Hey folks,
Sorry I haven’t been on-line to respond sooner. Although we have been busy in Las Vegas at the WCAF, I am just too spoiled by the high-speed Internet access that I have at home and in the office. When I have to use dial-up I tend to stay off the Internet.
I have said it many times here, I feel somewhat uncomfortable promoting our product in a forum designed for open exchange between framers. However, since I was asked to do so, I will answer as many questions as I can. Please feel free to chastise me if I go overboard.
First, thank you John for pinch-hitting for me, you did a good job, nothing to correct on your answers. Also, thank you for the kind words Judy, they certainly carry more credibility coming from a happy customer, than they would coming from me. I think most of our customers will eventually opt for the new machine, primarily because of the convenience features (i.e., blade change, depth adjustment, and quieter more accurate functionality).
There are several upgrade options, you can find them on our website, but I will try to cover the basics here.
Junior Customers will simply sign a new contract (they will have to pay a new Software User Fee $500) but they won’t pay an “upgrade” charge per se. They will then pay the new Junior monthly fee of $245 (instead of $225). The contract is still month-to-month, so you are never locked in.
Standard rental customers have the most options. If you are a Platinum member, you will pay the $3000 or $3700 (depending on if you need a new computer or not), but if you want you may pay that in installments (30 months). We will charge a little finance charge so you will pay $140 per month or $110 per month for the 30 months, but that way you don’t have to put out the cash up front. For the rest of our Standard rental customers it really becomes a math equation, that being how long have you rented for and what would it cost you (over time) to upgrade rather than simply start over. I have run the numbers and I think the answer is 14 months. If you have rented a Standard system for longer than 14 months you will save money by paying the upgrade fee. As a current Standard customer, you get to lock in your corners charges to the original 5 cents (we raised the fee on the new system to a whopping 5.5 cents per corner). But that does raise the rent $20 per month and that will add up over time. If you’ve had the system less than 14 months, you are better off to simply exercise a new contract, pay the Software Users Fee again, and pay the $390 per month.
If you purchased your machine in the last 120 days, we give you a 100% credit of what you paid towards the new machine. There are some other variables based on what you paid for your machine, but essentially we will give you at least a 50% trade-in value towards the new machine if you bought it anytime before September. Additionally, we guarantee you a “future trade-in” value on the new machine. We call it the future technology guarantee. We don’t feel people should invest upwards of $16,000 only to find out that the technology is outdated in a year or two (another great reason to rent).
Man this is getting long. Okay, other important items. If you upgrade you have to send us the old machine (remember the part in the contract about keeping your shipping boxes), but I will pay the freight. You get to pay the freight of the new system to your shop, so essentially we are swapping the freight charges with you. The new machine weighs about the same as the old one so the shipping charges should be close to the same.
The new machine takes a new blade (roughly the same cost) and we will take any un-open boxes back and replace them with new ones for you. We also will transfer any banked corners you might have on your machine if you are a rental customer.
We will always support our old machines and our valued customers. John is correct that the new machine has several advanced capabilities, so it is likely that there will be some designs that might not cut well on the older model (model 5000 for those of you who didn’t know there was a model number), particularly with 8 ply designs.
Well that is probably enough. Please feel free to call me if you have more questions or call our Help Desk (888 855-3335). I apologize for the length but I was hoping to only do this once. For those of you who don’t like vendors posting “sales stuff” I apologize to you as well, but with over 3500 customers, getting accurate information out is critical and this is a great forum for it.
The End (thanks for reading this novel by Edd Pratt)
[ 01-19-2003, 09:31 PM: Message edited by: WizardEdd ]