About us and this newsletter
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March 2005 •
January 2005 • or
current edition
Keynote article ...
Pricing strategy - simple and fair
I'm proud of our pricing model.
We're able to offer courses at prices that are good for the customer, fair and easy to understand. Pious claim? Maybe, but I prefer to work with and within a scheme that I can stand up and believe in ... but of course, it needs additionally to bring in a fair income.
A part of my "fair and easy to understand" clause is our policy of offering courses at a (low) quoted list price and the offering very few discounts, then only in very specific circumstances. If you send two people on the same course, or book a private course but can't find a week that every member of your team is available then - yes - a lower price for the second person or the team member who comes on the public course is justified and willingly given.
Yes, people do ask for discounts ... but usually they'll book and attend anyway once we've spent a few minutes explaining our policy; they come to appreciate that giving them a lower price would mean that we would have to charge a higher price to the person sitting on the next chair to them and that our business isn't one where "the price you pay is the most we can squeeze out of you".
Occasionally ... very occasionally ... someone backs themself into a corner. "I'll only come if you can offer me a special deal along the lines of xxxx". Sorry, sir/madam; we're not in the business of cheapened discounted courses, and people who want such courses will typically delay their payment to the last possible date too - one memorable case recently strung us along for (err) much longer that I like as "The EU is paying for this training ...." ... and of course in the end that didn't come through. A couple of "there's a cheques in the posts"s and ... finally ... payment when we threatened interest and collection charges would be added.
You'll see no mention of agents / resellers in the text above. That's intentional. We're quite happy for people to make direct or indirect bookings, and for the company that's making the indirect booking to charge their client for their added services. We're also delighted for such an agent / reseller if they're able to combine several of their clients onto a course and save themselves some money ... acting rather like a wholesaler. Where an indirect booking is made, we do take extra steps to ensure that the course booked is the right course for the trainee.
(this article written on 2005-04-29) |
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Public Transport • Training from Well House Consultants • And also ... • Tcl, Tcl/Tk and Expect • Programming in Lua • Python Programming • Well House Manor - Hotel and Training Centre • Apache HTTP and Tomcat Servers • The Perl Programming Language and its use • Ruby and Ruby on Rails • PHP - the language and its application • C and C++ Programming • Linux and Shell Programming • Melksham • SQL and MySQL • For the Webmaster, Postmaster and moderator • Java and the Java Environment • Fun and Flames • Running a training and hotel company • Around, about and nearby to Wiltshire • Client Side Languages (HTML, CSS, Javascript) • Keynote Articles • General Programming Topics
A little more about this newsletter ...
At Well House Consultants, we run niche IT training courses ... and we run a hotel for delegates on those courses and other visitors to Melksham too. And we make a lot of friends - have a lot of ambassadors with whom we want to keep in touch. So every day Graham (that's me, writing this piece) puts together an article or two which might include the latest sample programs that I've written during the current course, new information about
Well House Manor - our business hotel, tips on search engine optimisation,
announcements of upcoming public courses, pictures of local places, and even (on occasions) rants and whimsical pieces to keep those friends up to date and in touch. The feeds are available directlt via the Blog -
"The Horse's Mouth", they're on our
Twitter Feed and you can find me at my
LinkedIn profile.
But most people just want to look us up occasionally - every month or two, and then to catch up on the latest news just for their particular subjects of interest ... and that's what this newsletter is about
You'll find above the titles of ALL the new articles written in the last two months, listed by major subject area, and showing as
(new) with their date of publication. You'll find additional articles in each category too - topping each category up to a minimum of five articles. And you'll find a link at the end of each section which lets you expand that section to show the titles of every article that's been published in that section. After all, "the old ones are often the best ones", aren't they?