valid justification of the product's VALUE to the
customer.
We sent our previous customers a letter announcing the second product at
$495. We pointed out that we knew they had bought the first product for
$995 because they valued it and were willing to pay that much for it,
but we felt that it was only "right" that they benefit from our decision
then to market both products for $495 each. We offered them the second
product for $50 and each one took us up on the deal, many sending us
nice letters about our "ethics". We still made a profit over the cost
to supply a copy of the second product (although these customers did not
share the burden of overall production costs for the second product),
and we had some enthusiastic customers spreading the word about our TWO
great products, as well.
Dragon wouldn't kill itself if it sent a replacement Deluxe CD to every
member of this list who has purchased Dragon Dictate in the past and who
paid to move into DNS (I haven't) for a nominal fee. Like $10. In
fact, it might just boost sales if the product is any good and you can
get those with experience (and true need for it) to crow about how good
it is. But, it will probably wait until Bill Gates makes it a part of
the Windows99 operating system and then cry about alleged monopolistic
practices being its undoing.
IBM marketing muscle? Give me a break. That does not appear to be
their strong suit. Although they seem to have figured out how to price
continuous speech for the mass market before Dragon did.
Just my 2 cents.
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- Maybe in reply to: malkajef@@orthohelp.com: "New versions of Nat"
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