Our official policy for customers requesting evaluation units is to require payment upfront. However, we do honor a no-questions-asked 30-day return policy.
As you can imagine, we get a constant stream of requests for evaluation units. Obviously we’d love to provide everybody who asks with a demo unit. After all, the other brand name packet shapers will throw them at you. Especially if you are coming from an account they want to win over.
So, you may be wondering why we don’t do the same…
Some background:
APconnections sells quite a few units under $3000 dollars. To put this in perspective, last year a CEO from a larger competitor selling similar equipment admitted that $4000 is their break-even point.
So, how do we offer units starting at $2000 and still turn a profit?
A big part of our model to is make sure that we do not drill dry wells. Dry well is industry speak for pursuing business that will never materialize. Yes, we love chatting with people, but in order to pay our engineers and stay in business, we must limit money spent supporting customers that are just “looking”. The easiest way to do this is to enforce our evaluation policy.
Serious customers that are ready to buy something but need to see it work in their network usually have no problem with purchasing up front. Some, but not all, customers that are not agreeable to purchasing up front may have cash flow problems of their own. In an economy where banks do not know how to qualify loans, we don’t want to try to calculate this risk.
The result of our conservative policy translates to much lower prices , and to date nobody is arguing with that.
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