CoPilot Live | Pocket PC 5 Pricing

Dave

Everyone, below are the SRP's for CoPilot 5. You may find that retailers will discount to get your business, but these are the Suggested prices from ALK.

Suggested Retail Pricing:
(1) CoPilot live - Pocket PC 5 software only (UK) - £134.99 inc VAT
(2) CoPilot live - Pocket PC 5 with Bluetooth GPS & Plug n Play 128mb Quickstart SD (car mount, power charger, etc) - £299.99 inc VAT (down from £374.99)
(3) CoPilot live CF GPS Kit (CF GPS, vent mount, power charger) - £99.99 inc VAT
(4) CoPilot live Jacket GPS Kit (Jacket GPS, vent mount, power charger) - £119.99 inv VAT
(5) CoPilot live Bluetooth GPS Kit (BT GPS, vent mount, power charger with splitter) - £149.99 inc VAT
(6) EU Maps Upgrade - £99.99 inc VAT
(7) USA Maps Upgrade - £99.99 inc VAT

Registered CoPilot 4 customers:
(1) 30-day complimentary 'new version' policy - If you have already purchased a previous version of CoPilot within the past month (month of July) you will be entitled to complimentary new v5 software of the same map license. If you purchased a UK version, accordingly, you'll get free-of-charge v5 UK software. If you purchased an EU version, you'll get free-of-charge v5 EU software. If you purchased the base UK software before the month of July and the EU maps upgrade during July, then you'll be entitled to purchase new v5 software at a discounted price and will receive the v5 EU maps upgrade free-of-charge.

(2) v5 UK software - Registered owners of CoPilot UK Pocket PC products can purchase the new v5 UK software for £99.99 inc VAT. This is a 26% discount off SRP.

(3) v5 EU software - Registered owners of CoPilot EU Pocket PC products can purchase the new v5 EU software for £149.99 inc VAT. This is a 36% discount off SRP.

(4) v5 EU software - Registered owners of CoPilot UK Pocket PC products that want to purchase v5 with EU maps can purchase the new v5 EU software for £174.99 inc VAT. This is a 26% discount off SRP.

WereDude · Occasional Visitor Joined: Mar 10, 2004 Posts: 3

I think ALK should rethink their upgrade policy. I think they should take a look at Tomtom, they give a much better deal:

"TomTom Navigator 2 customers who activated on or after 18 January 2004, receive the upgrade for free, excluding shipping and handling costs. Customers who activated before 18 January 2004 pay €49 to upgrade the software plus any additional maps (such as Maps of Western Europe).
As an extra service, if you own two products (for instance a Benelux and a Maps-Of-Europe product), we will replace both for Euro 49 (and of course, if all your products were activated less than 2 months ago, we‘ll replace them all for free). " this is a direct lift from the tomtom site.

I bought Co-pilot Live 4 months ago and I am starting to think I would have been better of with TTN3.

paulmk

I have CP with all the EU maps and I must say that i have been extremely happy with the product and their customer support. However there is no chance that i will pay £175 to upgrade to V5. If this is going to be CP attitude to customers there is no incentive for me to remain loyal to their product.

As far as i am concerned the maximum i would pay to upgrade my Euro v4 version is £70. At this rate i envisage i will just use the V4 version for another few years and look at the market place to see what is best product on offer then and also consider upgrade policies.

A word of advice to CP it is better to have something than nothing at all and increase market share through customer retention and brand loyalty.

bren · Posted: Fri Jul 30, 2004 1:01 pm Post subject:

I agree with both of the comments above- the upgrade is too expensive.

I've got CP Live 4, UK only which I've just got working properly after several months. My plan was to get the EU maps next, but now they've brought out CP 5, what's the point ? I may as go the full upgrade route, except that it costs so much in comparison to upgrading with other types of software.

For a similar amount of cash to upgrading to CP5, I could get TTN3 or the like, knowing that future upgrades will be much less expensive. Had I taken the cost of upgrade into account when I was choosing navigation soft-ware, I may well have gone elsewhere.

OK CP 5 is probably the market leader for now, but presumably subsequent versions of TTN will overtake it.

For now, I'm going to forego an EU map upgradde and sit tight with CP 4 until the upgrade prices come down or a new alternative comes onto the market.

Hopefully this will be in the lead-up to Christmas.

paulmk · Posted: Fri Jul 30, 2004 11:32 pm Post subject:

I didn't think i would be alone, but it is a shame for those of us that are happy with CP V4 product that Alk are being so greedy with their upgrade pricing in the UK and are basically exploiting us when you compare the pricing policy in the US where their competitor upgrade will only cost you £66 based on current rates of exchange.

Why should we be loyal to brand that is (putting it bluntly) trying to shaft us!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rattle · Posted: Sun Aug 01, 2004 9:16 am Post subject:

I agree that the upgrade pricing is a bit overboard, especially considering that apart from the updated maps and the 3D view there seems to be nothing really new in there. But regarding the US vs UK/EU upgrade cost difference, could it just be possible that the US one costs less because ALK don't have to licence the maps from NavTeq like in Europe?

Dave · Posted: Mon Aug 02, 2004 12:44 pm Post subject:

Rattle, you have hit the nail on the head here. Although there is a large cost in having to geocode data themselves, there can be a cost saving compared with having to re-license maps.

The other thing ALK have tried to do is to make the upgrade price a percentage discount off the original price of the package. People also have to bear in mind that ALK are US based, all development costs are born in the US, having to ship products to the UK does cost more money in terms of currency conversion rate, freight duties, European/UK Customs duties etc.

