Yesterday I came back to BIAB. I was impressed and excited about how BIAB has improved since my last version. (It's been several years) Played with it a bit today and loved the new sound. Thought I'd purchase some additional RealTracks so I began browsing around and discovered RealBand. Wow this is cool. Got to have it. Finally discovered it was packaged with the PC version and I can't get it for a Mac. Wonder what the PC guys had to pay? To my suprise I found that yesterday, as I purchased BiaB, the PC folks were paying less for a new version, which also included RealBand, than I paid for the old version without it.

Suddenly my excitement was extinguished like getting slapped with a cold fish across the face. I called and talked to BiaB folks who were pleasant and let me vent...not too vociferously I hope. They explained that the discount resulted from the release of the new version and that Mac folks would also receive a discount when the new Mac version comes out. OK, that's great, but I bought yesterday, what good does that do me. (If the new version comes out within thirty days of purchase there will supposedly be some kind of an adjustment. And if pigs had wings they could fly.)

The bottom line is that a I went from being extremely pleased to feeling like the the customer on the TV commercial who's locked into a fixed rate after the rates have gone down. As he mentions the falling rates on the phone to the customer service rep she smiles and says "Yes, isn't that great!" "Not for me!" he responds.

I would hope that the PG decision makers would ask themselves this question, "No matter what rationalization or justification we might make, how do we expect a customer to feel when ,at the same time of purchase, they discover they have paid more than someone else pays for a newer version that also includes a great program which they can't have?"

The only logical answer is that they feel the small financial difference outweighs the public relations blunder created by this policy. Could be... but today I was pumped and prepared to buy several hundred dollars worth of additional RealTracks. Instead I bought none. Perhaps that's true financial impact of making customers feel like second class citizens.