Skycaddie subscription........

[USER1999]

I guess we have all been spoilt by the mobile phone market in this country.

Mobiles cost about £300 each, but we get them for nothing if we subscribe to a monthly tariff. Do you know we are the only country in the world to do this. Everywhere else you have to buy a phone, then a tariff.

As I have said before, maybe golfbuddy will be different when it comes out, and I am sure if it takes a slice of the market, then the others will have to rethink their position.

However, from what I have seen, the devices aren't going to be cheap, just no annual subs.

Alternatively, there are course downloads for PDAs, which seem to be what you are advocating, but the downloads are very expensive if you want more than a few.

Guys, a give away product, with course downloads off Itunes for 70p a pop is not going to happen anytime soon.

I don't see it as a rip off. It is business, they are there to generate a profit for their shareholders, not provide a public service.

 

[Herbie]

Bloomin heck Murph, where do you shop? My last Mob phone cost me £60, it takes photos and can link to internet and its on pay as you go and worked successsfully in 10 countries....300 quid???? PAH! What does a 300 quid one do?

 

[HomerJSimpson]

I have no issues with the renewal cost although I do agree that it should be clearer that a the end of the period the courses are lost until payment is made.

In terms of cost I'm happy. I've been to around 20 courses in the last year which I loaded into SC so it works out around £1.50 per course to load. No complaints. It still helps my game so I'll carry on using

 

[Cernunnos]

Its an interesting point about mobile phones. Though you'll often find the higher end mobiles that are worth that bit more, you pay more in line rental if you choose to get the phone free rather than buy it, so essentially you are simply buying it over a longer period of time.

You don't want to know the suposed official list price for my Nokia N95 8GB, but I certainly wouldn't have paid that out right in full. Hence why I went for the higher line rental cost to get it. Though to be honest, there are probably cheaper phones on the market that do more, though not necessarily more than mine.

For instance the camera is suposed to be very high quality. But in odd light conditions it does struggle & the camera facility is not user friendly. Wish I'd simply taken my SLR & put it in the Golf bag.

For GPS like mobiles I do think it should be an either or an or. In which you either pay nothing or a very small sum for the kit, but a subscription, or download fees for groups of courses.

Or, you pay a big hefty wad & get all your courses included or for a very small & I mean small yearly fee.

One thing I think does need to change is the storage capacity on some devices does need to be improved.

For instance if GolfBuddy can store 2000 courses, why on earth can I not have more than 40 on my Sureshot & why does the Skycaddie only store 10 at a time. Seems pointless to me, as clearly these devices should be able to hold hundreds if not easily the 2000 the Golfbuddy does.

& what about Sonocaddie. I assume that holds a lot of courses too.

Really I'dlike the device something like a TOM-TOM where you have everything you need already loaded, but only pay for a full complete update should you require it. Infact to get the full replacement for my England Scotland & Wales replaced by the UK & ireland would only cost £30. Now I objected when I first read this as I'd paid a lot of money for the device, but now after knowing a skycaddie wants to fleace people £29-95 per year to only store upto 10 courses at a time. So £30 once in a blue moon to update to better maps for my Tom Tom seems cheap. Especially as you can now pick up Tom Tom devices for next to nothing in comparison to what they used to cost.

 

[SammmeBee]

Bloomin heck Murph, where do you shop? My last Mob phone cost me £60, it takes photos and can link to internet and its on pay as you go and worked successsfully in 10 countries....300 quid???? PAH! What does a 300 quid one do?

I am assuming you don't top up very often......

 

[Twire]

The subscription was the part I wasn't happy about with skycaddie, that was another reason why I went for the awfull Caddyaid. They I think have this part right, where the once you have the software, you buy each course as and when you need it for £7:50 (pity about the rest)

When I changed to SG5 I tried to look at the subscription in a different way, and that was 75 rounds of golf a year divided by £30 = 40p a game. When people pay £2 for a ball then stuff it into the water, it puts it into context.

 

[Dodger]

Or £3 to £5 for a strokesaver at each course....I reckon over my year I will use it on at least 30 courses so no complaints for me.

 

[Cernunnos]

I still like to have a strokesaver or similar course guide as a momento of playing a course & is handy to see lay of the land especially at certain courses in conjunction with Golf GPS.

I was certainly glad of my GPS on the 2010 & could have done with it on the Monty too. But on both days the course guides were also invaluble.

 

[USER1999]

HNJ, I was trying to say that the price of the phone, if you were to buy it from the manufacturer would be £300. The prices the customer pays are all heavily subsidised by the networks.

I am in manufacturing of some electronic stuff, believe me, you don't get gps, camera, phone, mp3, pda etc in a small footprint package for less than £300.

If you were to buy a Nokia N95 anywhere other than in the UK, you would pay a heck of alot more for it, and because of this, we now have unreasonable expectations for electronic devices.


Cernunnos, would you pay £30 to update all the courses on your gps, every time one course changed? This would cost you a fortune over a year. Surely better to upload them one at a time.

I am interested in Golf buddy, as I said before, which comes with 22,000 courses on it, apparently. But what do they charge to update them, as they must be changeing all the time, so the data base must be forever out of date.

