From a purely business point of view, I don't understand why you go with "one time payment, so I can tell bad customers to piss off" rather than "monthly payment, so I make more money by having to stand the occasional bad customer".
With any serious pricing model you're going to cut a lot of people.
Put a sustainable pricing model in place that can afford support staff.
Sure, a bunch of cheapskates will up and leave - there will surely be a second rate competitor who will pick them up and offer the same poor or nonexistent support all over again.
One thing I learned from experience is that it's the people who pay the least who are the neediest and most frustrating to deal with.
> One thing I learned from experience is that it's the people who pay the least who are the neediest and most frustrating to deal with.
As someone who has partaken in a support organization where 99% were annual payments and 1% were "golden licenses" (pay once, never again), I can confirm that the 1% were by far the worst.
This reflects my experience in other services, but not in this one (where the only model is "golden license"). The vast majority are very polite, and asking for help about as much as everyone else (not more).
Paying once for a service doesn't sit right with me, it may not be rational but I feel that I can't trust that it will stick around. I'd rather pay a smaller monthly fee to keep the lights on, than a one time fee and constantly fear I might just be cut off one day.
And even if it's not technically a service, but say some closed source software or whatever, the same idea still applies for future bug fixes and maintenance, at least in my mind. At least for anything semi-critical.
This is true, and I would normally make it a yearly subscription, but this is https://www.deadmansswitch.net/, where you leave messages to send to your loved ones after you die, and I didn't want people to have their messages lost because they're too old/unable to renew a credit card or something similar.
I would rather pay 1.2 * $X now than $X/months per month over the lifetime of a product. It's not about the money for me, it's about having a fixed cost rather than an indefinitely recurring one that I have to continually decide if it is still giving me $X/mo in value and remember to cancel when I'm done. It's also about the sense of ownership I get over the product versus "this is something I'm renting" which, for me, is a big deal. I get that it is difficult to price in the cost of bug-fixes, but I consider that not my problem.
That said, support as a subscription (or alternatively, pay-per-issue) is totally fine by me. I'm also fine if new features are added to Version 2, and I later have to decide whether to upgrade or not.
And although it is not about the money for me, it frequently does pay off. I usually opt for the longest recurring subscription (if lifetime is not available) which usually has steep discounts and in the case of my XM radio... still enjoying that lifetime subscription.
I don't understand how that's "no threat" just because you got a one time payment. You're still losing customers to a competitor. Is this competitor also charging one time, or monthly? Do they make more money than you? Because if they're charging monthly, and more, you're clearly leaving money on the table as well.
There's a potential that you're paying a huge premium (that you don't even see) just for the enjoyment of being rude to customers. Maybe that's something you value extremely highly, I don't know.
I got that many times when a relative said something rude to me, and I answered right back. In the past I was told how rude I was, at which point I would parrot word for word what was said to me and ask.
"You don't think that was rude from them in the first place, I am answering in the same manner they talked to me. If they don't want it, then they should learn to talk nicer to me in the first place. Instead of assuming they can say whatever they want and get away with it.".
Interestingly, in the last decade my relatives have been a lot more polite with me when we talk.
I'm not telling you how to behave, I'm just saying that if you had thicker skin you would probably make more money, so another way of looking at that is that you're paying a premium for the luxury of being able to be, let's say "honest" then, instead of rude, to your customers.
I understand that and agree, but yes, I ascribe a high (societal) value to telling people when they're being rude, because I think to do otherwise is to enable them.
Besides, people like the customer in question come once in a decade (to me, anyway), so it hasn't been a problem.
I don't disagree with you, but I think it's less reasonable when you're a one man operation, because at that point you're losing money by not tolerating rudeness. If you're employed in support, or the manager of a support organization, "firing" toxic customers can make sense in another way: retaining competence because people don't quit, the money lost is not relevant compared to the potential risk of churn within support, etc. etc.
I both agree and disagree with you. In this specific instance, I made the service because I wanted to use it, and thought I'd provide it to others as a way of paying for server costs (my time is free because I need it for myself), but then also kind of feel obligated to keep it running because of the paying customers, which has worked out okay for the last ten years the service has been running.
In the general case, I agree that you would lose money by not tolerating rudeness, but think that one generally has a societal responsibility to call out bad behaviour, to let people know that that's not acceptable. Also, I think that rude customers are generally not worth it because they tend to cost more than they bring in, statistically.
Some people aren't motivated by trying to eke out every last cent out of a business venture, they're happy making as much money as they are currently making.
So while income could be maximized by acting differently, Stavros chooses to optimize for his well being instead.
Yes, this year I made about $100,000 (mostly I was lucky) but I had a conversation with a person who claimed to have made a million dollars in the last year and how poorly I did.
??????
It does not enter his mind that normally I make a third of that and so I am very happy with the windfall. Heck, with hindsight I could see how I could have also made a million, but only by worrying over every dollars I invested. There is more to life than spend all your time thinking about how to make more money. I have gone camping, hiking and living at a cabin by a river. He on the other hand sound like he spent the entire year glued to his computer monitor trying to make more.
Of course, you could be making the same mistake as your interlocutor here of failing to understand the other person's point of view - you assert that there is more to life than making money, but perhaps the other person has different goals to you - goals which can only be accomplished with large amounts of money.
