Waves transfer fees change ?

[DJBuddhaBear]

My biggest problem with this is they did NOT notify anyone! I just sold a plug that I had bought for a friend, but they never got into using the computer for recording. When I sell plugins I don't charge a lot as I just want to sell them and be done with it. I sold GTR3 for $20 - knowing that I had to renew the WUP for $7.50 I thought I would get $12.50 out of it - but the transfer fee was $10.00 so I ended up with only $2.50 - lesson learned.

Yeah, that was my biggest gripe. I, too, just sold a plug in but on eBay. I accepted a slightly lower BIN price, and after fees and transfer fees from Waves, I made less than $2.50. If I sell any more Waves plugins I will be jacking up the price to cover the fee. It would have been nice to have been informed via a mass email or something.

[sin night]

Getting to know this change from forums instead of receiving a proper notification email is definitely not nice.

Also, while I understand the desire for "limiting" the second hand market in order to sell more new items (especially when there's no difference in new vs used, as with software), I think this new policy is a bit too heavy on the user. Not that I want to sell anything second-hand (I buy things to keep them; I rarely sold something, just an handful of times, and it never happened with a Waves plugin), and I also rarely buy second hand (only once for software and very few times for hardware)... but I still feel uncomfortable with this policy.


Beside the lack of a notification email, there are some things that bother me:
- The requirement for both wup and transfer fee (I can understand either one of them - even though I don't really like it - but requiring both is a bit excessive in my opinion - but it's their choice).
- The transfer price calculated against the "normal list price", when the actual price on the market is almost always way lower because of the almost-perpetual discounts.
- The new requirement has been introduced *after* I bought most (if not all) my plugins (the last update of the transfer page is dated 6th Sept. 2017, while my last Waves plugin was a few months ago and most of them are from past years), and it's an additional cost on the user end. And it's something I didn't explicitly agree with (but I'm pretty sure the eula disagrees with me and enforces me to implicitly agree with the changes, so to speak).


Doing the math, actually the transfer fee is not that high, it will be between 10 and 15 bucks for almost every plugin (the 5% of an advertised price of 249 is 12.45, and that's already for their middle-to-expensive plugins).
But, if you consider the frequent sales, with prices ranging between 29 and 99 for a lot of plugins, I think the transfer fee actually ranges rougly from to 1/10th up to 1/3rd of what most of us really paid. Actually, if you bought a 249 plugin for 29 - sometimes the discounts are indeed so big - the transfer fee is almost the 43% of what you paid! This is probably the reason why I feel uncomfortable with the new transfer fee (even if I'm not going to sell anything)

So, if you bought something on impulse at 29 and soon after you're experiencing buyer remorse, then you're forced to sell it with an important loss (and hope to sell it in the first year, while you're still covered by the original wup), otherwise you're going to compete with the price of a new license.

It also kills the chance of making a few bucks by buying at discount price and selling when the prices go up (say you buy for 29, then you add at least 10 of transfer fee so you're up to 39, then you add your profit and you're probably close to 50, which I think it's towards the "least convenient" of the Waves discounted prices). Actually I have nothing against Waves trying to kill this kind of market, I'm just doing the math (if no taxes - like vat - are paid on those few bucks of profit, then I'm afraid it's not even legal, so...). I wonder if this is actually one of their goals with this policy.


Anyway, it's up to them to decide their policies... then I, as a customer, will make my own considerations. I may still buy from them if I feel the tool is worth the purchase, but everything is weighted in when I make my decisions, of course.


Just my 2 cents, of course.

[fluffy_little_something]

The WUP requirement also makes sense, in order to protect the inexperienced buyer.

[sqigls]

Derp. PayPal already DOES that.

[ghettosynth]

Doing the math, actually the transfer fee is not that high, it will be between 10 and 15 bucks for almost every plugin (the 5% of an advertised price of 249 is 12.45, and that's already for their middle-to-expensive plugins).

Which is not that unreasonable as a "cost of transfer" fee. I think that an issue here is that because they present "percentage of price" as a valid method in the first place people then take to interpreting it in that way to argue that it's either reasonable or not without ever questioning the validity of the thought process in the first place.

Really, the cost of a transfer is largely fixed per plugin, maybe even per bundle. So debating the actual amount charged is something of a waste of time IMO.

What this does do, however, is devalue Waves plugins even further. It will almost certainly have the effect that Waves hopes for, but it will also have unintended or, at least, undesired, consequences.

