On July 20, 2021 at 19:45, Johnny Canuck said...
I'm going to put a different spin on this. URC at one time built itself by competing in the same space as Harmony (pre-Logitech, early Logitech days), Philips Pronto, and similar DIY, often PC programmable, universal remotes. They continued to do so through the development, marketing, and release of remotes that were part of the Complete Control lineup (MX-880, MX-980, MX-1000/3000/5000/6000 to name a few). They willingly sold these remotes to retailers who would sell them to end-users (remember BlueDo and Surf Remote for example?).
While originally supported through their own individual editors, URC subsequently transitioned the programming for all these devices from MX-Editor to CCP. It was after this point that they then changed the terms of their licensing to offload the distribution of their software to dealers.
As a dealer, you might have a legitimate gripe, but as a consumer who has owned (at various times) most of the remotes above, URC already pulled a bait and switch on us once but wiggled out of it by saying that their dealers were able to distribute the software (as both BlueDo and Surf did).
They were always in the clear on TC and MX-Home. They never directly encouraged the sale of those products to end users and never positioned the line as a DIY product. They did do that with CC and then changed their minds when it became more profitable for them to do so. That time, they essentially shifted support from URC to dealers (I didn't care, I've never needed support) but continued to allow authorized resellers to sell hardware and package it with the software. What they did this time is malicious. They secretly and without warning disabled their software meaning that the very same MX-980 that I bought from Mike at Surf years ago that is still working fine at a friend's place can no longer be edited to support the new AppleTV he may have just bought. That's a degree of high-handed and arrogant bad faith that trumps anything they've done before.
I'm not disagreeing with any of that. What I am saying is they have put dealers in a terrible position for years by doing what you mentioned. Never should a dealer have been put in the position. A end user just sees "dealer is a crook that wants to sell me services at some crazy price". The reality is that no dealer is going to take on the support aspect that URC claimed would fall on them if they choose to distribute the software, which URC themselves directly told end users that a dealer could do. They basically failed to inform them the dealer would then have to support that end user with any software related issues. That is total BS.
Now, you may or may not know that TC was, at one point, sold through distribution. Overnight, they decided to pull the line from distribution and only selling to direct dealers, which is how it initially was sold. So dealers that were purchasing through distribution were cutoff from the line they were selling and could not fill orders on jobs they had quoted and taken deposit on. Instead, URC released CCGen2 which was just a fancy control system being that they didn't do any great automation at the time. It lacked all of the audio functions that set TC apart at the time. They then discontinued CCGen2, leaving THOSE dealers in the lurch. URC has a track record of doing this stuff, to both dealers and end users. Its a sad but unfortunate truth, and the list of people left in their wake just keeps on growing.
