Wintotal's shamelessself-promotion!

[liznindy]

That sounds reasonable....My only argument is the "slipping in" of a Mercury advertisement in your automated edi system (which I love!!). Of course, it could be that your update explanations (sent with the updates) may have mentioned that this "feature" would be in place. I don't know how many Mercury ads I sent with my recent edi reports before I found the check box :?

I have to admit I don't always read the statements which come with the updates

I will look over the Mercury info soon and promise to keep an open mind.

 

[George W Dodd]

George, how are are an AMC? What portion of your fee are we taking?

Dave Biggers
CEO
a la mode, inc.

Dave,

The profit motive is the only reason to do anything in business. If a la mode, inc. is not looking to generate revenue though mercury then why do it? Sure it's free now, but will that always be the case? Someone has to pay for all the man-hours and overhead so either appraisers will foot the bill or our clients will.

I don't have a problem with a la mode expanding its product/services and if being the middleman in the order/delievery process is appealing to you then that's fine. But every AMC out there has started out with the promise that they are going to help the appraiser increase their buisness, have an eaiser time receiving new requests and providing speedy delievery of appraisal reports. And every time someone has gotten between the client and the appraiser, the appraiser has lost.

There is nothing personal in my comments and intelligent people can disagree. I'm sure that your company's motives are honest and only time will show which argument is accurate.

BTW any status on pocket genie? It sure would be a great feature to be able to create a customed inspection checklist in pocket total while doing inspections.

George W. Dodd, SRA
Appraise-Virginia

 

[dbiggers]

I said above that of course we want to turn a profit (someone had said that we were just trying to make more money as though that was a bad thing). Absolutely, we love profit. We make money however by selling software to appraisers. Taking a part of the appraisal fee, like an AMC, would leave less money for appraisers to spend on software. Since the software is my profit, I don't want to ruin that by becoming an AMC.

What AMC out there makes its money by making sure appraisers have more to spend? None. So of course they have no incentive for appraisers to do well. The problem is that lenders are looking for ways to streamline the process. They will move toward AMC's, AVM's, and transaction platforms. Only one transaction platform -- Mercury -- is built on the premise of not charging the appraisers a fee, because it's the only one owned by a company whose increase in profit is tied to appraisers' increasing profits.

Bottom line, appraisers must help lenders move toward a platform that's appraiser-centric, rather than sitting idly by while lenders move toward whatever platform happens to be pushed on them by someone else -- someone without appraisers' interests at heart.

Intelligent people can of course disagree. But lenders are moving this direction every day, and there's not a lot of time to sit on the sidelines and debate. We dove in to help save this profession and -- yes -- to make sure that we can continue to make money serving this industry.

Pocket Genie should be out of beta already from what I've seen -- I'll see what the scoop is (I've been out for about six weeks straight dealing with some family business, so I apologize for not knowing offhand).

Dave Biggers
CEO
a la mode, inc.

 

[Tony in Ohio]

Dave,

Thanks for your thoughtful replies and your good software. Sorry if my prior post seemed harsh but I think you misjudged this one a tad. I think there are many better ways you could handle your marketing than by slipping spam into our reports. I am a professional and try to act like one and I feel that blatant advertising on my emails is unprofessional.

Since most of my reports go through your servers, I am sure you have, or could easily create, the world’s largest lender database and direct market to them. Piggybacking you’re Ad on my email gives my clients the impression that I endorse your product, and I can only assume that was intentional, thus my earlier anger.

I wish you success in your new venture and I appreciate the good product you put out, but please do not assume that I want your spam on my professional correspondences.

 

[Stone]

Dave - I think this is a good lesson for alamode and all other vendors. For many appraisers, 99% of their contact with their clients is through their reports. If a third party, in this case the software vendor, adds their own message it is a violation, pure and simple. It doesn't matter if it is for benevolent reasons, or not. Imposing your message on someone's livelyhood is just plain wrong. I use and like Wintotal, but find it completely unacceptable that a company to whom I am paying a fair chunk of money would use my product, in any way including advertising, without asking me first.

Think of it this way, if I somehow managed to put an add for my company in your software without your consent, would it matter if I claimed that I was simply trying to show other appraisers that I like your software? I doubt it.

All that said, I doubt this was done to harm anyone, and I am glad that you post answers to fairly tough questions on this forum. Please continue to post here, and I hope all is well with your family.

Michael

 

[dbiggers]

You know what -- you guys are right. Appraisers don't advertise, and that's 90% of their problem in competing with the threats facing them. The threats do advertise. They do get in front of lenders. They do try everything possible to make them believe that appraisers aren't necessary any more. (I'd suggest subscribing to the four top mortgage origination magazines -- you may be shocked at what's being said about appraisers in ads, in articles, etc. It may change your sense of urgency.)

