After my reply here I’m personally not going to reply to any more thing regarding the price doubling because it’s been rehashed so many times and been explained that it hasn’t changed for 9 years and has been readjusted for now and into the future. If it’s too high, that’s a Trakt problem not a user problem because as you say, people will only pay what they thing is worth it.
I will say that for one last comparison regarding “Trakt reaching Streaming prices”, Netflix has almost doubled their standard pricing in the last ~10 years also, and is otherwise much more expensive than Trakt, for the purpose that it has the actual media content I guess? From ~USD$10/mth (~USD$120/yr) in 2015 to ~USD$18/mth (~USD$215/yr) in 2025 source. Sure they have tiers but thats their choice and their base is still USD$7 I think and has ads.
To your point, yes you’re able to stay as a free user and if things change in the future you can adapt at that point.
My point was to show an example for what’s important and choosing where to spend your money. I’m not a sales person trying to sell you something and was trying to give a personal perspective, but you’re welcome to take it that way. But this doesn’t make me want to try give any more reasoning when people were otherwise asking for something from the Trakt team.
Thanks for replying but it’s clear that you (and, it seems, the Trakt team in general) don’t understand how Kodi addons work and it’s nowhere near as simple as some may think. And this isn’t to criticise you or anything like that, either, so please don’t take it that way. With Kodi, you don’t login as different users or have separate accounts for anything.
It used to be that Trakt Collection used to be the only way to use a synced list with multiple Kodi addons, and/or installed on multiple devices. Over time, better support for Kodi lists has been incorporated but I’ve always just kept using the Collection because all of our shows were there and it literally makes no difference whether our shows are in a Collection or a list…so anyone saying that using a Trakt Collection is “wrong” has absolutely no idea what they’re talking about when it comes to Trakt being used with Kodi addons, nor the legacy reasons behind using Collection vs a list.
And when I say 3 people, it’s not like my wife and I count as 2 separate people for payment but my issue is still that no prior notice was provided to users via email, which would seem to have been the easiest thing in the world to do. IF this had happened, I would have jumped on to the $30 payment if there was no other option. It’s very, very clear that many other users also had no idea about any of these changes because I keep seeing posts by people (here, on Reddit and in FB groups) asking what is going on because they can’t add anything to their lists. This BS is absolutely a serious communication issue by Trakt and it’s really obvious that the company’s rep is taking a serious beating globally….I’ve seen many, many, many posts by people saying they’re ditching Trakt, regardless of whether they’re free users or VIP.
@Ohifriend I greatly appreciate you taking the time out of your day to give your opinion and answer questions. Sorry if we come off as a bit abrasive, but given the topic I think it’s understandable due to how bad faith this has been from the start (the whole dressing this up in a nice cute dress of “more features for all!!!” while drastically slashing the free user experience, even for users that have been around for decades it seems). Not to mention no forewarning on this and just having this post as a sole source of information where users who don’t manage to find this post have to either just keep spending hours trying to figure out what’s changed and baffled why it happened without warning beforehand or as it happened. If you believe emailing the userbase and letting them know of this obviously big change from the norm is a good idea, please let your higher ups know. If you disagree that’s understandable. Have a good rest of your day!
Thats fair - I really don’t know how it works but if there’s an alternative set up, I’d suggest looking into it is all, if you’re not wanting to pay.
Regarding # of people, when you purchase food you technically count as two people, so per account is what I was suggesting whereas you use one therefore share the cost. But yes I understand if you were staying at a hotel for a holiday you’d pay for one room between two. Hotels usually set their prices for that max limit though, and if one person stays you pay the same or try find a smaller room (not always available in the same places). But that’s off topic now
I guess there’s not much more I can do myself but I know what you mean by many people suggesting they’re leaving. Time will tell.
Thanks for the kind words. Yeah I understand it’s frustrating and to a degree I can’t say you’re wrong and users should call out seemingly dodgy practices (not just here but in general).
All I’m saying is, as I can’t myself revert any changes, and am just trying to provide steps to work around.
As I suggested somewhere above, there’s various work arounds to temporarily clean up the data while you rebuild, and the Trakt community is usually happy to help find a solution to your use case. But throwing out personal attacks at staff (or others) doesn’t really help your case.
All I can say is thank you to everyone who has been constructive in some way.
@Ohifriend, I really appreciate you taking the time to reply and also to attempt to explain some things from your perspective. The fact that none of the other Trakt team members have really made any effort to do so (unless I’ve missed it?), has actually really pi$$ed me off and made me even more determined to find another solution. If Trakt management are this intractable (pun intended ) and/or unwilling to communicate with long-time users - I’ve been using Trakt for nearly 13 years since 2012 - then I simply don’t want to support the business. To be treated with contempt as a customer (intended or not) crosses a big red line in the sand for me.
Yeah I get it. I think most, if not all, of the team are at least aware of the concerns but also we can’t all spend our day replying to every single message. Imagine even for anyone being given personal attacks based on something that was probably prepared by not just them - do you think that incentivises them, or others to reply? I’d say not really. But yes, showing a general dislike for the changes or how it’s worded is all fair play.
Please just pass on that at the very least, Trakt users really need to be emailed about significant changes.