In most cases there will always be a price difference, but I think the majority of the difference in this case has come from where the data is sourced.

I see people here commenting on the upgrade price in comparison to TomTom's upgrade price, and if you all look around, TomTom's upgrade price isn't the norm in the GPS industry, in-fact TomTom are the outcast in offering a low low price. TomTom do still have (I believe) a greater market share in the PDA GPS product range and when you have a lot more people upgrading you can offset some of these costs by dropping the overall upgrade cost.

jdw7 · Posted: Mon Aug 02, 2004 4:14 pm Post subject:

CoPilot lost me as a customer when they wanted > £100 to upgrade from 3.5 (which was a bug ridden beta test effort at best) to CP4. It seems they've not learned any lessons but since GPS is still the territory of early adopters it won't really hurt them.

As the market matures they will learn about goodwill and brand loyalty - or they'll go under.

drummer · Posted: Fri Aug 06, 2004 4:43 pm Post subject:

Does anyone know how to apply for the upgrade from version 4 to 5. I have looked on the alk website but cannot see anything about upgrades.

jbb · Occasional Visitor Joined: Aug 07, 2004 Posts: 1

Indeed. I bought mine in the middle of june and although I'm happy with version 4 I'm not at all impressed that I'll have to pay £100 to get new maps and a few minor updates.

If it had been maybe £50-60 I might have considered it but not at that price.
And when I do come to upgrade I'll be much more likely to consider a different product instead.

WereDude · Occasional Visitor Joined: Mar 10, 2004 Posts: 3

Whilst I take Daves point that ALK may have additional costs with importing the software into the UK and licencing of map data to explain why there is a difference in the US and UK upgrade costs. I still think £99 is too high to justify the upgrade. Tomtom may have a larger user base which enables them to absorb the cost but don't they still have the cost of licensing the maps too? In my opinion all this upgrade offer is going to do is make Tomtoms market share larger. In my case I will continue with CP4 for the next year then switch to TTN4 when it comes out and enjoy cheaper upgrades in the future.

CrashBiker · Posted: Mon Aug 09, 2004 8:02 pm Post subject:

To be fair we should consider value as well as cost.

For instance, it could be that Navteq charge ALK for Maps more than TeleAtlas charge TomTom. It may even be that is why TomTom chose TeleAtlas over Navteq. On the other hand Navteq data seems to be generally regarded as worth more than TeleAtlas and for me the value of the extra £40 in having more accurate maps and being able to drive on the M6 Toll without family taking the michael is probably worth it.

I chose CPL4 on an iPAQ over an Audi nav system at £2300 (I think) and the Audi system could only route to intersections if I remember. In that context prices at this level are a bargain and the marginal additional cost of CPL over TT is unlikely to sway me from picking the system that does the job best - and so far for me that looks like CPL5.

I might have to think extra hard if Navigon in its RoadRama guise offers M6 Toll + Traffic but I understand so far that even though Navigon has the M6Toll on the map it can't route on it.

Even so, I also really like the spoken Street names of CPL, took a while to tune in my ear but now I understand it fine. Same happened with Trafficmaster freeway (still in use and also a God send).

About the only thing that really disappoints me on CPL4 is non display of POI's on a moving map and very poor POI alerting. If CPL5 fixes either/both I'll be a happy man.

Cheers

Crash

TheGoodMan · Posted: Thu Aug 19, 2004 6:31 pm Post subject:

The upgrade price should have been created in a group bases:
For example:
Purchase date less than a month: Free
One to two months discount of 50%
Three to six months discount of 25%
More than six months but less than a year: 15%

I think the group pricing would have been fair to everyone as it is based on number of months product used.

It is wrong to compare the price difference between TT3 and CP5 as the CP5 is much better product with fewer bugs and the least map errors. You will only need to refer
to Forum for TomTom and Places Not in Database.

SpeedCam · Posted: Tue Aug 24, 2004 10:36 pm Post subject:

The price comparison with TomTom is not unfair, Navigon also offer a full European upgrade for £66 and have similar overheads to CoPilot.

Upgrade Costs:

TomTom V3 (UK Only) £33
Navigon (Europe) £66
CoPilot (US Only) £66
CoPilot (UK Only) £100

I think once people start to use the product we'll hear if it is as good as we have been told and then we can decide if it is worth upgrading. What I'd like to know is the Traffic addon costs before comitting to the upgrade. There may not be an annual fee but the purchase cost could £200 ?

ohm62 · Occasional Visitor Joined: Oct 27, 2004 Posts: 19

This is not specific to the UK!

The Copilot pricing in the US, for base package and upgrades, is also outrageous compared to the closest competitors on that territory.

Competitors have similar costs, as noted earlier in this thread, so there is no other reason than pure arrogance from TravRoute/ALK to maintain such a high profit margin in their pricing, while other vendors are catching up fast, on a budget! They are so damn proud of their product than they blindly demand extravagant revenue from it. Well, competition is indeed catching up in both functionality and stability of their products, some using the same map base, differing only on POI data and routing algorithms. This will most certainly turn the market around, if ALK persists in its nonsense pricing policy. TomTom & co., and the nonetheless greedy Microsoft will eat them alive, and I won't shed a tear, even though I am not really a big Microsoft fan, and once was a true admiror of early TravRoute solutions...

When their traditional customers will have suffered enough from getting the worst support level of the bunch, the least consideration and empathy, and their faithfulness to the once leading Copilot solution will finally be eroded to ground level, ALK will have to learn humbleness and to come up with a better attitude, better pricing and most importantly better service policies.

-- OHM

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