That's probably why our beta testers (about 200 appraisers) evaluated this Mercury advertising feature for weeks and didn't make any negative comments. Odds are they're aware of the threats because they talk to us and look outside the appraisal profession alone. That's a lesson for the future for us -- they're not reflective of the average appraiser. They tend to be more aggressive and supportive of features like this.

We'll pull the footer feature and take you out of the loop on Mercury marketing. But, please read my previous post about the risk of doing that. If I bring a lender online with Mercury directly instead of you doing it, it will protect appraisers overall and stave off the AMC/AVM threat, but it won't protect you personally if that client is yours. That client won't necessarily add you to their short list on their own. If you set it up for them, you can be on their short list before they even see the Mercury site.

But, as I said, we'll pull the blurb feature (we'll turn it off by default). I just hope you'll back me up as having listened to you when appraisers complain that we've bypassed them individually, because that's what will happen.

Dave Biggers
CEO
a la mode, inc.

Dave,

Thanks for your thoughtful replies and your good software. Sorry if my prior post seemed harsh but I think you misjudged this one a tad. I think there are many better ways you could handle your marketing than by slipping spam into our reports. I am a professional and try to act like one and I feel that blatant advertising on my emails is unprofessional.

Since most of my reports go through your servers, I am sure you have, or could easily create, the world’s largest lender database and direct market to them. Piggybacking you’re Ad on my email gives my clients the impression that I endorse your product, and I can only assume that was intentional, thus my earlier anger.

I wish you success in your new venture and I appreciate the good product you put out, but please do not assume that I want your spam on my professional correspondences.

 

[Willie]

DBiggers said "I'd suggest subscribing to the four top mortgage origination magazines -- you may be shocked at what's being said about appraisers in ads, in articles, etc. It may change your sense of urgency."

So which magazines are these? Also, what are they saying DBiggers? I want to know. This is interesting. I see your point about the state we are in and you sure seem to at least think about us appraisers before moving your company forward, but I also see the individual posters point about your adds piggybacking. Interesting.

 

[Tony Lehn]

Dave B.,

You have taken quite a lashing here!! I just stumbled across this thread, and WOW!!

All in all, a la mode puts out excellent software. I'm extremely happy with your product, especially after seeing some of your competition. You have made putting a report together easy.

I agree with you on this. All the appraisers needed to do was to actually read the update information as they updated, and they would have known what was going to happen. Thank you for giving us an out, so we sould not have to send out the mercury advertisment. At this point, I'm not on it, and don't want to send out the ad. When I'm ready to sign on, I will.

Also, you know what they say, good publicity or bad publicity, you are still getting publicity. I know you probably did not intend to cause such a stir, but you are getting the chance to explain your product, over, and over, and over (how many times have told us it was free, and you still have people complaining about paying?).

You are also right about the advertising thing. Other threads on the forum are finally talking about making the public aware of what we, as appraisers do. This is an excellent start. IMHO, most appraisers become appraisers, then find they have to run a business as well. To their detrement, most only focus on the appraising, and forget about the business aspects. Now a days, just having a license isn't going to cut it. As an industry, we need to make our selves known, through intenional encounters, or we will be as many are predicting, a dead industry.

Thank you a la mode, for your support.

 

[Larry Lyke]

The part of the conversation that isn't getting much play is the fact that a la mode was/is selling both sides of the aisle.

It's a page out of the Bill Gates play book. We talked about this a long time ago.

The average Appraiser doesn't want to send his client information that sends that client crashing headlong into a roster of waiting appraisers who are nicely arrayed in a row so the lender can sample their wares. It would make it difficult for the appraiser who is cultivating a client to gain any headway.

Platitudes of why a certain software's ease of use is good for the industry is a minor point. A la mode has been marketed the way Bill Gates launched his product improvements:

'You get a half decent product, put it on the market, then broadcast each coming improvement as loud and far in advance as possible to keep your competition from gaining a foothold or raising venture capital.'

All in all a la mode's software is average in use and has a very long learning curve. I bitched from the beginning of what a poor presentation product a la mode is, but I didn't gain much sympathy. That garbage at the bottom of every page where my name should be must be very confusing to the lenders. Plus I wanted bold title capability in the bottom right hand corner so the underwriter can fumble through the pages without having to look up under the eaves to see the title of the page, especially an addendum.

 

[TIMOTHY R. REIDA]

THIS IS EXACTLY WHY I DON'T USE A LA MODE. WHEN I STARTED MY OWN COMPANY, I TRIED THEIR SOFTWARE AND FOUND IT TO BE THE MOST ANNOYING AND DIFFICULT TO USE SOFTWARE I'D SEEN. FINALLY SENT IT BACK AFTER NUMEROUS "TUTORIALS" AND HAD TO FIGHT TOOTH AND NAIL TO GET MY MONEY BACK. THANK GOD FRO POLAROID/ACI.