Xref: utzoo comp.databases:1512 comp.misc:3711 Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!telly!evan From: evan@telly.UUCP (Evan Leibovitch) Newsgroups: comp.databases,comp.misc Subject: Re: Empress pricing policy Message-ID: <374@telly.UUCP> Date: 8 Oct 88 04:20:55 GMT References: <1988Sep28.150224.26393@lsuc.uucp> <366@telly.UUCP> <4053@hcr.UUCP> Organization: System telly, Brampton, Ontario Lines: 71 In article <4053@hcr.UUCP>, jim@hcr.UUCP (Jim Sullivan) writes: >In article <366@telly.UUCP> evan@telly.UUCP writes: >> >>This Canadian company refuses to sell its products or support >>to other Canadian companies in Canadian currency. >> >>I'm sure Americans would be more than a little irate at a US company which >>forces them to pay for products in yen. This policy is nothing short of >>odious, and I ask my Canadian associates and clients to show their >>displeasure with their chequebooks. Buy something else. > >But like most Canadian Software companies, a majority of their sales are outside >of Canada. The problems maintaining multiple price lists are just to much >of a headache. They MAKE a database system, and keeping track of pricing data is too much of a headache? Do these people know how to use their own product? The Canadian marketplace, obviously, is not too much of a headache for U.S. companies selling their wares here. They all have firm Canadian pricing. >Anyways, you could get a price break is you just played the >market right, only pay them when the Canadian dollar is high relative to the >american dollar! That's not acceptable if I want to establish a firm quotation for a client. >I can't agree with the policy of "buy something else". That just sends >Canadian dollars outside the country. I cannot support a Canadian company which refuses to be competitive or care about the needs of its customers, just because it is Canadian. If Rhodnius is selling its product to the British in US dollars, it will similarly lose out to the competitor willing to quote a price in pounds. >The price of something is always >relative, and it will cost you the same if you pay in Canadian dollars, >American dollars, Yen, or little rocks with holes in them! :-) Relative to what? Without Rhodnius changing its pricing one cent, I can be almost 100% certain that the price I would have to pay tomorrow for its product is different from today's price. How much it changes is determined by a factor (the exchange rate) over which neither the seller nor the buyer have control. All Rhodnius' non-marketing expenses are paid in Canadian dollars, its dividends (if they exist) are paid in Canadian dollars, and it files to Revenue Canada, not the IRS. The company must certainly be calculating its basic selling prices in Canadian dollars, THEN converting it. It is nothing but marketing laziness that keeps the company from publishing Canadian prices. I am far angrier at a Canadian company which treats its home market as a "headache", than I am at a foreign company which chooses to bypass Canada. If Informix and Oracle believe the Canadian marketplace is worthy of Canadian sales offices and STABLE pricing in Canadian currency, then they are showing more respect for the Canadian DBMS consumer than Rhodnius. In my eyes, though, this Canadian pricing (or lack thereof) is just symptomatic of the generally brain-damaged marketing strategy at Rhodnius. There are other examples of the miserable way in which they have peddled Empress. Like the way they (don't) work with VARs. Rhodnius has a good product, and they'd be right up there in sales with Informix and Oracle if they had their act together. >Jim Sullivan -- Evan Leibovitch, SA of System Telly, located in beautiful Brampton, Ontario evan@telly.UUCP (PENDING: evan@telly.on.ca) / {uunet!attcan,utzoo}!telly!evan Don't worry - Be happy.