Private Equity destroys everything.
These companies that they bought were not doing so great to begin with otherwise they would not be for sale for a price where this makes sense.
Harvest hikes bills by 1500% after purchased by Bending Spoons
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Re: Harvest hikes bills by 1500% after purchased by Bending Spoons
#12A tale as old as time… Bending Spoons is who you sell to when you have developed contempt for your customers.
ETA: and contempt for your staff, too, since they basically always lose their jobs after explaining what they do
Re: Harvest hikes bills by 1500% after purchased by Bending Spoons
#13Private Equity destroys everything.
Your alternative is that companies shouldn't be allowed to change because the changes they want to make will make some people upset?
Raise prices 1500% and you'll find out that you were way underpriced, you'll create an opportunity for a competitor, etc.
This isn't cancer medication we're talking about here, it's some dumb SAAS product.
Edit: Appreciate the haters as always but can somebody please explain what they believe a company should be forced to do?
Re: Harvest hikes bills by 1500% after purchased by Bending Spoons
#14> Haldenby, whose business consists of up to 15 staff in the UK at any one time, with sister companies also in the US and Australia, said he was "in shock" when he received an email detailing the price changes. > Richard Haldenby, head of UK consultancy firm Salentis, told the BBC his monthly bill had risen from $130 (£95.50) to $2,110. If you estimate 25 employees total, that's $100/seat/mo. That's on the high end f…
> Bending Spoons was aligning with the market pricing
Buzzword nonsense. Wasn’t the $130 they were being charged before the market pricing?
You’re basically justifying that a 25-strong company can afford to pay more. Yes, that is true, but not all products have to extract as much profit as possible from their clients. Turn the problem around, how much does it cost Harvest to run their service for 25 additional users? It’s certainly not two grand a month.
Re: Harvest hikes bills by 1500% after purchased by Bending Spoons
#15This is the problem with subscription based software. In the days when people owned the software they used, a price increase like this would simply not be possible. People would be able to upgrade their own software on their own timeline.
Since Windows, despite its many faults, has a rock solid ABI (application binary interface), that piece of proprietary software from 2006 I use today still runs fine, as does that open source game from 2005 which I don’t need to figure out how to recompile.
So, yes, if these companies were able to buy the software instead of renting a SAAS (software as a service), they wouldn’t be subject to a huge bill to continue using what they have been using. And they would be able to still use that software for the foreseeable future.
Re: Harvest hikes bills by 1500% after purchased by Bending Spoons
#16Some existing customers might drop off But obviously you need 16 seats to drop for every paying seat in order for that to earn less money It also opens up a new market that takes them more seriously I dabbled in dropshipping and would literally put the same ebay ad at a 1,000% market next to the (seemingly undervalued) supplier I would buy from If you searched the item you would see both ads and people bought from me…
This reminds me of the game Eve Online. One of the frequent stories to hit the grapevine was someone putting up a common item at an insane price point in Jita or other popular trading system. And people would buy them (rarely, but consistently). Something like a piece of an asteroid ore at 50 million ISK. It's not exactly a crime, but for me it definitely sits in a moral grey area, somewhere between American Health c…
Probably the same people who doordash a $43 big mac at 8pm because "I'm hungry and I don't want to have to get up and drive over there"
Re: Harvest hikes bills by 1500% after purchased by Bending Spoons
#17Every now and then I check out the Evernote Reddit out of morbid curiosity. One person recently announced they’d finally had enough and were leaving because Bending Spoons increased their monthly bill from $20 to $30.
They’d been paying $240/yr for freaking Evernote.
I’m astonished at how much abuse many people will tolerate as an alternative to changing their habits. Bending Spoons made the same discovery, but gleefully, and apparently it makes a profit for them.
I just don’t get it. I mean, I do, but I wish I didn’t. It’s depressing.
Re: Harvest hikes bills by 1500% after purchased by Bending Spoons
#18The message is obviously:
If Bending Spoons buys your vendor, then gtfo as quickly as possible. Don't wait, don't sit around like a sucker and hope you won't get screwed over, you will.
Re: Harvest hikes bills by 1500% after purchased by Bending Spoons
#19Private Equity destroys everything.
In general, I would agree, but I think some small businesses are romanticized.
I have a house and have been with every small/medium local landscape company in town, finally settled on a landscape company that was bought by private equity.
The pricing is about the same, but they actually do a good job, the employees are nice, and they answer the phone. You don't have to beg them to come do work and hunt them down, and they can usually come out pretty quick.
Re: Harvest hikes bills by 1500% after purchased by Bending Spoons
#20A tale as old as time… Bending Spoons is who you sell to when you have developed contempt for your customers. ETA: and contempt for your staff, too, since they basically always lose their jobs after explaining what they do
They’re literally just a big private equity firm with maybe above average PR