Buying VMWare Fusion: A lesson in how to drive customers away
I recently bought Parallels, and it wasn't much better. From the email I sent them (after I finally found an email address):<p>- When I arrived on the checkout page (from the link in the nice email you sent), you had tacked on a $8 digital backup fee. That is a complete bullshit charge, and you added it by default with no explanation as to what it was, or why I would want it. It was also not particularly obvious whether or not I could <i>remove</i> said add-on. It is a shameless, low class, money grab.<p>- I switched my pricing from USD to CAD, and you added $10 despite the two currencies trading at parity (I quickly swapped back, and just paid in USD). Another shameless, senseless money grab.<p>- You require my name, home address, email address, and phone number in order for me to purchase downloadable software via Paypal. You do not <i>need</i> any of that information. You <i>want</i> it so that some tool in marketing can have pretty powerpoints. It should be optional. (Making it required simply requires me to make up information; a waste of both our time.)<p>- The “send me email spam” checkbox was checked by default. The only reason for this is to get permission to spam people too lazy to pay attention to the checkout. It’s another tasteless scam formulated by a greedy, customer hostile executive tool.<p>- After purchasing, I entered my serial number, and was informed that I would have to register to receive updates to the software I just purchased. I cannot explain to you how incredibly asinine I find that policy. <p>- The registration process once again required information I didn’t want to give you (requiring me to give you fake information)<p>- After registering, and confirming my registration via email, and entering my email/password combo into the application I was told that I had given invalid credentials, and to try again. (I hadn’t. I’m pretty good with copy/paste.) So I guess NO UPDATES FOR ME?