Along with many other Amazon Marketplace sellers, I purchased a lifetime license to Seller Engine in 2003. The program enables sellers to reprice their inventory using a simple interface.
Several months later, Seller Engine began charging monthly subscription fees. But the company allowed its original customers, who paid $150 to $200 for their licenses, to continue using its software.
Now, Seller Engine says it will no longer support its original license holders, but they are welcome to pay $39.95 monthly for “Seller Engine Plus.”
Here’s how Seller Engine’s Jack Keegan explained it to me in an e-mail:
“… We have offered free support and upgrades for Seller Engine users for four years now, and unfortunately the old Seller Engine program is built on a technology that is obsolete now which makes it very difficult for us to upgrade it and to keep up with the changes at Amazon.”
The program I use every day is obsolete? I had no idea. But I’m not a programmer, so I’ll refrain from calling Mr. Keegan a liar.
Perhaps it’s just a huge coincidence that the Seller Engine folks decided they couldn’t support their original customers at the same time they introduced a different product costing lots more.
In the past, I’ve consistently recommended Seller Engine on this Web site and in “The Home-Based Bookstore.” In the future, I’ll be sure to mention that Seller Engine stands by its promises only as long as it’s convenient for them.
4 Comments
Hopefully SellerEngine will collect enough subscription fees to pay damages from the class-action lawsuit they are inviting
Words just don’t mean what they used to.
“Free” = (We used this word to lure you to our site, actual cost is $)
“Always” = (As in PayPal’s old slogan ‘always free’ [I have a copy of the logo, if anyone wants one])
and of course,
“LIFETIME” = (Our lifetime or the product’s lifetime, NOT yours!)
I haven’t yet tried SellerEngine, but was just thinking about doing so using the ‘free trial’ if it still exists. Does anyone have an alternate software suggestion that costs less than $39.99 per month?
What's retarded is that the "old" seller engine has been working fine for us, but last month we had to migrate it to a new computer/hard drive.
We reinstalled it, it asked for the key #, and it wouldn't take … it said we needed a new key.
We emailed, and Jack Keegan gave us the exact same email (word for word).
But…we don't want support. We just want him to unlock/remove the mechanism preventing us from using the software we paid for.
He told us it didn't work – I said we don't care. We use it for other purposes. He can't tell me that I can't use the software (a) because Amazon made changes (the contact was between us & seller engine, not between us and amazon), or (b) because he thinks it doesn't work correctly any more.
I invited him to either send us a new key #, or to issue a full refund. No response.
Now we're thinking about contacting the attorney general – we have a lifetime contract for this software. AND, seller engine wrote the lifetime contract deal (not us) – we have the receipt!