| Hi, is this the line for bitching about all stuff related to 37signals? If so, my complaint goes back a couple of years - when someone on my team suggested using Basecamp for managing our web site projects. Without too much thought, we signed up and began to use it. To pay for it, I used my personal credit card. Of course, that meant I had to expense it. To give you some perspective, the expense system at our 5,000-plus person enterprise heavily weights ass-covering over ease of use, meaning that it takes about 30 minutes, 85 clicks, two printouts, an in-person signature from a superior, and a short jog up the stairs to deposit a hard copy in a finance department inbox, regardless of whether you have one receipt or ten. I didn't think much of it the first or second month I paid,
but by month three, I was thinking, boy, there must be a better way. At least let me prepay for a year of service, I thought - and I looked around the site for just such an option. Not finding one, I sent an email to the site admin to ask if I could prepay for a year, or preferably even longer. The reply I got was: "We only bill monthly, sorry." Thinking that perhaps they hadn't considered the reason I might be asking, I replied and explained just how arduous the expense process was at my organization, and suggested that offering a prepayment option might make it more likely for large enterprises to start using their product. The following was the reply I got: "I understand your position, but we are a month-to-month service. Some of the largest companies in the world use Basecamp and gladly pay month-to-month. And the smallest companies in the world love it too." |