 

[Cernunnos]

Cernunnos, would you pay £30 to update all the courses on your gps, every time one course changed? This would cost you a fortune over a year. Surely better to upload them one at a time.

Hi the point Iwas trying to make is as regards to preloaded software/maps, in that in the example of my TomTom, there are now lots of areas of the UK that have new roads, so having had the unit a fair few years, updating the map for that with all the roads & information stored, with one fell swoop can update everything.

Courses rarely change much

So for instance you buy a preloaded golf GPS you willfind little need to update the complete list more than say every three years. That equates to a tenner for the equivelent of full access... And of course at the same time this would update the list toinclude all the new courses that become available. soin reality this is the best value way & simplest way of going

Do you see what I'm getting at? I certainly don't mean just one course, now that would be silly.

I've had my TomTom over five years now & really its only just starting to get abit of a pain.

Heck I paid a little under £60 to sureshot for three years unlimited access & a full 40 courses at a time on the machine, which is double what I'm essentially suggesting.

If you just wanted an update on a system like that I certainly would expect to pay no more than £1-50 for a simple one course update or addition at the very most.

When you've currently got some Golf GPS systems charging £9-99 per month just to keep things upto date even thirty pounds a year seems cheap.

 

[USER1999]

But the only way to find out that the course had been updated would be to log in, and ask. Otherwise you would turn up, and find it is wrong. By the time you do this, you might as well have downloaded it.

As I said, Golfbuddy may offer what you want, but I am interested to see how it would work.

My course has changed 4 times (major changes) in the 8 years I have been there. The stroke saver is rubbish, as it is very out of date. For anyone with a gps, if the data was more than 4 years old, you might as well not bother. Out of 22,000 courses available, I bet mine isn't the only one which changes regularly.

I still don't see £29 per year as a major issue. When compared to the k's I spend on golf, it is not a significant outlay.

 

[Herbie]

HNJ, I was trying to say that the price of the phone, if you were to buy it from the manufacturer would be £300. The prices the customer pays are all heavily subsidised by the networks.

I am in manufacturing of some electronic stuff, believe me, you don't get gps, camera, phone, mp3, pda etc in a small footprint package for less than £300.

If you were to buy a Nokia N95 anywhere other than in the UK, you would pay a heck of alot more for it, and because of this, we now have unreasonable expectations for electronic devices.


.

Im not sure I agree with your first comment Murph, I dont pay any more for my calls or text messages or sending e-mail than anyone else does on different deals, yet the phone I have now cost me £60, on that basis they will be waiting an awful long time for their £300 quid. The speed at which phones are replaced/updated aligned with the gullability of people wanting the latest thing is more a reason for the high cost and not the actual value. Greed culture is also to blame. You can see these products out as new at your £300 range only to see the same phone a year later at less than half that price, which is one reason my comments are value based and not price based. Its a false economy where some deals are concerned, like the free phone on contract as you can get a new phone every year or two and if you rarely use it the networks dont make an awful lot of money and they dont get the phone back?

People dont have unreasonable expectations because a Nokia N95 costs more in one country than another, people have unreasonable expectations in life. Just look how many people complain about cheap air flights and delays, not amazed that they are sitting in a chair in the air travelling at 500mph, those who moan bitterly that they cannot get on line one day in a 100 or moan that their phone wont work inside joe's lead coated bomb shelter. Similar expectations with business, greedy fast buck mentality, one of the reasons for the current economic climate, something people are slowly forgetting about. The reason network companies make so much money is because of the gullable not the astute and the simple fact that in todays financial climate £300 Phone deals are the norm is more a measure of the gullability of people not the value of the product in such a massive market, one of the biggest markets out there, yet one of the biggest product price tags, now thats not how good fair business should be conducted. Bigger market means greater volume means greater buying power means reduced manufacture costs, yet the cost of the product soars and the cost of network use along with it though in more subtle ways, just greed in my view and not good value.

 

[Cernunnos]

murph how often does your course move a green significantly..? not often I'd imagine. As its surely the green that is the most important change on a course

The fact you go online & log in doesn't mean you'd make changes, simply look formajor changes & I'd doubt for an update search would cost anything significant if the initialoutlay for your Golf GPS is £300+.

Now for the newer TomToms updates are free its simply if you download a completely new map package like I'd need to as my unit is not supported any longer.

I myself willbe intersted in the Golfbuddy & similar units, but happy to wait 3 years for when my subscription runs out.

As you say, Course planners can be shite. And its a good point about updates, whether for course planner or Golf GPS, most of the sureshot maps are dated 2007, some even earlier. Imagine how many courses will have addedbunkers or water. Or even moved things. Moved tee boxes don't matter, as this isn't an issue for golf GPS systems. Seeing as its usually tee boxes that change its generally only course planners that are going to suffer.

£30 a year is nothing to update every year or more to the point have asmany updates as you want in these 12 months.

But getting back to the main issue. By stopping a subscription it is wrong that you loose all the information you have stored just because you stop paying, as you've already paid for the courses stored on the unit.

