> can't offer SGC certificates
We could sell SGC products today if we wanted to - we have the API keys, a partner account with another certificate provider (not Digicert), and a node module written for the relevant REST API. We don't want to.
> are basically whinging that their competitor is marketing their certificates on a feature people don't need.
Marketing certificates on a feature people don't need - and making it seem as if they need it - is wrong.
> That's basically par for the course when selling to businesses, especially where non-technical people are in a position of deciding whether to buy, and which vendor to chose from.
Being common does not make it right.
If you think it does: what's the name of your startup? Your bio is empty, and I think most of HN would be interested in knowing the name of a business that thinks this is OK.
Furthermore it's not 'par for the course': many other CAs don't sell IE5 support as hard as Symantec does. Here's DigiCert writing against SGC (we use DigiCert as our CA) https://www.digicert.com/sgc-ssl-certificates.htm, here's their competitor GoDaddy writing against SGC: http://agrihortico.com/freedownloads/SGC.pdf