Tag Archives: Pitchforks and torches

Autodesk’s revolting customers are evaporating

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The revolting customers themselves aren’t evaporating, of course. They remain solid and are still as irate as ever. It’s just that the appearance of outrage is gradually fading away on the Autodesk Community forums.

As mentioned before, forum moderators have been busily vacuuming up threads from all over the place and moving them to the Moving to Subscription forum. Some time in the last week or so, that forum became less visible. It’s no longer listed among the bold links on the right pane under Subscription Management, but for now can still be found (if you look hard) in the list of 96 forums. Or at least you can get to the page above that forum, from where you can click on another link.

As it’s now so hard to find, I’ll help Autodesk with its sincere desire to be transparent about its extortion scheme, er, wonderful discount offer by making the link a bit easier to find. Here it is:

Autodesk Moving to Subscription forum

Don’t mention it, Autodesk!

Oh, and the first time I tried to get in as a signed-in user, I got kicked out to the top forum list level. Don’t give up, try again and it should work.

From the beginning, I’ve had no doubt that the main idea behind the forum is to keep customer dissent neat and tidy in one easily-hidden place. It will almost certainly lose its final link in due course, then it will be made read-only and merged into semi-oblivion, just like the last one. When I dared to suggest such an outrageous thing, an Autodesk moderator accused me of being a conspiracy theorist.

Well, melt my steel beams with jet fuel, look what’s happening! Who would have thought it?

I’ll be sure to let you know when each of the final evaporation stages occurs. If you happen to notice before I do, please let me know and I’ll pass the information on to my readers.

Autodesk customers are still revolting

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I described before how customers are outraged by Autodesk’s attempt to price-force them onto subscription (rental). That’s still happening. The Autodesk Community forum moderators are still vacuuming up threads and Ideas submissions and moving them to the Moving to Subscription forum, which despite its obscurity is still active with some threads now having hundreds of posts.

Other discussions in various non-Autodesk locations are extending over many pages of comments. Almost all comments are highly critical of Autodesk. A large portion of these customers say they are abandoning Autodesk. Many are discussing the specific competitors’ software they are moving to.

In addition to the Autodesk forum staff confining commentary to a quiet corner, another way of keeping the public noise down is by directing people to talk to their resellers. Yesterday, I did just that. The rep who came to see me is a good guy from a great reseller and I was not unkind.

Autodesk obviously knows it’s hard to sell such a bad deal and is pushing its resellers hard to get with the program. They are being briefed and provided with PowerPoint presentations to help sell the deal. My reseller says he’s had to deal with “many angry customers” and feels like the meat in the sandwich. He did his very best to present the deal in its best light, but the poor guy is too honest to make it sound good. He has my sympathy.

There were some differences between the numbers he provided and what I’ve described based on Autodesk information. The major pieces of new information I gleaned (assuming my reseller is right) were:

  • For people who surrender their licenses and switch to subscription, the cost that’s locked in for the first three years is 5% more than maintenance, not the same price.
  • After the three-year lock-in, the year four subscription price rise will be about 15%.
  • After that, nobody knows.

The net effect is slightly worse for subscription than it looked before the meeting, but not hugely so. It’s not worth redoing my graphs.

Switching to subscription is still just a really bad deal that’s being presented as a good deal by comparing it with another deal (maintenance) that’s being artificially worsened. Sorry, but I’m not just comparing it with Autodesk’s other deal. I’m also comparing it with the deals provided by Autodesk’s competitors. According to that comparison, both Autodesk’s deals are shockingly poor. The same happens if I compare Autodesk’s subscription deal with rental success-story Adobe’s pricing.

I explained to my reseller the problem with surrendering perpetual licenses. Autodesk is requiring a decision to be made with permanent, irrevocable consequences, based only on short-term information. He said the message from Autodesk is that further information isn’t going to be forthcoming because, “No other company is going to let you know its prices five years in advance.” My reply was that no other company is expecting me to give away what has already been paid for.

Last week, I had a telephone conversation about an Autodesk rep about this issue. Among other things, I told him:

You’re asking me to give you my balls in a bag in the hope that you won’t squeeze too hard.

 
It ain’t happening.

Autodesk customers are revolting

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I don’t know what kind of reception Autodesk thought it was going to get to its less-than-fully-frank announcement that it was hiking up the price of maintenance to push perpetual license owners onto subscription (rental).

I suppose some negative feedback was expected, but I’m not sure the marketing mavens would have anticipated such a degree of near-universal outright hostility. I suspect they may have overestimated their ability to pull the wool over the eyes of a community that is generally technically smart and, thanks to Autodesk’s history in recent years, somewhat lacking in trust.

The Autodesk Community forum moderators are busily vacuuming up threads from all over the place and moving them to the near-invisible new Moving to Subscription forum, which in due course will no doubt be made read-only and merged into semi-oblivion, just like the last one.

Despite the obscurity and the futility of it all, people are still finding that forum and posting on it (over 300 in a few days) and they’re not happy. Many other complaints can be found on CG Press, CG Talk, NewTek, with countless smaller moan sessions popping up all over the place, such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, 3DVF (French), C4D Cafe, etc.

Then there’s the most powerful but least easily measured marketing communication medium of all; word of mouth. Out in the real world, Autodesk’s name is mud. Talk of abandoning the maintenance/subscription revenue stream altogether is common, as is switching from Autodesk to competitors’ products.

Why get so worked up? I mean, it’s only 5%, right? At first glance. Actually, the price will rise 38.6% by 2019, with worse undoubtedly to come. But for many complainers, while the excess cost and the nonsense used to justify it are condemned, those are not the main issues.

What is the main issue? Loyal Autodesk customers, people who have paid good money for perpetual licenses and kept them current with ongoing maintenance for many years, really don’t want to give them up. They resent being strong-armed into doing so and feel betrayed and deceived by Autodesk. “You can pry my perpetual license from my cold dead fingers. Screw you, Autodesk!” is a paraphrase of the views expressed. Generally it’s more polite than that, but sometimes less.

It has been quite educational for me to read the comments from customers of other Autodesk products who have experienced the same kind of product neglect familiar to AutoCAD customers. They feel they’ve been taken for a ride by a company that is happy to take their money but not that interested in spending it on improving the product they use. Attempting to gouge such customers to the extreme that has just been announced was never going to end well.

Given that Autodesk thinks very highly of its own image and spends literally a billion dollars every year on marketing and sales, I wonder how much this publicity is worth as a negative asset? Enough for me to retire on in ex-CEO-style comfort, I bet. As for the free marketing that Autodesk is providing for its competitors, I’m sure that is very much appreciated.

None of this will cause a change of path at Autodesk, of course. A few thousand dissatisfied customers with pitchforks and torches will not be considered noteworthy at board level. They might not even notice, and if they do they certainly won’t care.

Autodesk only listens to our dollars. We have them, Autodesk wants them. Only voting with our wallets will get the message across. Do it.