Sage News and Discussion

Sage official form for customers who merge or change names

Thanks Wayne. This is timely. I have a client that owns Sage 500, Active Planner, and FAS 500. They recently had a corporate name change. Sage told the client that in order for to process the name change, the client would have to provide a copy of new letterhead, a copy of a news release, and a copy of documentation registered with the IRS. Oh, and by the way, they also required a $50 admin fee. The client did get a new FIEN but they are a holding company and didn't do a press release. The client called me and to make a long conversation short, they asked ""Really? All this to register a name change? WTF?

1st and last time sage tried to charge me $50 for a customer name change, I sent them a $8,000 invoice for admin expenses I had incurred with the multiple name changes sage went through (SOA, Sage, Best, Sage) - website, logo'd apparel, literature, stationary, business cards, etc.

And the person that you need to deal with at Sage is largely unresponsive to much of any type of stimulus - email, phone. That $50 fee reminds me of how F9 used to try to screw you when a customer changed computers and you had to call for a new registration key. As if it was the customers fault that F9 had no technology to prevent piracy and required manual interaction.... If F9 (or whoever owns them) was not so difficult to deal with I think I'd still be selling the product. As it is now I avoid it even though it's fairly easy for customers savvy with Excel to pickup and learn.

Our VP of Sales is chasing this. Her response when I told her was that she was embarrassed that Sage would even ask. Saying she was upset is a great understatement. I will let you know how it works out but I don't anticipate any money changing hands!

In part, this is a process that software vendors impose to ensure there is no after-market for selling their software licenses to anyone except the end user licensed customer. I'm not saying it makes sense in any way but I believe that is the reasoning behind this process. The $50 fee is a joke of course.

I get that there needs to be a policy - however Sage needs to be responsive. I've had customers contact Sage - wait weeks with no reply - contact them again and wait some more. Then when I start calling it's the same thing until you start finding the supervisor then suddenly the Sage person who ignored you for weeks awakens - much as Ulma Thurman does in this scene from Pulp Fiction --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOoJoTAXDPk

And I've had customers try to take advantage too -- one customer was doing the processing (and using the MAS license of the other company) in Sales Order for another company. When the other company decided to stop sub-contracting the services and take their license back this customer couldn't understand why Sage wouldn't give them another one...