Too soon for a paid upgrade to a BlackBerry app
by Joe Pawlikowski on January 10, 2011
After we featured the FontCollection BlackBerry app two weeks ago, we knew we had a winner. The Twitter responses came flowing in, and before the end of the day the app had made an appearance on just about every major BlackBerry blog. Another sign of success came when FontCollection updated — four times. On the 28th it upgraded to version 1.7, and then two days later it was on 1.8. A day after that we got version 1.9, and on the 4th we got version 2.0. While the upgrades were worthy, they came with a drawback. You had to pay for the upgrade, even if you already paid for the app.
That’s the message I got when I followed the upgrade steps through the Store. I just bought the app two weeks ago, and now I have to pay for an upgrade? That just doesn’t seem right. Don’t get me wrong: it’s not the price that gets me. Again, I find FontCollection to be a quality app that is worth paying for. That’s why I payed my buck to get it. If the developer had priced it at $1.50, I still probably would have bought it. But when I buy it, I presume that transaction complete. I have the app. If there are any upgrades in the near future I’d expect the courtesy of a free upgrade, since I just purchased it. Think about it this way: people who haven’t yet purchased FontCollection — that is, people who aren’t customers of this developer — still pay a buck for the application. But people who have downloaded it — that is, people who
are customers of this developer — have to pay $1.50 for the same app. The developer has every right to do this. But that doesn’t make it right to its existing customers. We all paid for the app and gave our business to Almoko, and this is how we’re thanked? I really dig FontCollection, and would recommend paying the buck for the app if it weren’t for issues such as this. It’s not about the price, because the app is still cheap. It’s about the principle. It’s about paying customers being forced to pay more, while new customers get the same software at a lower price. I wouldn’t recommend anyone pay for the upgrade.
About the Author
Joe Pawlikowski is the Senior Editor at MobileMoo.com and has been covering the mobile industry full time since 2007. When he's not writing about the tech scene, he can be found discussing his personal love - baseball (and more specifically the New York Yankees) as well as writing on his personal blog.
5 comments… read them below or add one
I agree! When I saw this I left a review on the app @ Mobihand stating the exact same thing. I WILL NOT pay for this upgrade. The developer would be wise to remove the charge. I wonder why they thought this was a good idea! Many other users have voiced the same opinion on the Mobihand reviews as well.
I agree it’s TOO SOON to be charging existing customers of 1.x for an upgrade to 2.x. There should be a grace period where if you had purchased 1.x within say 30 days or 90 days or something, then upgrades to 2.x would be free. And upgrades from 1.x to 1.y (or 2.x to 2.y, you get the idea) should be free forever.
AND, customers who have a 1.x should never be forced to upgrade to 2.x to keep an app functioning at it’s 1.x level. Discontinue advanced technical support, etc., but don’t force users to upgrade. That just pisses us off and is a good way to force users to look elsewhere for the functionality.
Agreed! Seems the dev is taking advantage of the fact that he could technically go from 1.9 to 2.0, instead of something like 1.9.10. From what I read in the version update email, there wasn’t any uber fantastic functionality that warranted being charged an additional .49 cents compared to the 1.x upgrades, especially when I purchased it within the last 2 weeks. I was super disappointed about this, and this article is spot on!
+1. Agreed. I don’t know that a time window’s the answer, either; i think some devs would just postpone updates until the time periods lapsed. Who knows.
I really get ticked with the apps that cease to function unless you BUY the upgrade. WTF??? Imagine if MS Office ceased to function unless you bought Office 2010 a day after it was released. We’d probably be bailing Microsoft out of bankruptcy cuz it was ” 2 big 2 fail “.
FYI – they have REMOVED the upgrade fee for the upgrade to 2.0. Thought you might like to write about that to let the readers know! :-)