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HighBeam Research: Purposely Evasive on Price? -or- Cluetrain #12: There are no secrets.
Submitted by Steve Nelson on Tue, 2008-06-17 12:06.
cluetrain | highbeam | Marketing
While searching for some info on the web, HighBeam Research-hosted results were coming up with a fair degree of frequency. However, I couldn't access through to the articles they indexed because I had not subscribed to their service.
Fair enough. As was my question: How much does it cost to subscribe?
Exercise for the reader: go to the HighBeam Research web site and come back and tell me how much their service costs.
There is a link to "Take a FREE trial!". There are pages such as "What are the different membership options?" and "I have a billing question". There is a "Become a Member" page that links to their Terms and Conditions.
The Terms & Conditions page does inform you that this is an auto-renewing contract, that you will be bound by the payment terms, based on current rates specified in the enrollment screens, etc., that the price you pay is the price stipulated at the time you enroll. But without signing up for a free trial that automatically kicks over into a paid subscription, I don't see anywhere that tells you what the fee is.
I called HighBeam by phone, and when I asked the representative to point me to the URL with their pricing, he said he'd have to check. Two minutes later, he came back with the pricing information. When I again asked for the URL with their pricing, he came back two minutes later to tell me they don't have that on their web site, because "it depends."
This seems wrong to me, and I'm surprised that someone like Christopher Locke, co-author of the cluetrain manifesto, is associated with HighBeam. Isn't cluetrain all about communicating "in language that is natural, open, honest, direct..."?
[Update 9/17/08 - Comments include a response from Highbeam as well as others. This blog post is the top google result for "highbeam pricing" - wouldn't you think that should be highbeam.com instead? Looking again at their site, not only do they not give you the pricing, they don't even tell you their pricing model unless you start giving them info. Incredible!]
A good example of a good example
Submitted by Steve Nelson on Fri, 2008-09-19 12:58.
On a related note, I was trying to find out the origin of the 800-pound gorilla for another blog post, and found a reference at experts-exchange.com, but no answer until I paid for their service.
At first I thought "here we go again" when I went to their home page and found no obvious link for pricing, but when I hit the "start free trial" button, the trial sign-up page was very explicit about pricing. I'd rather see pricing on a separate page, but this is much better than HighBeam's opacity.
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Poor practice
Submitted by AdrienneA (not verified) on Thu, 2008-09-18 17:34.
It's simply poor business practice to hide a pricing structure behind the sign-up process. I, too, will NOT deal with a company that requires me to provide extensive personal information without letting me know how much I'm paying for the service.
The excuses of "it depends" or "we're testing" are just lame.
HighBeam, please listen to these concerns and be up-front about pricing.
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I agree. be open with pricing
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 2008-09-18 13:44.
So yeah, I am already a bookrags subscriber, and I am a subscriber because I was aware of what they offered and the price that went along with it. I think Bookrags is good for somebody interested in writing poems, short stories, and more. Just from glancing at the types of publications in Highbeam, I would imaging that it is good for the advanced writer as well as anybody in a professional science career.
Knowing the price is a huge part, guessing games aren't attractive at all. Try Kirby vacuum salespeople, show you a 3k$ vacuum cleaner for two hours and when you say awesome, what's the price, they dance over it for the next two hours, and then when you find out it's like, OMG get out of my house now!!!!!!!
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upfront pricing plus better client tracking
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 2008-09-15 20:32.
If testing is the reason for not showing pricing, highbeam should consider Promo codes.
That way you can list your prices upfront
(instead of being buried somewhere "beyond" the register/signup form). [I did not fill it out, nor was I going to, just for pricing info].
If any pages within your site currently happen to list "different pricing offers", remove them and point the links back to one upfront pricing page.
It would be a lot easier to advertise one promo code
for corporate users, at corporate related websites.
Another promo code at university/college related websites, with an educational promo code.
At least you wouldn't irritate the crap out of potential subscribers (by making them hunt and hunt for pricing).
I finally google'd, "highbeam pricing", to try and finding a pricing structure (and I found this forum).
In order to get me to signup for something like that, (just to find out the pricing structure), someone's product or service would have to be "the only player in town".
And even then, I would have had to have heard some really good "word of mouth advertising" elsewhere; to pursue an offer with such hidden pricing details.
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No refunds if you cancel
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 2008-07-27 00:12.
Oh and I just checked the terms on cancelling your membership. Yes, you can cancel your membership "at any time", but you don't get any refunds if you cancel!
So if you take out a one-year membership for $200, you have to wait till the END OF THE TERM before cancelling coz you don't get any money back. And paying $30 per month just isn't worth it.
If you are seriously interested in this service then try it out for 7 days (free), pay $30 for one month, and then - if you still find it useful - take out the one-year membership.
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Highbeam subscription cost
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 2008-07-27 00:03.
$200 yearly or $30 per month. This is what I got when signing up for the free trial. It might be different, depending on what options you choose, I didn't test this.
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The HighBeam price - it is a value not a secret
Submitted by Steve Weir (not verified) on Wed, 2008-06-25 15:16.
Steve,
Thanks for visiting our site. As the Marketing Manager, I'm disappointed to read that you think we are being evasive.
To be clear, there is no way to sign up for our service without knowing the price. The price is in the registration sequence - you can't sign up without seeing it. We reinforce the price when you sign up, and we send you a confirmation e-mail in your free trial to minimize any confusion. On top of all that, you can cancel your service with us at anytime on our site, and, as you can attest, we offer 24/7 US based customer service via telephone- which is no small expense considering we aren't a fortune 500 company.
It is true, we don't usually display the price towards the front of the site . We do this because occasionally we do offer testing on the the site, and we don't want users to see one offer on one page, and then another offer somewhere else. Our pricing display also enables us to offer discounts to users based on the demographics that give us during our sign up process (when we can, we like to let students use our site for a little bit less than oil company executives).
Of course, We are always testing new ideas about how to let customers know about us and the value that we offer, so you may see our price promoted a little more in the future. Rest assured, we won't ever hide the price from people who sign up to our service.
Thanks,
Steve Weir
Director Of Marketing, HighBeam Research
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you have to waste your time
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 2008-09-05 15:58.
you have to waste your time jumping through a bunch of hoops going through various pages of fine print and giving information about yourself and filling out data fields before you find out about the price.
Some people do not want to muck around with even getting on someone's mailing list before deciding whether it is a value for dollars.
I don't want to be signing up for any "free" trial until I find out NOT ONLY the terms and conditions BUT ALSO what the regular charge for the service will be.
That is part of the initial assessment a potential client goes through when evaluating whether or not to "bite".
The fact of not having those prices right up front where they are easy to find AUTOMATICALLY puts some people on guard and suggests some duplicitous marketing.
As with anything (even relationships for instance), it's caveat emptor, and you want to collect as much data on something as possible before becoming involved, because we are ALL crunched for time these days. If someone's being cagey, that's an automatic red flag and a "minus" right up front.
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price of HighBeam Research
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 2008-09-05 07:04.
I will have to agree with Steve. I had begun the process of registering for the free trial, but when I could find no information on the price, I thought I'd better check further. I would recommend that the pricing be more visible to ease the concerns of potential users of the website.
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I just had the same
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed, 2008-09-03 15:23.
I just had the same experience and was completely annoyed with the cloak surrounding price. I do not believe I should have to give you my personal information for a simple rate check. A big turn off. I hope you will make your pricing more transparent in the future.
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Pass this on to Mark Hurst at Good Experience
Submitted by Gary Peare (not verified) on Tue, 2008-06-17 12:22.
Mark would be interested in this, Steve.
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Highbeam subscription cost