I sent them this email 4 days ago and they don't even bother to reply to me.
So I decided to post it here to let you guys know...
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I just read that Leonardo will no longer be supported and you will
change your company name. I must confess that it does not make me feel
very happy and a bit foolish.
You should know that I made the decision to buy your software was for 2 reasons:
1) It was not necessary to pay monthly for support.
2) I expected several features to be added, as you promised me by email.
Try to empathize with the company. Their old business model was not financially sustainable in the long run. At some point, they would need to either have their employees work pro-bono, or shut down altogether. If they continued to go down this road, then you would not get updates anyways, because rolling out updates is a full-time job, and would require some kind of compensation. The old model relied on new users coming in. Once they stop receiving new users, they stop receiving funds to pay employees.
In both cases, this is not going to happen as I expected. I've read
your answers on the support forum and your attitude towards your
existing customers doesn't seem to be appropriate.
I think they handled everything correctly. I think many of the customers don't care about reading concerns from other customers, so staff members get annoyed by constantly having to repeat themselves. It's understandable.
Before I even bought your software, I asked many questions about the
future development of the software. Your team seemed to be in complete
agreement with my feature requests and let me believe that they were
on the roadmap. As I mentioned in a previous email, I still don't use
my license because I was waiting for my applications to arrive one
day, which will never happen. I bought a license to encourage you in
Leonardo's development!
It's great that you are trying to offer them features to implement. But understand, that, it takes time and money to implement those requests. Should Margin staff make updates, and not receive compensation? Companies who cannot sustain themselves financially end up collapsing. I don't think that is beneficial to anyone.
Suddenly changing your business model from a single cost to a monthly
cost shouldn't impact your existing customers in any way. Having
bought Leonardo, I trusted you and I thought I could use this tool for
at least 5 years! Please stop saying that we will be able to use the
old software until the end of time, it is totally absurd because we
are dependent and at the mercy of API updates from trading platforms.
Please, at least don't take us for fools.
They gave a more than two week notice, which is more than enough. How does this harm any user in any way? If you want to upgrade, great! If not, you will continue to be able to use Leonardo, as it has always been. You honestly probably will not notice any difference, had they not made an announcement.
That said, I appreciate that you will offer 50% to all existing
customers even if this decision was not initially considered. Although
I can understand that the support and improvement of a software
requires sufficient financial resources, this discount is not enough
and your customers have let you know on the forum. Your hero badge
story is felt like a joke and unnecessary.
Now I think you are just being greedy. $25 a month for the standard plan is very inexpensive. Since you are a hero member, you get 50% off of that. The discount is more than enough. I kindly request of you to not be so selfish. You are not forced to commit to the subscriptions.
Please revise your strategy before it is too late and trust is
completely broken. I still believe in your product and your team.
An existing customer.
The decision to rebrand was probably well-thought out. They even will release a new website. I don't think these things happen overnight. Jonathan is a very intelligent person. I'd say he probably understands his companies needs better than anyone. Let them run their company the way they see fit. I understand that this re-branding is not for everybody, and that is fine. You can never please everybody.
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