R.I.P. UPGRADES
2018 - 2023
WHAT HAPPENED TO UPGRADES?
Ever since I started this store in 2018 I’ve offered upgrade pricing. Many other companies make their loyal customers pay premium prices for their products, while offering new customers endless discounts in order to get them in the door. For me, this just wasn’t right. I wanted to make sure I could give loyal customers my best prices.
For five years I processed upgrades manually – looking through a user’s product history (sometimes with dozens of products) in order to determine their price and ensure they got the best prices possible. Unfortunately, early in 2023, it became apparent that I wasn’t going to be able to do this any more. As the site grew, it became more and more complicated and time consuming to process them, and it didn’t leave me enough time to explore, innovate and make creative new soundbanks that you love. I knew I needed to automate it.
Well, with more than 50 products in the store, that was never going to be an easy task. I spent hundreds of hours creating a system and then populating it with rules in order to account for every conceivable combination of products in order to give you a unique upgrade price.
Back in September I launched this system. Let me tell you, there’s nothing quite like stress testing a system with real traffic, and it became obvious pretty quickly that there were issues, and lots of them. After this, I did everything I could to improve the system and fix the issues. I spent lots of time testing it all out, and it all seemed to be working ok. Bring on my annual “F**k Black Friday, It’s My Birthday” sale.
At this point, the system got a damn good testing again, and this time even more issues came up, with some customers being shown one price, but then being charged a different price. After looking in to these issues, it became clear that the new upgrade system was not going to work, and I had no option but to shut it down. I tried, with the best of intentions, to provide my loyal customers with a way to upgrade their products, but unfortunately I failed. All I can really say is – I’m sorry!
WHAT NOW?
I’m now going to be focusing my attention on creating a new system that rewards loyal customers by giving them the best prices possible. Unfortunately, I can’t give a timeframe for when this will be available. I can assure you, however, that I’ll be working hard behind the scenes to create a loyalty scheme that not only rewards your loyalty by making sure you get the best prices possible, but also a system that actually works. Watch this space!
