Last weekend, DDO had a pretty major sale going. All adventure packs were 30% off, and the $50 Turbine Point package was awarding 6,900 points instead of the usual 5,000 points (138 points/dollar instead of 100). This week, things are back to normal, which may translate into far less money spent in the store this week.
The Impact of a Sale
For a practical example, look at the Ruins of Threnal Adventure Pack. This pack has a list price of 550 Turbine Points, which is $5.50 at the standard exchange rate. The 30% sale discounted it to 385 TP, which, at the sale exchange rate, works out to $2.89. In other words, the two sales stacked for a discount of a whopping 47.5%. This was a major incentive to buy (and, perhaps as importantly, spend) points, and I'm guessing that they did indeed do a lot of business last weekend.
The problem is that, where I would have paid $3 for this pack, I was not willing to put $47 - three months sub to the MMO of my choice - on deposit with Turbine simply to secure the exchange rate deal. Buying Turbine points in any quantity smaller than $50 is a much worse deal (in addition to not getting the bonus sale points), and this particular pack was more of a want than a need, so I decided to pass. Now, with the sale over and the pack costing twice as much, I'm even less likely to bite.
The Inflexible Sale
Sales are a powerful tool - I literally went from never having played DDO to buying $50 worth of points when the 6900 point deal was offered back in March. The problem is that the sale price affects the perception of the regular price. Worse, having such a large difference (38%) between sale and regular exchange rates makes just about any other sale Turbine could come up with moot; I'm not going to leave 1900 points on the table by purchasing $50 worth of points when there isn't a sale on, just to save a few hundred points in discounts on some adventure packs.
In the end, the content I bought with the points I had banked will last me for a while yet, but I will probably end up scaling back my DDO time (and therefore any possibility of making DDO purchases) until the next time a sale happens when a $50 purchase fits in my budget. (Given the history of LOTRO promotions, I'm not too worried about the wait.)
I'm okay with that for the most part, as I'd never really planned to have DDO be my primary full-time game anyway. Turbine might be less okay with that, if they are under pressure to produce regular monthly income. In this particular case, the inflexible nature of their heavily sale-incentivized payment model has literally cost them a purchase.
I guess they believe these kinds of promotions train players to spend more liberally in the short-medium term, and that this will ultimately be worth more than the amount of money they lose from players who actually care about sticking within a budget. In the long term, this type of attitude plays a big part in why non-item-shop players get the impression that item shop games are out to soak them for all that they're worth. Perhaps Turbine may not feel that they have the luxury of worrying about that right now, but it could come back to bite them later.
Church Vans
I posted this story over at HolyCoast.com, but it reminded me of many of the things about church vans that can become an insurance nightmare.
A terrible story out of Kentucky:
In one case I remember a youth pastor was driving a group of kids at night somewhere in the desert and decided to try and switch drivers without stopping. In the process they lost control of the van and rolled over. A girl from the church was killed and I think the company ended up paying over $250,000.
In another case a church preparing for a long trip took their van to a local tire shop. The shop said three of the four tires needed to be changed, but the other one was okay. Somewhere in New Mexico that other tire blew out causing the van to roll. One person was left with terrible permanent disabilities. The jury found the tire store faultless and held the church 100% responsible to the tune of $10 million. The church only had $5 million in insurance and ended up having to sell their property and almost everything they had to pay the judgment.
If your church has a van, especially a 15 passenger, you have to be very careful how those are operated. Too many times I've read stories where a group loaded all kinds of heavy stuff on the roof plus a full load of passengers and then had an incident where the vehicle got out of control. When you load the roof you raise the center of gravity and move it towards the rear of the vehicle, and that makes the front end a little goosey and makes a loss of control much more likely. For awhile there some church insurers wouldn't even insure 15 passenger vans.
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State police say the death toll has risen to 11 in a fiery crash between a tractor-trailer and a church van on northbound Interstate 65 in south-central Kentucky.When I was in the church insurance business several of the top losses in the history of the company had involved church vans. It doesn't appear to be the case in this accident, but it was often the driver's inexperience with that type of vehicle that led to the crash.
State police Trooper Charles Swiney says two children survived the crash.
A pastor for the family in the van says they were Mennonites from Kentucky on their way to a wedding in Iowa. Authorities say the truck driver was also killed.
Officials say the tractor-trailer crossed the median and struck the van head-on around 5:30 a.m. CDT near Munfordville.
In one case I remember a youth pastor was driving a group of kids at night somewhere in the desert and decided to try and switch drivers without stopping. In the process they lost control of the van and rolled over. A girl from the church was killed and I think the company ended up paying over $250,000.
In another case a church preparing for a long trip took their van to a local tire shop. The shop said three of the four tires needed to be changed, but the other one was okay. Somewhere in New Mexico that other tire blew out causing the van to roll. One person was left with terrible permanent disabilities. The jury found the tire store faultless and held the church 100% responsible to the tune of $10 million. The church only had $5 million in insurance and ended up having to sell their property and almost everything they had to pay the judgment.
