PhaseOne Capture 1 SE to be discontinued

[Peter_AUS]

Well aren't they having fun over the past 3 months with Capture 1 and its problems with its upgrades policies.

After the last few weeks it seems PhaseOne management have decided to discontinue the SE version and stick with LE at ($99US) and PRO at ($499US but currently promitional special of $450US) with support for all cameras in both, and discontinuing the SE version with the impending release of Version 3.6.

There has been much discussion about these upgrades and problems with many people purchasing special 5 upgrade packs for the LE and SE versions and with the most recent announcment of the SE version going, well the perverbial hit the fan good time and the discussions within the main support forum at www.rawworkflow.com certainly has gotten a few backs up, me included.

With customers who have purchased this product and the upgrades and some only in the past 6 - 8 weeks it really got the annoyance factor going, me included as I purchased what I thought was the product level that suited my non-professional level, not needing the extra batching in the PRO version.

So with all the angst that happened over the past 48 hours, it would seem that PhaseOne has listened to the customer base and have decided to upgrade in the future all SE customers to the PRO version with their 5 pack purchases changing to 2 upgrades and without having to spend anymore money, like the $149 that was previously asked for, effectively forcing their customers to either stick with the level they were at and a redundent product, or upgrade spending more than the original purchase price for the PRO version if purchased outright in the beginning. Some would have to pay upwards of $558US for a product that should have cost no more than $499.

I feel this is a good outcome for what I believe is probably the majority of their customers, although they will now have to pay for upgrades of software, probably sometime in 2006 at around $199 US, instead of the usual what appeared to be $79 a year for the SE version, but still they are getting a non redundent version aren't they.

This is a golden example of a company not thinking through the problems they are having and trying to bandaid fix the problem and getting deeper and deeper into the doo doo.

I have recommended Capture One to others here in PhotographyReview.com and friends, but I certainly will be thinking twice about the recommendation in the future.

I just thought I would pass on this info as it might effect others here, there hasn't been any emails out and about by PhaseOne regarding this, which is another annoyance to the client base as well, hearing only of this on the dedicated forums at RawWorkFlow.com.

[Michael Fanelli]

Well aren't they having fun over the past 3 months with Capture 1 and its problems its upgrades policies.

Yep, I got burned by C1 and it's first "upgrade" from the Rebel version. It's bad enough that the promised free upgrade never materialized, They then took my money for the new "upgrade", deactivated the existing version, and never delivered the new version. Repeated emails were ignored. Without service or response to customer problems, even the best product in the world is no better than garbage. I would never recommend this product, let it RIP.