Many Trakt users never even visit the website or use the app etc because we’ve never needed to i.e. we only use the barebones syncing etc and nothing else. So for Trakt management to only post about these massive changes on the website has hit a lot of users hard because they (including me) only found out about the changes after the fact when there was nothing we could do. This is extremely poor communication and in reading some posts here, it seems like poor communication has been the default modus operandi for some time with Trakt. This has to improve.
Is the defense for the changes and complete lack of communication plus further ignorance to address the self inflicted wounds now “because someone might say something mean to us”?
Telling upset, confused and otherwise insulted users to go someplace else is extreme poor form. The analogies about what this change is in terms of cost when compared to a massive billion dollar corporation that provides, for their fee, extreme levels greater product, just further entrenches the brainless actions taken to this point. If you want to compare the price of VIP to the price of Netflix you better be offering VALUE to the same degree. When is Trakt’s sequel to Billy Maddison coming out again?
The defence is the response was pretty clear that the changes are made and you can choose to adapt, not that you’re forced to leave. And many suggestions have been made by others on workaround or solutions. Obviously people have continued to respond after personal attacks but it was an example. We have other things to work on to continue building Trakt, and can’t sit around and wait for people to change their minds.
I don’t think I ever told anyone to go someplace else, if you’re referring that to me.
Also remember that the value is your own perception - obviously many people see the value in Trakt or it wouldn’t exist, for those people nor any free users.
No one said they are being forced to leave. But your own words in that single sentence tells users everything they need to now.
“Choose to adapt”.
Also doesn’t addres the complete lack of communication before the change, when the change orrurer and since, especially with the quite vocal outcry of displeasure from users.
If you (the team) don’t have time to sit around and figure out how to address your users who are openly expressing who what they once saw having value, free users or paid VIP, then you fail to adress the rest of what I posted.
Many people saw the value in what Trakt WAS and are telling you (the team) directly to you face now that the value is no longer there. If that doesn’t givee you (the team) a moment’s pause to evaluate the current situation and what rammifications it could have moving forward because you (the team) are affraid of unkind words or think less of the time to even address these matters let along work for a more agreeable resolution for users, they what do you (the team) expect Trakt will be when users find an option that provides them much better value (price, features, communication, patronage)?
So far it’s only been a few VIPs in this thread saying they are pleased to continue to pay for what they percieve to be value while telling others to find someplace else if they don’t want to pay the new/increased price. Can’t imagine those numbers outpace the rest when it comes to earnings towards funding this project.
I mean, the value hasn’t changed for existing VIP users, so I’m not sure what you’re getting at. By choose to adapt I mean if you’ve gone over the limit based on the introduced free limits, you can do a clean up or not, or look for another workaround depending on your use case. You can still track what you’re watching.
We’re going to continue working on the things we’re working on and monitor the changes, not revert something because something mean was said by a few users. Some people took the time to contact support or make threads and get support from the community on what they could do differently. We can’t help if not everyone wants to do that.
Existing VIP users who are facing a 100% price increase have had the value of their VIP slashed in half. For non-VIP users the value has been greatly limited. If you ARE the team, or at least speaking for them in your capacity, then continued ignorance of what is being stated to you only ocntinues to alienate users.
No one asks you to revert things because they called someone a mean name.
Blanketing all voices of displasure in the tone of a minority who said mean things just lends to more fiended ignorance.
Thus far all the support that has been given is to blame outside parties for the inability to utilize Trakt as they had been prior to the paywall being put up and/or tell users to find something else. Then attempt to compare your perviced value of Trakt to that of a company which provides millions of hours of actual entertainment content, not, as another user coined it, a glorified spreadsheet.
If you (the team, who ever) are too busy “working on the things you are working on” to take pause and understand the damage being done to Trakt then you, the team, who ever, have no one but yourselves to blame if things progress in a further negative manner.Pretending it’s not the fault of Trakt for the actions of Trakt while defending said actions only continues to errod the name of Trakt, as seen in many more places than just this thread, by many more users who won’t ever come to this thread.
I certainly do not see value in Trakt as a service for $60 annually and for my usage not even $30. So instead of trying to convince me why yor service is of great value worthy of the price you have now decided to charge you have lead myself to spend the past few days looking at alternatives. Many others are doing the same and having discussions elsewhere on how to ditch Trakt directly because of the recent Trakt actions and further treatment by the Trakt team. Many analogies for what is being done have been used in this thread but the best is still having shot yourself in the foot and I will add you are now pointing your gun at your other foot, leaning heavy on the trigger. I won’t put more of my time further into your product. That is my valuation of Trakt, which has been very much influenced by this thread.
I appreciate your passion but if you didn’t see value at $30 then there’s not much more I can say, clearly. I don’t see why we would reduce the price lower than it was previously.
As I already said, and you’ve pointed out, any damage done is on us and we’ll monitor.
It hasn’t? So those VIP users that get their recommendations from users’ comments, users’ lists, users’ recommendations aren’t losing value when there’s a non-zero exodus of said users producing that content?
Even moreso, limiting lists, will impact future list creations and editions and probably more importantly current ones. There have been numerous VIP users in this very thread trying to get you to see this exact point. But alas, clearly it falls on deaf ears.