We get many requests to waive the set-up fee, for all kinds of reasons, many of them quite reasonable.
We have a set-up fee for two reasons.
First, we allow people to cancel at will. If people did not have a set-up fee, they would cancel when they did not have work, and resubscribe when they did. Administratively, that would be more than we can manage. Also, economically it would not be viable for us.
Second, technical support tends to be higher at the beginning of a subscription, and the set-up fee helps us compensate for that fact.
If we granted any waivers, that would not be fair to all the similarly-situated people who paid the fee.
Also, we would have to decide on a case-by-case basis whether to waive the set-up fee. This would represent an insupportable burden on our time.
Sometimes people intended to sign up at a conference where we were waiving the set-up fee, but did not quite decide in time.
If we waived the fee for those people, it would not be fair to the people who did take the plunge at the conference itself.
We allow people to cancel the software at any time. The caveat to that is that, when people re-subscribe, we charge the set-up fee again.
Again, if we waived the fee in that case, we would be incurring the costs described above, and it would be a slippery slope to the on-again off-again subscription arrangement that is not sustainable for us.
Our goal is to make the set-up fee be the smallest possible amount that would prevent the constant cancel-and-resubscribe, and that yields some return to cover the greater tech support costs.
We hope that this amount does not deter you from subscribing to our great software!
We strongly believe that even in one or two cases per year, the software more than pays for itself in the enhancement of the quality of work you do, the efficiency savings, increased profitability, and referrals from happier clients.