49 cents per image download?!?!
Segfault
Registered Users Posts: 14 Big grins
This seemed to have been snuck in as part of the price list upgrade, and questions about it have so far been ignored in the pricelist thread by anybody from SM.
In the news / blog entry introducing the price lists, the little detail about how all digital downloads would now have a per unit cost associated with them was put in as one of those "Oh, by the way" type of things at the very end. Going from free to not free is not something you bury at the end of an article outlining a new feature on an unrelated item.
Now the argument that processing a $0.01 credit card order cost SM more than $0.01 is valid, and I do not have any issues with SM instituting a policy that more or less prohibits a transaction where they are guaranteed to lose money. But a 49 cent per image is equally invalid, especially when you toss the 15% cut on top of it. Processing an order is a fixed cost that does not vary with the number of images in the order, but in this case if a customer buys 4 downloads the fee is $1.96, not 49 cents. (And then they still get the 15% on top of it.)
There are two ways that SM could have approached this issue that would acceptable to me (with the caveat that you should explain why, not just go and do it and hope nobody notices).
The first method would be if SM instead instituted a fixed "Download only service fee" that gets applied to all download only orders (vs mixed download/print orders where they already get the 2.99 S&H fee to ostensibly cover the order processing fee). Then provide me the photographer an option of eating that fixed fee so that when the end user sees a digital download for $4.99, they pay $4.99. Most folks don't like S&H fees on things that don't actually involve shipping so I'd rather hide that detail from them.
Another option would be to specify a 'Minimum Digital Cost," of which SM would take their customary 15% such that their cut would cover their transaction cost.
Bonus points if you gave us the option of which one to pick on a per-pricelist basis for those times when we want to do something stupid and actually sell a download for $0.01 (and we then lose $0.48 per transaction for single image transactions).
So petty pretty please with sugar on top, two things to keep in mind in the future:
1) Don't make a change like this again and then try and hide it.
2) SM has built up a reputation for being fair and open, this change was anything but.
Anyway, my 0.49 worth. Hopefully this will be my last rant on the topic. :-)
In the news / blog entry introducing the price lists, the little detail about how all digital downloads would now have a per unit cost associated with them was put in as one of those "Oh, by the way" type of things at the very end. Going from free to not free is not something you bury at the end of an article outlining a new feature on an unrelated item.
Now the argument that processing a $0.01 credit card order cost SM more than $0.01 is valid, and I do not have any issues with SM instituting a policy that more or less prohibits a transaction where they are guaranteed to lose money. But a 49 cent per image is equally invalid, especially when you toss the 15% cut on top of it. Processing an order is a fixed cost that does not vary with the number of images in the order, but in this case if a customer buys 4 downloads the fee is $1.96, not 49 cents. (And then they still get the 15% on top of it.)
There are two ways that SM could have approached this issue that would acceptable to me (with the caveat that you should explain why, not just go and do it and hope nobody notices).
The first method would be if SM instead instituted a fixed "Download only service fee" that gets applied to all download only orders (vs mixed download/print orders where they already get the 2.99 S&H fee to ostensibly cover the order processing fee). Then provide me the photographer an option of eating that fixed fee so that when the end user sees a digital download for $4.99, they pay $4.99. Most folks don't like S&H fees on things that don't actually involve shipping so I'd rather hide that detail from them.
Another option would be to specify a 'Minimum Digital Cost," of which SM would take their customary 15% such that their cut would cover their transaction cost.
Bonus points if you gave us the option of which one to pick on a per-pricelist basis for those times when we want to do something stupid and actually sell a download for $0.01 (and we then lose $0.48 per transaction for single image transactions).
So petty pretty please with sugar on top, two things to keep in mind in the future:
1) Don't make a change like this again and then try and hide it.
2) SM has built up a reputation for being fair and open, this change was anything but.
Anyway, my 0.49 worth. Hopefully this will be my last rant on the topic. :-)
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When I said it was introduced as one of those 'oh, by the way' type of things, that blog entry was what i was talking about. It is put all the way at the bottom of a post on pricelists (which I like a lot, by the way ).
Changes to cost (xyz was free, but now it cost $A) should probably get their own notice and be explained so that we are all clear on what is going on and why. When they get disclosed at the bottom of a post detailing functionality (the _how_ we do things), most folks are going to miss it (because they only read the first part) or the discussion thread is going to be all over the map on what should be two separate topics.
As I scan through the comments to that post there is one other person with a similar complaint that garnered a single response, and a bunch of other folks who just outright didn't like it because they were selling downloads for $0.10 (and thus I can see your issue with losing money).
Again, my main issue is not so much with the fact that you are doing it. First and foremost it is the method in which it was announced. Of secondary concern is the method (per transaction vs per image) of how the new fee structure is structured.
--john