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Harvest hikes bills by 1500% after purchased by Bending Spoons

bbc.com

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Re: Harvest hikes bills by 1500% after purchased by Bending Spoons

#91

Post by strenholme »

ClarityJones wrote: post #63
pmontra wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that Comcast is a USA only service so have no idea of what people watch or listen to on Comcast. But above all, why do they need a consultant to do the switch? There is more to it than a credit card and a subscription?

Comcast is an ISP and Cable Television provider, with a terrible reputation. When I cancelled my service when them I had to mail the modem back to them. I did it UPS shipping with tracking, because I know not to trust them. They never-the-less claimed they did not receive it, and billed me for the device. Eventually - armed with the shipping confirmation - they acknowledged receipt of the package, but insisted that t…

A few years ago, someone recorded a phone call with a Comcast retention rep who kept trying to tell someone to not cancel their service; it took nearly 20 minutes for someone to cancel their service:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/07/call-...

Re: Harvest hikes bills by 1500% after purchased by Bending Spoons

#92

Post by fuzzfactor »

r721 wrote: post #60
ChrisArchitect wrote: post #22

https://archive.ph/3xFCY (when did BBC.com become paywalled?)

>The BBC is introducing a paywall in the U.S. https://www.niemanlab.org/2025/06/the-bbc-is-introducing-a-p... (June 26, 2025)

I sure hope their advertisers are asking for huge amounts of money back since thay can no longer reach millions of people which they were paying to reach previously.

Re: Harvest hikes bills by 1500% after purchased by Bending Spoons

#93

Post by slumberlust »

carlosjobim wrote: post #43
strenholme wrote: post #15

This 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 o…

The majority of businesses still use buy-once invoicing software. Which they of course should. Paying a subscription for such a thing isn't very smart.

Industry? Source? This does not match my experience to date. I see subscriptions everywhere from telephony, CMS, slack, quip, etc.

Re: Harvest hikes bills by 1500% after purchased by Bending Spoons

#95

Post by carlosjobim »

slumberlust wrote: post #93
carlosjobim wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of businesses still use buy-once invoicing software. Which they of course should. Paying a subscription for such a thing isn't very smart.

Industry? Source? This does not match my experience to date. I see subscriptions everywhere from telephony, CMS, slack, quip, etc.

Note the word "invoicing" there in my comment.

Re: Harvest hikes bills by 1500% after purchased by Bending Spoons

#96

Post by insane_dreamer »

carlosjobim wrote: post #43
strenholme wrote: post #15

This 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 o…

The majority of businesses still use buy-once invoicing software. Which they of course should. Paying a subscription for such a thing isn't very smart.

> The majority of businesses still use buy-once invoicing software.

are you sure about that? Most small biz I know use Quickbooks for that, and it's a subscription service.

Re: Harvest hikes bills by 1500% after purchased by Bending Spoons

#97

Post by insane_dreamer »

freediddy wrote: post #18

The 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.

I was worried about Komoot when they purchased it but so far no issues -- has even improved somewhat (was already quite good).

But what happened with Harvest may be an omen.

Re: Harvest hikes bills by 1500% after purchased by Bending Spoons

#98

Post by AlfeG »

kstrauser wrote: post #17

Every 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 gleef…

Octopus Deploy year ago raised our payment from $50 per month to $15000 per year with 3 years in advance. We were able to agree on only a 1 year. This year we with use of 200$ Claude sub - created a "clone" of Octopus for our own use. No more payments to Octopus =)

Re: Harvest hikes bills by 1500% after purchased by Bending Spoons

#99

Post by orliesaurus »

dabeeeenster wrote: post #88
orliesaurus wrote: post #34

I posted about my friend Igor who had a similar experience on my LI [1] - from a few hundred to $3000+ a month - and a lot of people reacted saying you could simply vibe-code an alternative in hours and save thousands of dollars. it does seem like either people drank the kool-aid on vibecoding...or it's actually really possible that shitty software that we once relied upon can now be vibed into existence in hours at…

I used to write that software - the answer is that most of it can be vibe coded in a day now.

hope you're happier now than then!

Re: Harvest hikes bills by 1500% after purchased by Bending Spoons

#100

Post by penguin_booze »

dofm wrote: post #12

A 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

[flagged]
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