I agree. With SW, MS Word, Excell, etc, etc... These are all mature products that do what they do well. Nothing really needs to be done other than fix bugs. But with this thinking how do you keep the party going at HQ? Got to charge these fees. Software as a service is this on steroids. Total BS!
Very similar situation for me. When I need SW support there is so much info on the web I can generally get what I want to know quickest using a web search. I wanted the CAM support. In my case I use SW CAM so can't call CAMWorks directly. My first Var was not a CAMWorks seller and really didn't know CAM well so I switched to another. The second had some CAMWorks support but I knew more than the guy that I was trying to help me. And, it seemed like they were more interested in selling 3D printers than supporting the software. The current VAR I changed to because they claimed to be more machining oriented.
My VAR used to be a sole CAMWorks reseller, I don't know that they offered anything else and the guys were incredibly knowledgeable but they were bought out by HawkRidge a few years ago and I feel the guys from my original VAR have pushed to keep the knowledge up with CAMWorks for support. When needed I get great help.
I also try to tell myself the $3700 a year I pay for maintenance is less than 1% of my annual sales, in all reality I probably break more than that a year in tooling on making a bad off set with a tool or missing something in my program, mistakes that I could easily prevent if I slowed down somedays, or even just my aluminum chip recycling easily covers the maintenance cost annually. There's so many other aspects of my business I could save money easily and that $3700 is for software that essentially is the foundation to every part machined in my shop.