Yes, exactly CatSoleil. They do deserve to be paid and the the cats are adorable and their work, including management of the whole business, is very professional.
Back to a discussion of “FOR FREE” since I’ve had morning coffee.
“Tad Carlucci” Wrote:It's obvious that the 1500L$ price has nothing to do with equipment costs, programming costs, support costs, or anything else related to our long-term holding of cats at no income to them. They provide all that as a free service. I point out there are hundreds of thousands, perhaps over a million, cats currently being held are using this free service.
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For all the complaints, I doubt they sell enough kits for it to matter to them. Certainly not enough for it to cause even a blip in their daily cash flows; and not even a blip in the number of our cats they're already servicing FOR FREE.
Your argument comes perilously close to being, “They do all of this stuff for free, so the permapet potion should be free also.” Now, I know you didn’t say that. But you’re on that slippery slope. And I agree with you that the permapet fee is not likely to be important in their income stream.
Part of your implicit argument seems to be that they service the cats for Free, so there’s no cost involved. I think this is incorrect. I think that even though they do not charge us for customer support on a per/ticket basis, customer support represents a substantial operational expense for them. If Kitten Longmeadow is not being paid an hourly wage, she should be. But I think she is.
A lot of the things that you cite as “free” would only come into play as paid things if KittyCats! had gone with a completely different operational model of charging for cats and boxes rather than cat food. You are a sweeter soul than I for being grateful for such things. I figure let’s discuss the operational model that is in place.
I still think my theory that the 1500L price functions to socially engineer the minimum price for a PermaKitty is plausible.
Would I personally like PP potion to be cheaper? Yes! Of course! Who wouldn’t? But I suspect there is a very sound business case for it not being so.