I don't know about skycaddie, but with my sureshot I can edit the information stored on it, including the downloaded officialmaps & I can even update these additions to the main site if I wish.

My dad has one of the new Tom Tom units & he can actually edit his own maps, alter roads, add speed cameras to the list & even upload these changes to the site, now if you can do this with Golf Buddies & similar then all is good with the world.

 

[Herbie]

Additional questions....What exactly does this kit require doing to in order to compensate for course changes??????

Its main task is to offer measurements, how many courses make such dramatic changes that would require any alteration to programs that would cost so much?

£30 a pop subscription. If a million people have one thats £30million quid they are getting from just a million users, what could possibly justify that kind of money for updates etc when one operator on a key board can do the job during lunch break?

 

[Cernunnos]

Especially as a lot of the GPS companies are going over to Overhead mapping rather than mapping from the ground.

 

[USER1999]

Sky Caddie map from the ground, and that was the OP.

We move a lot of bunkers about, so that is important info (if you use this function).

HNJ, you haven't got a clue. It is impossible to make a mobile phone for £60, even if you made 1000,000 of them. I price this sort of stuff every week in China. The phone companies make a significant loss on hand sets, and the fact they don't get their money back from you just shows how much they are making from others. Try buying your handset in HongKong. My free in the UK Motorola V3 razor was £600 retail in HK with no contract. This is the real world price. I remember pricing it up, as I wanted one, and O2 wouldn't give me one on my £12 per month tarif, but would if I changed to £20 per month. I still couldn't work out how they would make any money, but that was the case.

 

[Cernunnos]

They make money becase calls in reality don't really cost as much as we're charged, therefore the operator can afford to pay a little extra to the phone manufacturer.

The other thing is that all new technology costs more initially, but as the profits from setting up a production line for a design are covered, then the only costs are incidentals like materials & wages, basic running costs for the line. hence why the cost of a £300 phone 12 months later can drop to £120, or even less. Though the phone shop you buy the phone will still have you think that you are getting a £300 phone when infact you are not. You are getting a phone that was artificially inflated by the manufacturer to cover their costs in as little time as possible

Its the same idea with any high end piece of electronice.

Imagine wide screen plasma tellys costing £3k when they first came out. Now you can get better quality ones for £600. Why? well the production line has been set up & only slight changes will have been made to circuit boards, screens etc. By the time amodel has been out for a while running costs of the line effectively reduce further & to run the last of aline out before the new model comes out they can afford to supply virtually at cost to the stores & the store itself may itself reduce profit margines on an old model to make way for the new one.

The main reason for high cost electronics, is that thing mentioned earlier greed. Both from the consumer & the manufacturer, knowing the vanity of the general public. We feel we have to have the bright new model that does very little extra, because its new & slightly different looks, even though the technology under the skin is usually very similar.

Greed & Vanity.

Prices of everything are kept artificially high to make us think we have gotten an exceptionally good deal when in reality manufacturers & in the case of line operators are making money hand over fist no matter how little of our £12 permonth or £20,or even £27 per month actually goes towards the use of the line itself. The operators know for every customer who uses the phone on a contract to its full, there is someone else who will pay £20 a month & make only a couple of calls, maybe a bit of internet & maybe 50 or 100 texts over a month at the very most. On those customers the operator is winning, the phone is essentially paid for quicker, the customer has the one he wanted & everyone is happy. Even if the customer is out of pocket each month.

tbh for what most of us use our phones for we'd all be better on PAYG unless we are a high user & simply stayiing with the phone that does exactly what we want, which brings up vanity & greed once more.

EDIT: BTW I have heard it said (whether this is true or not) that even SkyCaddie has reduced the amount of from the ground mapping it does.

Sureshot used to map from the ground but their site says that although they still do, they have also started to map from above too. Just wishn they'd hurry up & map the courses I need pdq.

 

[Dodger]

Not sure where you heard that from but it is total crap,I can assure you 100% that all courses mapped by Skycaddie are done by a person on the ground.

 

[viscount17]

Cernunnos,
I can't see the advantage of storing huge numbers of courses on a GPS, you can't possibly play that many, and if it's a once only download how do you get updates/new mappings. If you have to connect to a PC to do it then it defeats the object.

Yes, the 10 on SkyCaddie is a bit miserly, but I'd of thought the 40 that you have more than adequate at any one time, probably a years golfing in one load.

 

[Cernunnos]

40 is aproaching sufficient to play all the local ones I'm likely to plus a good proportion of favorites & ones I know I'm going to play through the year. Even then I didn't quite have enough storage to put on all the ones I thought I might need.

But even with 40 courses, there is always that time someone says, do you fancy playing here or there. Or if you are away & see somewhere you suddenly on a whim decide to play. Now unless the unit already has near enough every course in the country Or I might by some miricle have brought along the laptop & there is a signalfor my mobilebroadband to work, then I'd be stuffed.

When you work a 4 day on 4 day off rota, it can sometimesgiveyou some good opertunities to play golf at different places.

If I know in plenty of time what I'm doing, then there is no reason why I can'tdelete a course or two & add a course or two.