For me, transfer fees might as well make something NFR because it adds one more step to the sale process that I simply can't be assed with. Of course not everyone feels this way, but, as is clear from this thread, people do view this negatively.

I suspect that part of the effect of this is that people will be less likely to consider the $39 to $69 sales as often. The additional transfer fee will simply be mentally added to those prices to bump them up to the next class in the buyer's mind. The $29 sales are still cheap enough that people won't mind, but the more expensive sale prices will be closer to the decision edge more often. The truth of this is immaterial, people often make somewhat irrational mental valuations, it's what drives the psychology behind the "9" in the first place.

[imrae]

What feels sketchy here is that the list price suddenly "matters". Previously the permanent-discount-on-absurd-list-price sales tactic seemed a bit dishonest, but didn't actually affect users as long as they only consider the price they're actually paying. But now this seemingly arbitrary number with too many digits on should actually be taken into consideration as part of your total cost of ownership? Not only can they change the policy without notice, they can also change these list prices. What happens if they add more zeros to the list prices?

[Scrubbing Monkeys]

I think waves missed an opportunity here. They could have charged a flat 5.00 per transfer, automate the process and taken advantage of all the impulse buys that then get resold. And with the re seller having to add the extra, I may look to waves not the resell ( if it is say 6 months old) in order to get full WUP.

[MogwaiBoy]

Sending an email to a "Matt at Waves" with usernames and serial numbers was a bit oldschool and whether this Matt existed or not, someone at Waves probably spent their whole day actioning transfers. So a transfer fee is not unwarranted (even with the WUP scam lurking behind everything) but I agree this is something of a missed opportunity for Waves - if the goal was to choke out the rampant secondhand market instead of benefit from it, then goal achieved.

[transverb]

Well Waves, you broke my heart when I WUP'ed up to 64bit when Logic switched to 64bit. I felt like I had to buy my plugins all over again. A few of my mates felt exactly the same way. I took some time off, said I was better off without you, even replaced you with other plugins and finally moved on. I even started to forgive you since your ridiculous $29.00 deals. I saw how inconsistent your pricing structure was. But now let me be clear:

I'm done.

TL;DR: No notification email letting customers know the policy change? WUP + high transfer fee? No more of my business.

[robotmonkey]

Well, even though I think it sucks somewhat and that It was a mistake not to notify its users, I wouldn't over dramatize this. I'm definitely not going to say I will never buy a Waves plugin ever again as I most certainly will.

It's evident that they do want to limit the second hand sales market. In the past I have bought and sold couple of Waves plugins in the second hand market but these days it won't be affecting me much. Except maybe in a rare case I would decide to sell off all my Waves stuff. But in the past I was in the second hand market mainly because I was building up my Waves collection and it was a way to get plugins cheaper. These days at the sale prices I see no point in buying anything from the second hand market anyway. And of course, I even do not want anything much as I have most of the Waves plugins I have planned getting anyway.

Even though I hate being nickel and dimed that way, the fact is that Waves needs to adjust to the market situation and overall they seemed to have done pretty well at this, and kind of lead the way in the industry. Pretty much all the developers are now going the Waves way.

[LeVzi]

I dont think a transfer fee is a bad thing, I just think it's ridiculous to charge 5% of say $299 when you might have only paid $29 for the plugin in the first place. That's where this is unfair to me. And as someone who enjoyed good deals here at KVR , I will miss the chance to get some really good plugins at a good price.

[robotmonkey]

I will miss the chance to get some really good plugins at a good price.

But surely you can buy directly from Waves and resellers? 21$ plugin is pretty good deal if you ask me.

[imrae]

I just think it's ridiculous to charge 5% of say $299 when you might have only paid $29 for the plugin in the first place

Especially when that number $299 isn't used to determine anything else! Why not just report the transfer fee?

Ah well, still better than trying to choose a broadband contract... http://dilbert.com/strip/2010-11-21

[TONAH]

Whole thing is ridiculous. I am selling H Series for $40’and the buyer asked me to pay the fee that from 600 would be $30 so I would make $10 from this.

It makes me want to sell off my account for $200 and be done with them

[murnau]

Whole thing is ridiculous. I am selling H Series for $40’and the buyer asked me to pay the fee that from 600 would be $30 so I would make $10 from this.

It makes me want to sell off my account for $200 and be done with them

Since their forced you to have active WUP when you want to sell i never bought anything anymore from them. Not to speak about the fee. It's great not to have any GAS when they spam you with their daily deals anymore.