I am a longtime VIP subscriber–since February 2014, apparently, which surprised me as I thought it was a couple years later. I have been paying $30 since the start.
I’m not upset about the price increase per se. (And I’m not starting this thread to hear everybody posting about how they’re going to cancel, or about how it’s a doubling of the amount–yes, we understand math; the price should have increased gradually over the years but it didn’t, so here we are.)
It’s more that about 8 months ago, grandfathered users were told they would continue to be grandfathered. We haven’t even made it a full billing cycle for all users before that is being changed–IOW that hasn’t even been honored once for every VIP user.
I want to believe this was them, last year, trying to bend over backwards to thank early users, but the reality is setting in that it’s not actually sustainable because a significant portion of their VIP userbase falls under this exception. I don’t know if that’s the case, but it would do wonders to hear why this specific action was necessary so soon after being told otherwise, @justin .
For the record, I’m of the opinion that grandfathering can’t last forever, especially if you have a large population of grandfathered users versus newer users. And if it were me, I wouldn’t have made the relatively sweeping promises last September that they did. But the lack of acknowledgement about the change from that time to now is troubling.
(eta: I also know that removing grandfathering was never going to go down well with at least a certain percentage of grandfathered users, so there would be saber-rattling no matter what. But the way this was handled in particular is a very bad look.)
Honestly, don’t be surprised if @justin doesn’t bother his ass responding. There’s NO justification for reneging on earlier promises. There’s also been no promises of anything new that would be significant enough to warrant such a hike. Trakt now seems to be a “do as we please and damn the consequences” company no matter how much users (free or paid) show their disgust
A % rise in line with, say, inflation might have been acceptable, but the loss of trust for completely screwing users over now far outweighs whatever excuses they may (but most likely won’t) come up with
Possibly, but I was one VIP shouting the house down when Trakt clamped down on free user features, so I’d hope there’d be a few free lot who are as outraged as us and see the sun no longer shines out Trakt’s backside. Free or paid we’ve all been shafted to one extent or another and need to come together against all these changes, even if it means quitting and deleting all our data
I too am a long time VIP subscriber, since 2012. I’m one of the users staring at a 400% price increase now after 13 years.
And here’s the thing. I get it. Costs go up, and it’s completely unreasonable to expect to pay the same price FOREVER. I appreciate that I was grandfathered in. I defended so many decisions they made, up until the increase to $60. That was too far for me, and I started to see the writing on the wall, but I was assured then, just like I was when the price increase to $30 happened that I would not see a price increase and that Trakt was “just fine” financially. This was THREE months ago that we were promised to be grandfathered in.
$15 in 2012 translates to around $22 today. Round up and Trakt is DEFINITELY worth $30 to me. $60, after promising me this would not happen? Yeah sorry I’m out. Even when they doubled it 3 months ago I remember thinking that was a bad move and we’d see Trakt die a slow death because it’s a hard pill to swallow. But after promising three months ago that you wouldn’t do this only to turn around and do it anyway? Sorry, that tells me you no longer want me as a customer. Message received. Already looking at alternatives.
