inkFrog Acquires SpareDollar

[mandy]

Hello.. This is Greg one of the owners and Founders of inkFrog, inc.

I wanted to be the first to post to you all that inkFrog has acquired Sparedollar and Tomas will be joining the inkFrog team. I wanted to make this announcement here on the forums first because I know you all have had many questions about what has been happening with Sparedollar over the last several months. During this time we have been working with Tomas on this acquisition and are pleased to say it's finally here! Tomas will become a partner in inkFrog and be working with us.

We are very excited about purchasing Sparedollar and very excited to be working with Tomas. InkFrog and Sparedollar have always had the same philosophies and have always been the low cost leaders in Auction Management. This will NOT change!

I'm hoping this acquisition doesn't worry any of you. We are planning big things for all of you and will make up an extensive FAQ section to answer all of your questions regarding this. InkFrog and Sparedollar are very similar and are run in very similar ways. (inkFrog is a very small company and cares about its users!).

We know that your main worry is pricing and software. We completely understand this and assure you that you don't have to worry. We have developed brand new software that has the ease of use of SpareDollar and the powerful features of inkFrog. This software has not been released to inkFrog users or Sparedollar users yet. We will release it for everyone beginning this month or the first few weeks of April. We will also ensure that all of your data is seamlessly moved over to the new software and will make the transfer very simple and painless! We also are working on the pricing structure but assure you that we plan on blowing away the pricing barrier and will ensure that Sparedollar users have very little pricing changes while still getting a ton more features and 'stuff' (as I like to call it).

I know you all will have lots of questions :-), We will be keeping you all posted through each step. Please do NOT try to signup for our current inkFrog site now. Everyone (inkFrog and Sparedollar) users will be moved to our new site starting within weeks. We are very excited about this new software and will work with you each step of the transition. We also will be setting up extra support to ensure that any of your questions get answered.

I look forward to getting to know most of you and look forward to hearing your comments and feedback on our new site once it's released. If you have ever worked with inkFrog before you know that we listen to our customers and implement features and ideas they have into our software.

thx for listening to my long post, but i wanted to explain as much as possible before we do the press release about the purchase.

best regards,
Greg Sisung
InkFrog, inc.

http://community.sparedollar.com/topic.a...C_ID=72364

further discussion: http://community.sparedollar.com/topic.a...C_ID=72365

[iron_chick]

Dumping SD last fall was one of the best decisions I made all year.   

[iron_chick]

I'm apparently not done with this:

You know what . . . Tomas almost doubled the monthly fee at SD 5 months ago - ostensibly to hire customer service and programming folks.  From what I've heard, he's done neither.  Having heard this announcement, now I know why.    But it still strikes me as wickedly dishonest to raise rates in order to do these things when you are in negotiation to sell the company and have no intention of doing the things you promised.  I would imagine that since inkFrog is higher priced than SD - much higher than SD was  - the new owners wanted to make sure Tomas could get his customer base to pony up the extra bucks and that was the real reason for the rate increase.  (Well, I'm sure the extra cash in Tomas' pocket over the last 5 months was an added bonus for him, too.)

Beth, in cynical mode this morning.  I need coffee.

[iron_chick]

From Tomas on the forum:

Posted - 03/21/2006 :  02:00:14 AM 
The price increase at the time was absolutley necessary to maintain SpareDollar's current operations and to further it. The acquisition was not a firm agreement at the time of the rate increase decision.

Heh - I was right.  inkFrog DID want to make sure SD users would pony up the extra $$ before buying the company.

http://community.sparedollar.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=72365&whichpage=4

[bargainbloodhound]

SpareDollar...the same one who forgot to renew his domain name last October?  Hee, hee.
http://community.tuliptools.com/index.ph...833.0.html

[iron_chick]

Yep.  Right around the time he doubled the monthly fee. 

[bargainbloodhound]

Happy customers...NOT http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=2000104298&tstart=0

[stardust]

[quote author=iron_chick link=topic=3097.msg11209#msg11209 date=1142950054]
From Tomas on the forum:

Posted - 03/21/2006 :  02:00:14 AM 
The price increase at the time was absolutley necessary to maintain SpareDollar's current operations and to further it. The acquisition was not a firm agreement at the time of the rate increase decision.

Heh - I was right.  inkFrog DID want to make sure SD users would pony up the extra $ before buying the company.

http://community.sparedollar.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=72365&whichpage=4
[/quote]

Also sounds like the man was deep in financial doodoo and needed the bucks to pull out.   When I was a complete young noob and totally toopid a number of years ago,  I tried SD once for their free 30-day trial.  I was not impressed.  Now I'm much older and I'm still not impressed.  Still toopid, too.

Added:  Re Infrog viewpoint --  If you can't beat the competition, just buy 'em!

[wahm922]

Well the new and improved IF has potential but its not for me!

I'm jumping ship.  Actually I jumped ship awhile ago but for some stupid reason I still pay SD as a "backup" service since I now use Auctiva.

I guess old habits are hard to break :oops: