Junk mail, and rude selling
Long before I started reading emails, SPAM, and Unsolicited Commercial Emails (UCE) I got junk mail. Stuff in my mailbox trying to get me to buy some wonderful gadget, or service, or whatever.
Sometimes the offer looked interesting. So I would browse through. What I found was that if the price wasn’t right out there in front, I wasn’t interested. Time and again I found that if I had to find the price, the seller was deeply and emotionally invested in hiding that detail from me until the last minute.
I don’t always use price to decide what to buy. There are a number of ‘acid’ tests, things that I look for that signal, “I am not interested”. If the price is believable (not too low), and in an acceptable range, that is OK, I will look further. Do I already own it, or might I want another? Maybe. Can I afford to buy the other stuff around it to make it useful? All things I try to consider each time.
The part that always signaled ’scam’ to me, though, was hiding the price. That is an important consideration, and making me look for the price feels really rude.
Tonight I was looking at ExpressionEngine. I do design work, and some respected designers, as reported by Smashing Magazine, had mentioned this application for designing web sites.
Wow. Expression Engine is so wrapped up in binding in customers, you have to log in to find the price. Sorry. That fails my ‘junk mail’ test really big time. It took three page lookups for me to find the ‘you have to log in to get to that product information page’.
I hope Expression Engine enjoys their customers. I will be remembering this snub, where they deliberately chose to be rude to me, for a long time. Born June 25, sign or Cancer, don’t you know. Cancer’s tend to hold a grudge till it dies a slow death, then have it stuffed.
The sites I do? The price is right there with the product ID and description. My attempt to be courteous in a rough, country kind of way.
September 14th, 2007 at 12:53 am
You sure about that? To find the price, all I had to do was hover over the “Overview” tab and click on the “Pricing” link. That took me to the Pricing Page which clearly states what each license costs. Also, from that page, you can download the free “Core” version.
Oh yeah… I forgot to mention that I’m not logged into the site at this moment, even though I’m a very satisfied ExpressionEngine customer. Are you sure it took you “three page lookups” to find the price? I mean really sure?
September 14th, 2007 at 7:45 am
Hi There,
This is Leslie, I’m the VP of EllisLab. Sorry you had a bad experience on our web site. I just want to assure you that you do not have to be logged in to view our pricing. You can find it right here:
http://expressionengine.com/overview/pricing/
See? No login required. Also, you do not have to login or register with us to try out EE Core, our free version of ExpressionEngine.
You are absolutely right. If we required people to register just to see our pricing we’d lose customers quickly and it would be a very dumb way to treat people, which is exactly why we don’t do such things.
I’d be happy to personally answer any questions you have via email or on our Pre-Sales forums (you do have to register to post on our Pre-Sales forums, but not to email us).
Best to you on finding a solution that meets your needs.
September 14th, 2007 at 10:08 am
Chris,
Thanks for visiting.
Thanks for the tip on navigating to what I was looking for. I must have gotten lost. That particular sequence just never occurred to me.
Leslie,
Thanks for stopping by, I wish the occasion had been happier for both of us!
September 14th, 2007 at 10:26 am
Hey Brad,
No problem. Sorry if my comment was snotty. It was late and I was juiced up on NyQuil (nectar of the Gods, I tell you).
I’d really suggest you give EE another look if it still interests you. It really is a fantastic publishing system with both great staff and a strong community presence. I don’t think you’d be disappointed!