Formulator 4

[cato]

Formulator 4...what's the schedule on it coming out?

Cato

[andicap]

Last email I got said April, but no other details.
Said will keep Form 3.0 prices for six weeks and then charge higher prices on sliding scale depending on the deal you sign up.

one card will be 1.75 more but if you sign up for 120 cards, its only 63 cents more than the 3.0 price.

[Marc At DRF]

We're shooting for April 14th. Fingers crossed.

[Marc At DRF]

Did I say April 14th?

I meant April 21st, I swear.

Barring last minute disaster, we light this candle tomorrow afternoon.

[Buddha]

marc, i see that the downloads are now available. when and where will the program be available?

[Marc At DRF]

Softwafe now available.

try http://www.drf.com/formulator

"Barring last minute disaster"

BTW, that, of course, happened yesterday. 4 months of beta testing without a serious, program crashing bug, but yesterday, moments before launch, bug was introduced. Ugh. Took all day to squash it.

[andicap]

W/FORMULATOR 4.0
Single Card $3.75
Daily Plan - 3 cards $5.00
Monthly 10 cards $27.95
Monthly 20 cards $44.95
Monthly 60 cards $89.95
Monthly Unlimited $149.95
Quarterly 30 cards $74.95
Quarterly 60 cards $119.95
Quarterly 180 cards $209.95
Quarterly Unlimited $349.95
Annual 120 cards $265.95
Annual 240 cards $399.95
Annual 720 cards $749.95
Annual Unlimited $999.95

I understand all about volume pricing, but why -- unless I'm totally misunderstanding the structure -- is it so much more expensive to take the monthly 10 card and 20 card plan than the daily 3 card plan?
I see $1.67/card for the 3-card plan
$2.79/card cents for the monthly 10-cards
$2.25/card for the monthly 20-card
the monthly 60-card is $1.50 so I presume you are pushing people to the 60/unlimited card plans. Same thing on the quarterly and the annual side where the annual 120 cards is $2.20+ a card, quite a bit more than the daily card.

Or you can look it the other way and see where you're giving the daily card player a break because most people are only playing one card at $.3.75 a card so you give him a HUGE incentive to upgrade to the $5 plan. Better value for the buyer and more revenue for the DRF.

Did I just answer my own question?

[Marc At DRF]

Andicap,

The pricing structure for Formulator "basic" files and Formulator 4.0 are essentially the same. F4 files are about 50% (with a few small exceptions) more expensive across the board with discounting only at the highest levels-- then there is significant discounting. Annual unlimited plan is only 25% more expensive with F4, for example. But my point is the structure is the same so any problem you have with f4 is the same as any problem as you'd have with our basic pricing.

Our pricing, in general, is considerably more complicated than the online competition because none of them have a print product. We're efforting to achieve a bunch of different goals with our online pricing--

In the case of our 3 track or single card editions, we are mimicking our print edition costs.

In the case of our 10 or 20 card plans (and longer term plans with small-card commitments, such as the 120 card annual), we've made them available because customers strongly wanted the flexibility they offer, but since the $ commitment is not that much, we're uncomfortable with pricing it too cheaply, because of cannibalization concerns. This is frankly a long story that I don't feel like getting into here.

Longer term plans for higher volume? We discount and make it much more price-friendly for the customer because we believe it is "healthy" cannibalization for us.

I'm not contributing to this thread if it continues, sorry. I've explained these issues here in the past and, quite honestly, it's kinda impossible to keep everyone happy. It's just a different business model that our online competition's-- my job would be a lot easier if it wasn't.

[LOU M.]

Installed it several times but it keeps telling me it can't find adobe acrobat. When I click on the icon it tries to start and then tells me millenium has caused an error and wiil now close. I have adobe 5 on my pc and i'm running ME. 3.01 worked fine.

[aaron]

I also cannot run it on millenium.I was one of the testers and told them it wasn't running on millenium,but I guess they never fixed it. I thought that would have been corrected on the official released version.

[Tom]

Andy,
I agree strange pricing. No matter what the plan. I don't like the cost, so I probably will pass. What with all the documented DRF PP errors and ommssions this past year right here on this board, how much faith can one have in their data's accurracy?
Maybe a one day card here and there, but certainly this is not my cup of tea. After having had access to HDW data, I can't justify the cost to step backwards in terms of data quality and reliability.

[andicap]

Tom,
I'll probably give it a spin during the trial period. I don't think the DRF info is THAT bad, certainly is better than BRIS (but I agree about HDW being state-of-the-art).

Money might be a problem for me now, but I like what I hear about the trainer patterns and charts.

What's really interesting about this is if more and more high-flying bettors check this out for the trainer info, etc., how might this affect the odds, if at all? Will trainer angles get bet harder in the future if the info is easier to get?

If that is so, would that help pace players who bet against strong trainer angles?
If an obvious strong trainer angle is NOT played, will that become a bad sign, much like when an obvious strong Beyer is not bet?

Or will a small minority of people use this trainer tool, making up a tiny fraction of the betting pool?

[Marc At DRF]

You guys--
Please keep in mind re: costs-- the costs are no higher right now. They won't be any higher until after the Belmont Stakes. If you're gonna find out if it is worth the $, now is the time to do so.

[Tom]

Good point, Andy...
I am a pace player and hopefully this new emphasis on trainers will bump up my prices a bit.
My only hope is that the new enhanced DRF pricing will not cause many of these guys to go broke and dro out of the pools.

[andicap]

The price is the same as the newsstand (although I will likely incur higher printing costs as a result if I do this -- I wonder if it would just be more cost effective to go to printer that uses the toner rather thanthe inkjets wince the toners get more paper per penny than the inkjets.)