Steen have you compared it to other general living expenses, every thing has gone up.
Looking at the percentage, it does look like a big jump, but in actual hard currency its only a few quid more per month.
My insurance increase on one car is substantially more than what Zwift have raised their price.
No, I’m not comparing apples to oranges. I am comparing the price of 2 cycling simulators. I also don’t see why we have different pricing for a digital product across the globe. Developing, delivering and support is the same for all, so why should some pay more than others? It is not like when you walk into a physical store, that they say, hey you are from Denmark you pay this price, or hey you are from Zimbabwe you pay that price.
I have the same car as in 2017, and I would wager that the insurance is more or less the same. I would say less than 1000 DKK more for all our insurances combined. Of course we look at the cost of that regularly (as you should!), and changes company if they got a better offer than the current. Think we have had 3-4 different in the 10 years with this car, and now we are back at the one we had 3 years ago.
Somehow they become less greedy, when you have switched to the competition, and offer you better pricing next time…
I’ll believe it when I see THAT from Strava/Zwift.
But using the cost of insurance is not that suitable, as there are too many variables. The insurance needs changes too much over such a time period. Back then we were focused on getting good insurance benefits for the children (which only very few of them offered) and maybe we paid more for that. Now that they are 16 and 19, that does not apply anymore, which makes it easier to shop around. Change of workplace for me also means only 1/3 of driving (36.000 km -> 12.000 km per year), which also means cheaper insurance. So yes, if EVERYTHING was kept equal, the price hike would be higher, but nothing like 127% thank God!
Yes, it is only a couple of quid extra per month - then multiply that by, lets say 500.000 subscriptions. That is quite a substantial amount of improvement to their cash flow! Netflix, Disney and HBO is also “just a few quid” more per month, but it all adds up.
Looking at wages for the management in high profile companies (and I see Zwift as such in the eCycling business) I see clearly where the money is going. Hint: It is not only going into to developing the next great feature or offering better user support! Also, the management is rarely affected when layoffs are happening, and if so, they often leave with 3 years pay or something similar.
Recently the chairman of a Danish newspaper had to lay off a bunch of people to cut costs. Not long after (days/weeks) he turned 75, and received a cool DKK 2 million as a birthday gift from said newspaper. As he said, he had no problem with that, as it was in his contract. Too bad for him, the press got news of this, and then the governing parties (who partiarly subsidices newspapers) forced him to pay it back.
Another recent case is a Danish billionaire, who was the main shareholder (75%) of a company that caused a landslide, threatening a nearby city and river with toxic waste dirt. Few days into to the still moving landslide, he files for bankruptcy for the company and left the DKK200 million bill for the local tax payers (probably the rest of us too) to pay. To make matters worse, one of his other companies were hired/paid to help move/cleanup the dirt.
Legally he isn’t required to pay the bill for the cleanup, but he could if he wanted to.
Just shows the poor judgment of many people in the management layer. Private Equity managers/investors are no different. Most of the time it is a pump and dump business strategy.
