Feb 13, 2020
The Print Tracker ownership team has been shaking their heads for quite a while now. With more than 16 years in the print tracking software business, Print Tracker has watched the MPS industry’s evolution. But what has happened in the past few years is truly unprecedented.
There’s been a lot of consolidation in the MPS industry, and what many feared was going to happen is actually happening. We’ve heard that “the other guys” are raising prices, and not just kind-of. Some of the largest MPS dealers in the United States are reporting that their prices will climb by 350%!
“We’ve been wondering if a price increase was coming. Now we know,” said Brian McCauley, President of Print Tracker.
Many customers are reportedly receiving an email mere weeks before their service-contract is set to expire informing them their price is going up … way up. With that short of notice, few dealers can find a replacement service and deploy it to every network for every device they are managing before they are forced to renew their contract. They face the tough choice of paying exorbitant fees or not being able to service their customers.
Print Tracker has chosen to respond to this assault on the MPS industry with a letter poking fun at the reported business practice of giving customer’s short notice of giant price increases. In discussions with former “the other guys” customers, this was the gist of the message they got:
Dear [CUSTOMER NAME],
I have some exciting news to share with you as you are preparing to renew your contract with us in a few days. We feel, and are confident you will agree, that after a series of expensive acquisitions, we need your help to pay for them. The exciting news is that, given your years of loyal patronage, we have decided to only increase your price by about 350%. I know this might sound high, but the truth is, we bought up all the competition so we don’t think you have any choice but to continue using our product.
We are hereby giving you 30 days notice of this price increase. We were going to inform you of this insignificant change to our business relationship sooner but felt it was in our mutual best-interest to keep this quiet so you wouldn’t have time to look for an alternative.
Thanks for taking the time to share in this excitement with me. If you have any questions, please send those to our customer support department (the support fee will be reflected on your next invoice).
Sincerely, “the other guys”
We don’t know what they actually wrote, but this is the gist of what we’ve been hearing. The claims of 350% and 30 days of notice are accurate … we only took liberties with the attitude.
Print Tracker has been providing print tracking data to MPS dealers throughout the world for the past 16 years and has never raised prices. Nor do they charge for support. If you’d like to make the switch from “the other guys”, Print Tracker claims the process is easy. Don’t believe that? Ask their customers, or contact Print Tracker for more information.
To put that kind of a price-increase into perspective, consider the table below:
| Item | Current price | Up by 350% |
|---|---|---|
| 1 gallon of gas | $3.00 | $10.50 |
| Avg electric bill | $111.61 | $390.64 |
| Avg airplane ticket to Hawaii | $451.00 | $1,578.50 |
| iPhone 11 | $849.00 | $2,971.50 |
Would it be normal to see a gallon of gas sell for $3.00 one day and $10.50 the next? If a price increase happened like that in the energy sector, it would be considered price-gouging. Spending an additional 350% on a plane ticket is enough to move you from economy seating to first-class. Who would be alright if their electric bill at home went from $111/month to $390/month? Who would buy an iPhone if the price jumped from $850 to almost $3,000? A 350% price increase in anything is a HUGE increase.
There are several reasons a price increase from “the other guys” might be happening. Perhaps their server space costs more than it did before. Or maybe they added some new developers and need to offset those costs. It could be that “the other guys” held their prices down too low for too long and are finally forced to adjust pricing. Or maybe their parent company bought three of the larger software companies in the industry and felt that by reducing competition, they could jack up pricing to help pay off the cost of those acquisitions. We may never know the reason behind a 350% price increase, but one can always wonder.
The combination of the extreme price increase and the short-term notice in which it is being revealed seems to indicate a premeditated intent to leave customers with little opportunity to evaluate other options and make a good decision before their contract expires. Is this the way one business treats a valued partner in growth? Price increases happen, especially in the MPS industry. It’s not uncommon for a rate to go up here or there. Sometimes, those rate increases are sharp. But a 350% increase from one year to the next?