Has anyone else seen this? This seems to be a common pattern lately. Companies will list all their products:
Product X1 Product X2 Product Y1 Product Y2 Product R42 Product F25
… but they don’t have a page explaining what the difference between the X line, Y Line, R Line, and F Line actually are. Let’s say they are gadgets. Would it hurt them in any way to simply say the X line prioritizes speed, the Y line is backwards compatible with legacy gadgets, the R line is meant for business use, and the F line is experimental form factors. How do you not think to put this info on your page?
If I see a comparison matrix, I’m a happy camper. OTOH, you have to be extraordinarily careful with words or lose sales. Because people are stupid.
Case in point; Employee needed a new laptop and we leaned mostly towards Lenovos. Found a sweet deal on one labelled as a gaming rig. Boss wouldn’t sign off because, “A dev doesn’t need a gaming rig with a high-end video card.” Of course not, but still showed him the specs, compared against what we were currently purchasing and paying, no go. We ended up paying more for a laptop with lower specs because it didn’t have a “gaming” label.
What if you call a product line “prosumer”? It may be perfectly acceptable for a small business, but the owner might feel he needs “enterprise”. He looks at the enterprise line, flinches at the price, goes to another brand selling the same damned thing with a label that makes him happy.
Another one I had just posted; Shooting the shit with a customer who was unhappy he couldn’t buy straight grass seed and the label only showed the filler content in small print. What a ripoff! Another customer chimed in that filler is necessary for the seed spreader to work as expected. Oh.
X line prioritizes speed - Nah, not paying extra for speed, don’t need it.
Y line is backwards compatible with legacy gadgets - Sounds like it’ll be outdated soon.
R line is meant for business use - They just slap that on there to sucker people into paying more. (Yes they do!)
F line is experimental form factors - I need a tried and true product, sounds like a clusterfuck.
Having worked in various fields for 40 years, and now at my first retail job, I see that a lot of the fuckery we blame on capitalism is actually sellers trying to navigate ignorant and fickle consumers. Also, sometimes the weird shit we see, or don’t see where we expect it, is due to laws and regulations, but that’s another story.
Ubiquiti devices. What’s the difference between “UniFi Gateway Fiber” and “UniFi Cloud Gateway Fiber”? Last I checked they were even the same price.
Took me awhile to figure this out when I was first considering getting their stuff. Basically, you need some kinda server on the network running their programs to manage their devices. The “cloud” devices include this capability, otherwise you’ll need either their cloud key or to set up your own server running it. It’s definitely poorly explained and the weird pricing schemes don’t make any sense really.
So why not sell only the cloud version? Does that version somehow prevent management from another cloud key? If not, having the functionality dormant costs nothing.
Yes. They disallow controlling a ‘cloud’ device with another network server.
