Price increases during a Pandemic – are you really serious?
I sent the following email to an accounting software group from which we rent their ‘KashFlow’ accounting software. They are part of the Iris Software group. My email is self explanatory, the above table shows how the monthly rental has increased substantially since we started with them in 2015. My email below went to customer support and I copied in 6 of their senior execs on 29 April 2021, I’m yet to receive a response. The execs email addresses on their website were cloaked as Exec1@iris.co.uk and for each of them, they had a different number behind the word exec. Talk about being a number in an organisation!
Dear Kashflow (Iris Software Group), I have been a client of yours since 2015, a very small client I have to add.
I have endured price increases continuously from you and I think it is unacceptable to be increasing prices during a pandemic in the way that you are doing. Over the past 6 years you have increased your prices by 80.07% which is quite frankly obscene, an average of 13.3% annually over the past 6 years, again this is unacceptable.
My turnover has reduced significantly over the past year and in fact has reversed. As a small Ltd. business I have had not one single penny of support during the past year either. So can you give me just one good reason why you think it is acceptable to impose a price increase on your customers?
Your strategy to leverage your existing customer base in this way is quite frankly unbelievable!
The UK inflation rate has been between 0.04 and maximum 2.68% in those 6 years, how can you justify it?
Interesting how the Iris Software Group’s profit for the year-ending April 2019 is an eye-watering £550 million! up from £98 million the previous year. But having said that it’s quite difficult to uncover your accounts, a myriad of around at least a dozen or so of companies all interconnected and now renamed as Perennial Newco2 Ltd? I’m sure it’s all legal.
On behalf of all small businesses that are having to endure your unjustified price increases, please reverse your decision!