Omegaone Battery Pack Upgrade Fiasco!

[rpommier]

Check out this thread on the Omega One official forum

http://www.wormholecreations.com.au/wc/megabbs/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=1818&posts=55

In summary, Omegaone offered free lifetime upgrades for Battery Pack. Recently they released a version of Battery Pack and called it Battery Pack Pro v6 and called it a new product. Meaning you don't get the upgrade from version 5x for free.

They state that both versions 5x and 6x will be continually upgraded at the same time. So 5x users will still get upgrades, but technically v6 is the same program.

To prove the point I went to my purchases page on Handango to download the latest version 5.3.2. Guess what version downloads? Battery Pack Pro v6. A little suspicious.

To make matters worse Omegaone has done some more manuevering and have renamed Batter Pack Pro v6 to version to v1.0 to reduce confusion. They state both versions will remain for sale and will continue to be seperate products. The question is why? They are the same program!

Here's my take, the upgrade is only $5 nothing if you have a Starbucks habit :) But don't insult me by saying v6 is a new version of Battery Pack, it's not. Just come out and say, "Hey guys we need to keep the business going, would you mind a policy change after this version?" I'm sure that would've been no problem. Make v6 the last freebie and charge me $5 for every major update v7, v8 etc....

As it stands now who's to say they won't make a Battery Pack Pro Deluxe v1 and charge again? I really feel for people who bought BP within the last month thinking upgrades were free, only to see v6 being sported a few weeks later. What do you guys think?

[dlangton]

I never really liked Battery Pack. Ate up way too many resources. There are freeware apps which do just as good a job. Never understood why anyone bought the software.

[Jacob]

I think it's reasonable for them to do stop the unlimited upgrade policy, but I think they handled it quite poorly.

[Stephen Beesley]

I think it's reasonable for them to do stop the unlimited upgrade policy, but I think they handled it quite poorly.

Agreed. I quite like Battery Pack (which I use in conjuction with Journal Bar). With a piece of software that has developed so much since it was first released I think it is fair to charge a small fee for major version upgrades, but I think this was handled badly.

[hollis_f]

Cool! Dump on your customers and tell them they're lucky to get free fertilizer.

I think I'll wait for Battery Pack 2006 super deluxe pro platinum (special edition) and save myself having to pay for six other 'lifetime' upgrades.

[dh]

I personally think free upgrades are a dumb thing to offer. There are only so many customers out there, without the revenue from new versions how is a developer going to grow and have the resources to improve the products? Would MS have grown into the current company if upgrades to different versions of DOS and Windows had been free?

I use Battery Pack and have no problem with paying for an upgrade every 18 months or so. Agree, it could have been handled better though.

[Jon Westfall]

A developer takes into account money lost from upgrade fees when they offer unlimited lifetime upgrades. They should grandfather all existing users in, and then start charging if they want to change the policy.

[WyattEarp]

While $5.00 is a small price to pay for such a program; a simple email to existing owners and policy change notice on their website would have sufficed. This was very poorly handled indeed :?

[rpommier]

My thoughts exactly guys. I emailed them asking the difference between the 2 verisons and haven't heard from them. They seemed to be hunkered down in their bunkers until the barrage is over :evil:

The sad thing is there really no other solution that I can find that mimics them sufficiently. The closest I can find is from Scary Bear http://www.scarybearsoftware.com/ppc_pl_overview.html

I'm going to give it a go and see if it gets the job done.