CompuServe Messages

I called my dealer this morning and cancelled my order for an upgrade from 3DS R3 to 3DS R4 after hearing the announcement that the spline modeler won't be included in the new upgrade. This was not the only reason I decided not to upgrade, but it was the final straw. This is going to be a long message. I don't expect you to respond to it, but I wish you would pass it along to your marketing people. When I bought 3DS R1 a number of years ago, I was absolutely delighted and amazed by the package. I never regretted spending thousands of dollars for it – I felt I got my money's worth. When I bought the 3DS R2 upgrade it confirmed my decision to go with AutoDesk. I was delighted by all the new features in this release and was sure that you had a customer for life. The feature list for the 3DS R3 upgrade seemed a little thin but I bought the upgrade anyway. I anxiously ripped off the shrinkwrap, and the first thing I saw was a form I was supposed to fill out and send, with more money, to some third party (Vibrant) who would send me the video drivers that would allow 3DS to work at full speed. I was very upset, to say the least. Why was I shipped the "B" version of 3DStudio? I payed all the money that was asked of me – expecting to get the best program that was then currently available – yet was shipped what amounted to a crippled version. I realize that the amount of money asked was small, and I'm not going to elaborate on this issue. If you don't see this as a marketing blunder, then I'm not going to try and explain – you'll just have to find some way of seeing the issue from a customer's point of view. I became hesitant about upgrading to R4 when it became clear that the direction you were taking was to provide additional functionality through add-on modules that needed to be purchased separately (IPASs). It concerned me that the Yost Group, who I understood were writing 3DStudio, were also writing IPASs that they sold separately. Why were they not concentrating on improving the main program? I know that a number of software companies are taking a similar approach to software development these days. I suppose the rationalization is based on a "you only have to pay for what you use" philosophy. But just because I understand it doesn't mean I agree with it. I started to write out an extended explanation of why I don't agree with that approach but decided that my reasons could be summarized, in part, by the phrase "EXCEED YOUR CUSTOMER'S EXPECTATIONS." For all its supposed faults, look at what you get with each release of CorelDraw for example. I would like to go on but, in conclusion, my attitude towards your (and other) software packages has become: Sure I only pay a few hundred dollars for the upgrade, but there are tens of thousands of users like me who also upgrade and buy new packages and that adds up to millions of dollars that we are paying. Should we get a better package for that amount of money? In a number of cases the answer is yes. When you start exceeding my expectations again, I will start supporting your software again. Thanks for listening.