Re:Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract
by ummonk on Saturday February 05, 2022 @01:13PM
(#30223890)
"it’s just when companies move to subscription they turn into mini insurance companies focused on the spreadsheets. They model out your lifetime value and know that every $1 they chisel out of you is worth $1.40 in 5 years."
The term for that is "evil".
Re:Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract
by marcosdumay on Saturday February 05, 2022 @01:30PM
(#30224100)
"Evil" is normally used for people that do worse actions than overbill their customers. "Fraudster" applies better here.
Re:Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract
by lostcolony on Saturday February 05, 2022 @01:45PM
(#30224328)
Nah, evil is fine. It's a low grade evil, sure, but it's still evil. To cite a lovely paragraph from Carpe Jugulum that feels appropriate -
“There’s no greys, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.’ ‘It’s a lot more complicated than that -’ ‘No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.”
― Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum
Re:Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract
by gkedzierski on Saturday February 05, 2022 @01:44PM
(#30224316)
> They model out your lifetime value and know that every $1 they chisel out of you is worth $1.40 in 5 years.
Even more. Every $1 in MRR is worth around $216 in company market cap. (assuming their current multiple)
Re:Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract
by cjbgkagh on Saturday February 05, 2022 @03:10PM
(#30225344)
The CEO can also claim credit for the stock price increase and get his bonus. Fixing it would reverse the effect and put the bonus at risk. So not only will such ‘small evils’ become intrenched there is also a powerful insensitive to find even more of them.
They are brutal in the enterprise space, looking for 10-15% price escalations. They also turn over sales leadership so if you are big enough you can pull stunts for concessions. Just do some recon and figure out what they get paid the most on. Last time, we hired a few interns specifically to do a public PoC of how we were getting rid a key product in the portfolio. Made sure they heard about it and got significant confessions. Basically 10x the intern and PoC investment. We ended up hiring the interns as well for an extra bonus.
As a consumer, you need to be really aware of the motivations of your suppliers business model and model your business accordingly. Understand your costs and use OSS strategically, or understand where you just need to take what they offer (ie AWS). Things in the middle, like Adobe in my case, you need to be ready to walk away or play chicken and make a deal at the 11th hour.