I’m a proud owner of a Hengedock — a wonderfully simple docking station for Mac laptops. Hengedocks lets the laptop stand sidewise while on your desktop and easily connect (and disconnect) from a bevy of devices, such a large full screen monitor, external hard drive, USB ports, wired internet connection, sound connections, iPod charger, etc. It also helpfully organizes the wires and cables involved the process.
Takes 2 seconds to drop my laptop into the Hengedock when I want to go “full desktop”, and 2 seconds to easily pull the laptop out when I’m rushing out the door.
I love my Hengedock. Apparently, so do a lot of Mac owners as the new second-gen Hengedock has been recently released. What I don’t love is the company’s new policy on upgrades for early adopters.
My understanding from their recent email to me, is that they are offering a full replacement to anyone who bought the first-gen product in the last 30 days. So far, so good. In fact, so far so unexpectedly nice. Though, you do need to send it back before they send you the new one.
But if you were a super early adopter (like me!), you only get a 50% discount towards a new Hengedock. Wait, you’re going to offer the guy who just bought one in October a full replacement, but you’re going to offer me — who bought the product when no one knew or cared about www.hengedocks.com — less of a discount?
It’s funny in some ways because their email seems to acknowledge this issue of Early Adopter Syndrome:
Has the news of our second generation docks got you feeling a bit of early adopter remorse? We know that feeling all too well, so we’re offering free upgrades and credits toward a new docking station to our existing customers
So they get the problem — but what they clearly don’t get is the solution. Why are companies so wacky about things like this and think their customers are trying to rip them off? It actually hurts the good will I feel towards the product and the company by penalizing me for having bought the dock when it first came out. How can that possibly be good, for me or for the Company? This is a product, not a software license. They’re not going to do anything different with the “fresh” piece of plastic that gets returned to them from the other guy than they would do for the “stale” piece of plastic I have.
Now if this were THIRD generation and Hengedocks.com were making me an offer to replace my first-gen item at a discount that would feel quite different — because something happened in between (the second gen product). But the item a fellow bought 30 days ago is literally the same thing I bought 6 months ago **when I helped you build your company and your brand**.
The other fellow did nothing of the sort, probably learned about it from other early adopters like me who raved at its nice design and utility. I call that “sweat marketing”. I was the one who took a chance and the one who should be treated better, as a “founder”-customer, than Johnny-come-lately who saw an ad for the product paid for by the money I spent with you not so long ago.
At least, that’s how it feels on this end. Just when I was really grooving on my hengedock, I’m starting to feel a bit … unhenged.