I always respond to these requests that we're happy to do these things for our Enterprise customers, with a minimum yearly commitment. (I stole that from Patio11 and it has served me well over the years).
Companies use these requests as signals that they want me to charge them 10-1000X the off-the-shelf price for the service. Usually they realize that this is what they're doing, but occasionally I'll get to have a fun email exchange with a rank and file developer who accidentally flipped his $5/month personal plan into $300/month Enterprise mode by routing his purchase through Purchasing.
No, you can't go back. Once you start acting like an Enterprise, you're an Enterprise. There's no way I'm risking ever needing to involve my lawyer for a customer with an expected lifetime value of a few hundred dollars, so once you cross that line you're across it.
cc'd to 3 levels of purchasing at a company you've heard of:
"I'm afraid we've reached the point where it is now officially silly to continue discussing ways to save $BRAND_NAME (a billion dollar company, if I'm not mistaken) three hundred dollars."
Companies use these requests as signals that they want me to charge them 10-1000X the off-the-shelf price for the service. Usually they realize that this is what they're doing, but occasionally I'll get to have a fun email exchange with a rank and file developer who accidentally flipped his $5/month personal plan into $300/month Enterprise mode by routing his purchase through Purchasing.
No, you can't go back. Once you start acting like an Enterprise, you're an Enterprise. There's no way I'm risking ever needing to involve my lawyer for a customer with an expected lifetime value of a few hundred dollars, so once you cross that line you're across it.
cc'd to 3 levels of purchasing at a company you've heard of:
"I'm afraid we've reached the point where it is now officially silly to continue discussing ways to save $BRAND_NAME (a billion dollar company, if I'm not mistaken) three hundred dollars."
They're still customers to this day.