Know your audience
Hmpf. I got this letter from Peachtree today. I’m not a huge fan of their software, but it gets the job done and there really aren’t very many alternatives. The company is in at least its third incarnation since I got my first version, (an autonomous company, part of “Best Software” and now part of “Sage Software”). It’s another one of those companies that removes features in every new version and adds it back in as a pay service.
The biggest PITA in this regard is their payroll tax tables. It’s always been a pay service, but orignally, they gave you one set of up-to-date tables to start with. If you were savvy enough, you could update the tables on your own. They don’t do that any more, and if you try to generate a payroll check, you get alarming error messages telling you you need to subscribe to their payroll tax service. This is not just misleading, it’s untrue. It’s just a method of frightening you into paying for something that is expensive ($230/yr) and, for the most part, unnecessary. Now, if I generated checks for employees in more than one state, or had some other weird sort of something something, then it might make sense, but I generate about two or three paychecks per year. And even if I generated one per month, like I used to, even that wouldn’t make this service worthwhile. Luckily, the weird way of writing their calculations hasn’t changed. I imagine that will be the next feature that will be removed.
But be that as it may.
This is the new sales scheme. They really ought to make an effort to know their audience. Granted, I occasionally need transport other than a bike, it’s true. But the implication here is that a bike is an unsophisticated, retro, backwards — one might even say “quaint”– method of transport and that, certainly, no one could possibly consider using it any more.
Hogwash. Typical suburban thinking. Because, clearly, you should be driving a Hummer.
