It covers the same points, though, more or less
Signed up to the forum after 7 years of paying for VIP just to say Iām cancelling over the price doubling(!).
Find it really hard to believe updating a database via an API call every so often requires $5USD a month per user to sustain. I rarely open the website, I only look at the stupid recaps when I accidentally click the wrong thing, and I didnāt even know there was a forum until 10 minutes ago.
So dumb.
15 Likes
Itās still not too late for Trakt to retroactively rectify their mistakes.
As stated before, your issues are fourfold:
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Not honoring an explicit promise made by Traktās CEO, assuring each VIP member, at the time of writing, their pricing of $15 or $30 would be grandfathered indefinitely. āfor as long as you remain an active VIPā.
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The material edit, after breaking your own Terms of Use, to an official, contractual notice, without:
a) Resetting the date on the aforementioned notice to again comply with the 30 days in your Terms of Use;
b) Making your subscribers aware again, by direct notification and durable medium, of that material change in the contractual notice, which, in some US states (like California under the Consumer Legal Remedies Act) may require āclear and conspicuous notification of material changesā. -
Discriminating against subscriptions whether they are active, cancelled, manually renewed, or set to auto-renewal, affecting around 18% of longstanding and loyal VIP members that became victim of Traktās own limitations on payment method by choosing to not notify these affected members at all.
The sudden rushed and forced manner of your plans to increase the VIP pricing so drastically, completely disregarding your own Terms of Use with the original notice only giving 7 days to go into effect, tells me that you principally did not even bother to confer with a legal representative to pretest your plans against the legal framework that you have to abide by.
Mistakes can be made, itās human nature. But when you make mistakes, clearly pointed out by multiple users, and yet take zero responsibility and donāt try to rectify them - especially as a Product Manager making the original, erroneous notification - is very unprofessional on many levels. If this were my company, it would raise serious concerns going into their next performance review. Product Mismanager might be an interesting new title to fill.
You claim that transparency is a priority for you, yet you dismiss any and all critisiscm pointing out where you failed to deliver on your promises and obligations. Deleting posts, hiding and deleting threads, silencing users: is this really how youād address legitimate concerns about the actions of your company? By pretending everything is fine?
So you try some paltry attempt at damage control, on why grandfathered pricing is totally unfeasible, claiming how lifetime plans are unsustainable. Yeah, obviouslyā¦ Who is even talking about wanting lifetime subscriptions? Nobody is and nobody expects that. So everything you address are fallacies and sophisms, not contributing to any of the valid concerns so many of your paying customers have. Thus far, this is the only additional āexplanationā we got. Truly abhorrent.
However, what people can reasonably expect after being made a promise like that, is to honor that promise for at least one yearly cycle starting on the date that promise was made so those affected can renew at least once against their current pricing.
What if someone even pettier than me or a regulatory authority like the FTC were to scrutinize your actions after receiving complaints, can you really confidently demonstrate you followed the appropriate legal framework?
I truly cannot comprehend why Trakt, which I used to regard as a decent company in the past, suddenly decides to go full North Korean on their loyal customers that supported them for over a decade. I personally donāt even care about the price increase that much, I could afford it no problem. Apart from the neglect to follow basic legislative rules, itās the absolute disrespect you have shown to your faithful and devoted members that just made something snap inside. I hardly use any of the additional VIP functions and my subscription was primarily to support the company. With such a drastic, 100% price increase, you are completely overestimating yourselves with something that is basically a glorified text-base solution for tracking media. You aggregate data from various sources and present them in a pleasant way. If TMDB would suddenly cease to exist tomorrow, you would have a real problem on your hands. How do you even justify such an absurd price increase in the first place?
Again, you can still take responsibility for your actions by appropriately correcting the issues stated above.
17 Likes
Which self-hosted app did you decide on and why? Iāve been testing Ryot and Yamtrack thus far
Well I am too thinking to not renew my subscription after 6 years. 100% price increase seems not rational to me. I was thinking first to cancel my autorenewal but did not yet. To my understanding from an EU law perspective price increase for subscription must now be actively accepted (usually kind of Accept button), email or forum/webpage notification is not enough, so the autorenewal must be done at same price or the provider needs to cancel the subscription itself. There has been recent cases against Amazon Prime & Disney about price increase not actively accepted by customers. Anyone considering to wait what happens at renewal?
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I live in Belgium & have never had to accept any subscription price increase for anything, so Iām not sure that is an actual EU law. (Might be in a specific country?)
My internet provider (for example) raises their prices every year and they just give notice. If that would require active approval Iām sure customer rights organisations would be up in arms.
This is correct, you legally only have to be given good notice, and the option to cancel before the next payment is due.
1 Like
Thatās exactly what will happen (already happening)
After having tested both, I went with Yamtrack.
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They said, āour infrastructure expenses have doubled in the past yearāā¦ well now with the majority of users leaving VIP they wont have to maintain the infrastructure because no one will be using it!!!
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anyone has a self hosted alternative with automatic tracking for Emby?
You cannot say this after assurances were made just months ago regarding the price staying the same. You making the change so soon tells me that you are strapped for cash.
Why was spitting in the face of your long time VIPs by increasing their price out of nowhere best for the business instead of implementing tiers, a widely requested pricing feature that would have only added VIPs instead of losing them?
Why did this happen out of nowhere?
Why did you even increase the price in the first place instead of bringing back the $60 tier that existed? I likely wouldāve upgraded!
25 Likes
A 100 percent increase in any service is a total rip off.
As an OAP I struggle as it is with monthly bills how am I supposed to justify, no matter how you sugarcoat it, a 100% hike in a service just for recording TV and Movies 
I have supported you with 8 years as a VIP but I doubt I will make it 9 unless I win the lottery 
16 Likes
Itās clear to me after such a long time that Trakt made their decision. They donāt want people around paying less than $60, regardless of how loyal you may have been (13 year sub here myself).
For better or worse, this is the ānewā Trakt. Trying to change their minds isnāt going to work as the former FitBit executives turned Trakt employees rot the company out from the inside.
As a long time Trakt user, this sucks to realize, but the Trakt we knew is dead and things will continue to get worse much like every other company that āchangesā. Iāve been part of this with many companies at this point.
The only thing I can do as a customer is speak with my dollars. Iāve provided my feedback to deaf ears, and I just realize that Trakt is no longer the service I was glad to pay money to support. When I say ātrakt is deadā I mean more than just price. Gone are the days when customer feedback actually MATTERED to them, gone are the days when it was 2 people doing this in their spare time for the love of media. Welcome to the days of executive leadership making ego-based decisions, ignoring feedback, and introducing worthless features that drive up the cost of the service (by their own admission, I work in IT and while cloud pricing has increased, it has NOT doubled in the last few years).
It was a fun ride, but now that Iām also just a number to them, they can just be a number to me, and I can go support places that actually earn my dollars instead of companies that ignore their customer base. Itās not going to change. The company has moved on. Itās time we do too. Will I still use the free service? Time will tell.
25 Likes