If your church has a van, especially a 15 passenger, you have to be very careful how those are operated. Too many times I've read stories where a group loaded all kinds of heavy stuff on the roof plus a full load of passengers and then had an incident where the vehicle got out of control. When you load the roof you raise the center of gravity and move it towards the rear of the vehicle, and that makes the front end a little goosey and makes a loss of control much more likely. For awhile there some church insurers wouldn't even insure 15 passenger vans.
Some states, like California, require a Class B Commercial license to operate any church vehicle with 10 or more seats, though many churches don't follow that law unless their insurer makes them or the CHP stops them. That's probably a good idea since going from a passenger car to a large van is not as easy a transition as you might think.
1 Day, 4 Appointments, 333 Miles
As an agent my appointments were either set by me directly, usually for new business calls, and by my office for renewal meetings. We kept a common calendar so both of us could see what was scheduled and try to maximize our efficiency. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't.
One day I was scheduled in the Rancho Bernardo area in the northernmost part of the city of San Diego at 10am and in San Ysidro, the southernmost part of the city at 11:30. My appointment would take at least an hour and the scheduler didn't realize that even though both churches had San Diego addresses they were 40 miles apart. I didn't make it to the second appointment on time.
I'll never forget one particular day because it was probably the longest day I ever had on the road.
I started the day by leaving home about 8am for a 9am renewal meeting in Vista. First leg was a relatively short 46 miles. I departed Vista around 10 for the second leg, an 83 mile drive to Borrego Springs for a new business appointment at noon. Borrego Springs is out in the middle of the desert and it's not all highway driving. The last leg into town is a winding mountain road that descends into the valley where the town is located. I made it on time, but didn't have much of a cushion.
I spent another hour there before heading out on the third leg - 31 miles back through the desert and up the winding Hwy 78 mountain road to a camp in Julian. Got there in time to grab some lunch before the 3pm meeting. Much prettier country than Borrego Springs, but camp renewal meetings always involve a lot more work.
And the day wasn't done. After a 90 minute meeting it was time to head for the fourth leg - 46 miles to Campo, right on the Mexican border where I had a 7:30 pm meeting with a church board. For the record, there's almost no place to go in Campo for dinner. No fast food places, no restaurants that I could find...nothing.
My meeting with the church board only took about 30 minutes (I wasn't the only agenda item) and I was finally free to start the final leg - 126 miles back home. I think I got there a little after 10pm.
It looked like a great adventure when I first planned the trip, but by the time I got home I resolved never to try that again.
The Poison Chicken
During my early training I spent a Friday doing new business and renewal appointments with one of the senior people from the office. We had been out on appointments all morning and into the afternoon and were getting hungry. The area we were in didn't have much in the way of fast food, but we managed to find a Church's Chicken store. The senior guy decided to hit the drive-through.
Now I expected that he'd order a chicken sandwich or something relatively portable that we could eat easily in the car, but to my shock, he order a full-on bucket dinner, including two or three sides. We had enough food to feed a who car full of people. He also expected us to eat it in the car, which really complicated matters. There was just no easy way to do it, but he drove with one greasy hand on the wheel and a piece of chicken in the other.
It was hardly the best fried chicken I've ever had, and at one point he commented that the piece he'd just eaten "tasted funny". More about that later.
Our next appointment was a new business meeting with a start-up church. We were going to meet the pastor at his apartment. We still had a car load of chicken and fixin's and the senior guy decided to give the rest of it to the pastor for his family to finish. It seemed like a nice gesture at the time.
We headed home for the weekend, and on Monday the senior guy told me he'd been sick with food poisoning all weekend. That "funny tasting" chicken had been rotten. Fortunately, I didn't have any problem, but I couldn't help but wonder what we did to that nice pastor and his family.
Related Tags: Church Insurance, Church Mutual Insurance, GuideOne Insurance, Brotherhood Insurance, Philadelphia Insurance, Church Mutual, GuideOne, Insurance For Religious Organizations, Insurance For Churches, Church Insurance Programs, Church Insurance Agent
Now I expected that he'd order a chicken sandwich or something relatively portable that we could eat easily in the car, but to my shock, he order a full-on bucket dinner, including two or three sides. We had enough food to feed a who car full of people. He also expected us to eat it in the car, which really complicated matters. There was just no easy way to do it, but he drove with one greasy hand on the wheel and a piece of chicken in the other.
It was hardly the best fried chicken I've ever had, and at one point he commented that the piece he'd just eaten "tasted funny". More about that later.
Our next appointment was a new business meeting with a start-up church. We were going to meet the pastor at his apartment. We still had a car load of chicken and fixin's and the senior guy decided to give the rest of it to the pastor for his family to finish. It seemed like a nice gesture at the time.
We headed home for the weekend, and on Monday the senior guy told me he'd been sick with food poisoning all weekend. That "funny tasting" chicken had been rotten. Fortunately, I didn't have any problem, but I couldn't help but wonder what we did to that nice pastor and his family.
Related Tags: Church Insurance, Church Mutual Insurance, GuideOne Insurance, Brotherhood Insurance, Philadelphia Insurance, Church Mutual, GuideOne, Insurance For Religious Organizations, Insurance For Churches, Church Insurance Programs, Church Insurance Agent
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