Vectorworks

At the time of this writing, there are two DMX universes worth of people (1024) who have signed a Change.Org petition calling on Vectorworks to discount their pricing during the COVID-19 crisis.   

There is a lot of information flying around the internet now, capped off with an article by Vectorworks that appeared yesterday in the online edition of PLSN. The arguments and comments of many of my colleagues have started to be twisted by the PR machine and a large game of internet-telephone.

I’d like to take a little time here, at least from my perspective, to explain the situation and the frustrations that I’ve been hearing about from friends and colleagues as well as experiencing personally.

Of course, my caveat is that this writing is simply my perspective. I don’t claim to speak for anyone other than myself. I’ll make some generalizations, but I fully realize that everyone’s case is slightly different. For background, I am primarily a theatrical designer and most of my online circles are made up of other theatrical designers working at all levels of the industry.

It’s important to realize that this situation did not start simply because of COVID-19. The frustrations in the Spotlight user base have been growing for a very long time. It’s a recurring thread online – people post in various groups complaining about both the cost of Service Select and the rising cost of Service Select. These posts inevitably lead to the same discussion – what value are we getting for the money that we are paying, after already paying several thousand dollars for the software up front?

It seems like, for the majority of the people in my sphere, the answer is “not enough value.” I can count on one hand the number of “new features” that Vectorworks has added over the past 3-5 years that have actually made any kind of substantial difference to my workflow – certainly not ones that I would pay for.

When COVID-19 happened and live events shut down completely, there was an unprecedented response from companies all over our industry to help. Vectorworks took a different approach. Most everyone I know who reached out to Vectorworks in the beginning of the crisis was told the same thing – essentially being told that they had few options other than to just cancel their accounts or go on payment plans for the balances due. 

These responses, and the response by Vectorworks in PLSN, miss the point of the problem. A payment plan does not help us when we are not working. By most estimates, our work won’t be coming back this year. How will a 90-day payment plan help us, when we have little to no income in the meantime?   

In the PLSN response, Vectorworks was quick to point out that they did not raise any prices during COVID-19. Instead, customers who purchased a Service Select contract prior to September 2015 had their prices increased in September 2019, and that they were simply just now receiving billing notices for later this year. So sure, technically they didn’t raise any prices during the crisis. I’ll give them that. But they could have stopped those notices from going out. They could have said “you know what everyone, we realize that this might not be the best year for a price increase to happen, even if it was announced previously.”   

A simple gesture of goodwill like that would have gone a long way for so many people to restore a fraction of the eroded trust and faith in Vectorworks.  

Earlier this week, there was a post in a Vectorworks User Group on Facebook from a Vectorworks employee explaining that Vectorworks would be offering users the option to cancel their current agreements and reinstate in 2021 with no penalty/fee. This language had not been seen previously, and at the time it was posted, it didn’t even appear on Vectorworks’ COVID-19 information page. 

It still doesn’t.

So far, this has been the only response by Vectorworks that I believe could actually help some people. The problem, though, is that it still is a somewhat empty gesture, devoid of actual goodwill towards the user base – simply framing the idea of “waiving reinstatement fees” as a way of helping. In the meantime, though, your account would still be suspended.

Furthermore, it’s not exactly what it seems. When users have reached out to their account reps for clarification on this policy, this is what they were told:

“This option is to cancel your Service Select renewal and allow you to renew up to (date) without late fees or penalties. Please note should you wait to renew, you would be responsible for both your past due payment and your 2021 renewal payment.”

I am unclear on if this is a separate policy from the one listed in the PLSN article, as there seems to be some language discrepancy on cancellation and if you will still have access to  Service Select features in the interim. The Covid-19 information page doesn’t contain any specific clarifying information at the time of this writing (5/1/2020).  

If Vectorworks truly wanted to help its user base in this time, they could either offer a deep discount on this year’s renewal and/or say that this year, renewals would be free for those who were impacted by COVID. It’s that simple. That’s what the petition asks for. (Since I started writing this, the signatures have gone into Universe 3, by the way.)

I understand that Vectorworks is a company. I understand that it is in business to make money for itself and for its parent company. As a large, multi-national corporation, they are in a place to offer real financial assistance to its user base, whereas we as individual designers and technicians are not. Vectorworks serves other industries that are not affected as substantially by COVID-19. They still have an income stream. We do not. It’s the least they could do to help restore some faith in the company, which is what all of this really comes down to.

A few weeks back, Vectorworks sent out a poorly-timed marketing email including the language “Many people are taking this time to evaluate their software needs,” then proceeded to offer discounts on new subscriptions.

I encourage my colleagues to take their words to heart. Let’s really spend some time evaluating what we need here, and what other solutions exist that might be able to fill those needs.

That’s certainly what I’ll be doing over the next few months, and I look forward to sharing my findings here!