Customers Don't Like Renting Software
from the want-to-own dept
Microsoft is really having trouble understanding customers today. First they can't figure out why no one wants web services, and now they're giving up on a trial program to rent software. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that most people prefer to own something (and do what they want with it) than be limited, and lose the use of something after a certain period of time (though, the music industry still hasn't figured this out either). Microsoft said that the trials they ran to let people rent Microsoft Office have been a dismal failure - mostly because (and notice how they blame the customer, as opposed to their own inability to explain things correctly) people didn't realize that at the end of the "rental" period the software wouldn't work any more. People thought they were scoring a great deal and getting the software for not very much money. Clearly, Microsoft didn't do a very good job explaining how the "rental" program worked - and in doing so probably pissed people off even more, when they suddenly discovered their software wasn't working. Of course, if Microsoft had explained the program clearly, very few people would have bought into it, because a quick calculation would show that, over time, they would end up spending a lot more than they would by just buying the software outright.
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