NOD32 rip-off

Hey, i posted this in the http://forums.whirlpool.net.au forums and was told to come here and tell my story...

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=319220&p=-1#bottom

That was the post i made about NOD32 and a PC shop.. please read the link so i dont have to type it out again...anyways..ive still got the piece of paper with the prices on it and the PC shops name..Just wondering if any further steps could be taken because the is a serious rip...

 

Hey John, can you register here and send me a PM with the details.

Cheers

 

Yes it does sound dodgy, I am not sure what could be done about it though. Blackspear will no doubt be along shortly and offer up his insight. Welcome to the NOD community and sorry it was such a bumpy introduction. Bookmark the forum here at Wilder's just incase you have any problems getting oriented to NOD. Take a look over Blackspear's settings sticky to give you and idea on how to set up NOD.
here is the link https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=37509

OOPPSS sorry Craig, you posted as I was answering.

 

Nothing surprises me about these "PC shops/stores" anymore. Buyers beware!!

Let's hope Blackspear/Eset can do something about this one.

Appears that they were simply downloading NOD (cracked version?) and installing on people's machines?

 

Where are you reading this, I can't see anything that mentions such.

Nod32 has a RRP of $64.50 in Australia, as a Reseller I can sell at this price or above as it is only Recommend Retail Price. In fact I sell it for $65.00 and offer installation, tweaking and instruction for $30.00. I have sold nod32 for coming on 3 years and from the hundreds and hundreds of licenses sold there have been only 5 people wanted to install Nod32 themselves, of these 5, 3 returned to the shop and asked me to install and tweak.

So let's all just wait and see what details are provided before any further speculation is given. It may simply be a Reseller selling at $20.00 more than RRP and adding an installation fee. We have an interesting article just arrived, to quote from it:


The bad news is that 2005 will see a severely reduced market growth - probably about 5% instead of the double digit growth experienced over the past four years. Whilst the price of IT goods has fallen (primarily because of good currency exchange rates) so too have profit margins with notebooks and many peripherals like printers etc., having less than 10% retail margin. This has led to the collapse of many retailers who have found that they can't survive at those rates - nine south east Queensland stores closing since Christmas including Condorde and FTC are evidence enough of this. And there are strong industry whispers of dozens of other stores in South East Queendland on very shaky ground. One clear symptom of this is that service and civility are the first thing to go, especially when something goes wrong with your low cost purchase. I can't protect you from getting a bargain but I can warn you that make sure the goods you buy have a manufacturer's warranty that does not rely on the retailer to honour it.


There are a lot of Resellers in Australia that are not happy that Nod32 is priced so low compared to Norton and basically every other Anti-virus sold in Australia, but we will not get into that as this is a Support Forum not a Reseller Forum

Cheers

 

i sent ya a PM Blackspear

 

Hi John, welcome to Wilders, just looking at it now.

Cheers

 

The store in question is owned by a Mate of mine just up the road from me. I disagree with his method of selling Nod32, but that is his choice in doing so, he is allowed to sell at above RRP in Australia, and he is an Authorised Nod32 Reseller. The margin's are very low as stated above, compared to any other AV sold in Australia, and he has a full on Retail Store inside a Shopping Centre. With such high rental and having a huge staff, he must also have higher margins.

This is not a rip-off per say, though in my opinion he should be selling similar to what I do, in that the customer is quoted RRP plus installation, so in his case it would be $65.00 plus $45.00 installation, tweak up and instruction. Selling this way his market may tell him that the $45.00 is too high.

The customers that purchase Nod32 through his store are provided a UN and PW when allocated by Nod32 Australia, these are sent by email.

Hope this helps…

Cheers

 

ah ok thanks for the reply. Just thought its a bit steep charging that much. Look like ill have to buy it off the Site, cheers everyone for the replys..

 

John, I have sent you a PM.

Cheers

 

Glad to hear that everything has been resolved, thanks to BlackSpear.

That will teach me to post at 6 a.m.UK time. Time to wake up.

It was the $110 dollars that seemed steep and the fact that he was not given the install disc

Now that I have woken up, I can see now that they were Australian dollars and everything now seems above board

The moral of this story? Do not post before you have woken up and leave everything NOD to Blackspear

 

lol indeed very good morals..and good morning

 

LMAO, no no no, if you leave it up to me I drag Dog into things and more things, which in turn gets us into allsorts of trouble...

 

I truly feel for this PC reseller... we're primarily a web design company, with a NOD32 reseller status - we got into selling NOD32 because we valued the product and decided that:

a. more people needed to know about NOD32 instead of the inferior mass market rubbish they're currently using
b. an additional income stream is generally a good idea if it is "profitable".

Now... we see two sides of the coin here - our primary business is selling services (web design, consultancy, hosting, domains etc) - and a (much) smaller portion if now NOD32 (about 0.5% of our revenue).

People in general have got used to purchasing cheap on the Internet - this means they have got used to spending their money with strangers... is this a good thing?

Generally, I'd say NO!

It has led to downward spiralling costs... which means downwards spiralling margins.

Low or razor thin margins means a cut in service - it has to!

Recently, we removed our 800# from our NOD32 web site - why? Many resellers don't even have a phone number - or purchases were being made from local stores who are simply out of business... result? Many of them ended up calling us - demanding support for a product we had not sold them!

It was business sense, we had to politely redirect their enquiries to the correct channel and field a lot of angry NOD32 owners who though we were duty bound to provide them (FREE) support... ummm.. I'm sorry, try buying a camera online, or from someone in a bar, and demanding your local neighborhood photo store provide free support... see how that flies!

I have to say - and this from someone who buys online, and builds e-commerce solutions for our clients to sell online - the internet and to some extent, FRANCHISES - are destroying the "local" businesses.... yes - I've said it... local businesses are being killed by the internet and franchises?

Why?

Because the little guys - the ones who DO provide the services - are being priced out of the market!

Franchises and volume sellers of ANYTHING are setting up seriously streamlined purchase and distribution channels, and purchasers ONLY see the purchase price as their bottom line... they don't consider service, local jobs, etc... they don't think about what to do if/when it breaks... they commoditize EVERYTHING down to the lowest cost, and sub-consciously THROW out the service with the price savings... do they KNOW they are doing this? Sometimes - yes. Sometimes - no... as demonstrated by the fact that they call us and also (so I hear), Eset in the USA, demanding support when their retailer goes out of business.

This situation is going to get worse unless the public at large reach the decision in their own sweet time that people's time and resources used to provide support is worth something...

In our MAIN business - web site design and hosting - I see THOUSANDS of local businesses buying domains, hosting web sites, and building sites with out of state and out of country providers - which is TRULY IRONIC for restaurants, realtors and local insurance agencies - as you can bet your bottom dollar that their revenues are NOT generated from out of state dollars (99.9%+ being local clients).... so the problem is endemic - until EVERYONE starts to wise up to what they are doing to their own local economies, expect this to get a lot WORSE!

 

The wealthiest communities in the world are those that have the same dollar change hands within that comminity the most times before leaving.
Here in country Australia people are generally happy to pay for genuine 'I want to give you the best service I can' service (and thats a good thing because there really isn't anything in the way of tips) - if people just want bottom dollar then they generally go to the city in the first place and I don't see them, but yes webyourbusiness I do believe that generally what you're saying there is true.