Craig Patchett from the Behind the Scenes podcast sent the following email about Roxio’s new “upgrade” option or lack there of for Toast 7. Seems like they may be learning some upgrade pricing tricks from Apple.
I won’t be upgrading to Roxio Toast 7, even though I’m a registered user of Toast 6. Why? Because apparently Roxio couldn’t care less about its registered and loyal owners. The cost to upgrade to the latest version? The same as it is for anyone else to buy a copy. Technically, actually, it’s more. Any user of OS X qualifies for a $20 discount off Toast 7, which you can purchase from Buy.com with tax and shipping for $85. Net cost: $65 after rebate. Registered owners qualify for a whopping $30 discount, but only if they buy directly from Roxio for $99.95 + $11 shipping (the discount only applies to the CD version) + tax. Net cost: $80.95 + tax after rebate. So basically Roxio wants to reward those who are buying Toast for the first time and punish those who were foolish enough to purchase previous versions.
This approach to upgrade to upgrades is disgusting and is nothing more than a blatant example of corporate greed. Roxio should be publicly shamed by its existing customer base for choosing such tactics.
Power to the Pirates. Yes I agree, it is reason why copying software is so widespread here in Bangkok, Thailand. It will be available in many stores here soon and it will only cost $2.00
Pirating software is not a solution or an answer to this issue. Petitioning the company to change their policies is.
Have you checked amazon? 58.99 after an upgrade rebate, and free shipping.
I’m not defending Roxio’s pricing, but I am somewhat defending the idea that Apple does the same thing.
Remember, new versions of Mac OS X are an upgrade for any Mac owner since every Mac came with OS. There is not a Mac that didn’t come with a prior version so as to need a “full” version like a homebuilt PC. So $129 is the upgrade price and is in line with an upgrade copy of Windows. For many Mac users, the same is true with iLife. It came with the computer, so any new version is an upgrade (and not free like some seem to expect). Okay, so those with older Macs that didn’t come with it are getting a bit of a better deal on iLife, but it also usually will require them to have to upgrade their Mac to run it better or at all, so there will be some extra outlay.
Count me in, I do not like Roxio’s attitude at all regarding loyal customers.
But on the Amazon UK site it is 62.99 pounds sterling and that converts to $115 approx.
No sign of any rebates
Looking at the price of Filemaker 8 also and US it is 299 and Euro is 349 which is a rip off. Seems that Filemaker got the numbers all wrong when making the currency conversion. It should have worked out at about 240 EUR
So you can see that you can be punished for living in a different continent and the whip is not reserved for just upgraded users of software….
“… So $129 is the upgrade price and is in line with an upgrade copy of Windows.”
Actually the upgrade price for XP Home runs $99 ($199 for the full ver.) in most mortar & brick stores, less in online stores.
The new Roxio pricing structure is going to force users to hold off upgrading to the latest & greatest until it becomes absolutely necessary for them to do so. Which in turn will only hurt their sales, lets just hope they figure this out eventually.
You must understand that Roxio will probably abandon the Mac market soon. There is no reason that I can see to have Toast. I bought Toast Titanium 5, and several before 5, but have declined 6 & 7 because the Mac OS will do everything I used to do with Toast. Why not sweep up as much money as you can and walk away?
I suspect 7 will be the last upgrade (non-upgrade).
To be fair now, I am a registered user of Toast since 4.0 deluxe. I have upgraded each time since and currently have 7.0.1. You need to keep in mind that version 7 includes the feature set of Popcorn (being able to compress 9GB onto a 4.7 GB DVD) as well as features in Jam that allows one to be able to encode ac3 audio and do DVD music albums in dolby digital. Popcorn was $50-$20=$30 and you were able to do that for seven months until T7 came out. Jam 6 has been out for several years and now like I said, T7 does ac3 and DVD music albums. Along with the many added features (including Divix) I beleive that is a very reasonable cost. As for me I did get an insider email that allowed me to get T7 for $99-$30=$69.
I can’t complain about that.
Think for a moment, how many s/w developers who develop very good s/w for Macs make that kind of an offer. There are not many.
Let’s aplaud Roxio for their hard efforts at making their great product even better and more feature rich.
My two cents worth.
Have a great day.
Bob
Hey folks,
I have bad news for those of you who think that Roxio’s pricing structure is new. I bought version 4 for 90 dollars, then I upgraded to version 5, again, 90 dollars, then I paid like 20 bucks for the upgrade to 5.02 or whatever it was that allowed me to actually use it in OSX, then I paid another 70, to upgrade to version 6. For my money, there has not been a single added feature that amounted to jack. The only reason that I keep Toast around is because, as far as I know, you can’t make a copy of a disc with OSX. If I am wrong, please, let me know, and I will never shell out another cent to Roxio.
Toast, Total Cost: $270, added features: None worth mentioning…
Peace,
Dr. Pretorious
I bought Toast 5 and a couple months later Toast 6 came out. Roxio refused to give me any discount. These guys are the worst I’ve seen in the way they treat previous owners. Unless they offer something you’ve really gotta have, I wouldn’t waste my money.
I think this story just got even worse. I received an email today with an offer for 50% off the upgrade. When I clicked the offer to go the site it was clearly getting hammered with hits and being served VERY slowly. I patiently decided to wait a while and come back for what looked like a decent upgrade deal from Roxio. About five hours later, I received ANOTHER email from Roxio, this one rescending the 50% off offer as an ERROR and correcting it to 30% off for upgraders. Apparently, not only are the folks at Roxio a bunch of greedy bastards but their marketing people don’t talk to their accountants before sending out offers. What a pathetic excuse for a company.