@SirSkeedle: Hi. I've no doubt that Ross-Tch will answer, but my understanding from their webpage is that there are ostensibly 2 x upgrade offers;
- The first offering is a physical equipment upgrade that relates to loyal users that have previously purchased a now obsolete/outdated cable. This offering is rare in commerce these days (and it speaks volumes about RT's corporate value-set) and I assume that it is provided as an overt statement of gratitude by the shareholder(s)!
- The second offering is a license upgrade that relates strictly to V2 owners
These separate offerings are what mathematicians call "jointly exhaustive" (meaning that there are no other offers) and they are "mutually exclusive" (meaning in this instance that once a V2 is purchased, users can't mix-and-match between offers)
From your explanation, it appears that you took a market position when you first decided to buy your V2 device. For whatever reason, you concluded that the best option (for you) was to buy a version of V2 with a 3 x VIN restriction. Your obvious advantage from this decision was a saving in purchase price - which you have enjoyed in the interim period.
With time however, your needs have changed and this has resulted in a desire to increase the license-count. Without intending offense, it doesn't seem proper for the seller to be responsible for funding the cost of your changed requirements - particularly given that you had the option of buying a V2 with unlimited VIN as the original purchase and you chose otherwise.
On the second issue of the comparative price for VIN upgrades across the pond, I preface the words below by admitting that I am totally agnostic regarding Gendan's prices (I have never purchased equipment from them) - but I have a keen interest in commercial pricing principles/policies (having devoted a period of my working life to the subject).
It's clearly no coincidence that the cost to upgrade for the 2 x currencies has EXACTLY the same digits!! At a nominal exchange rate of 1 x Pound sterling=$1.4 USD, this means that folk on the wrong side of the pond pay a surcharge of about £47 (or 28%) for each upgrade that is processed using the local agent
Given that a license upgrade is the simple task of shoving an email delivered activation code into the Interface Config utility, this level of surcharge is very interesting - and I would have thought that the surcharge was eminently avoidable in the 21st Century
Now, I'm not naive enough to expect that commercial product pricing will necessarily be cost-based, but perhaps the surcharge reflects Gendan's additional costs as the intermediator between RT and the user (assuming that Gendan receives a reasonable margin for selling the service in the the UK within the $169 USD that RT charges end use customers).
According to the web, the median hourly earnings for full-time employees in the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2020 was about £15. I have no idea how Gendan pays its employees - but using median UK wages, this means that a cost-based surcharge would permit roughly 3 hrs work-effort - again interesting!! Of course, the essential dichotomy with assuming that the surcharge is cost-based is that it's size is determined entirely by the UK/USD exchange rate, which is entirely divorced from movements in the cost of wages!!
Anyhow - my guess is that there is a very clear message in Gendan's pricing; "to those of our customers who are sufficiently informed about the Ross Tech alternative for upgrading VINs, don't use us!! I intend no offense to Gendan in suggesting this message - it's just simple logic!!
Don