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Pocket Casts, you altered the deal, so I will alter your app

blog.matthewbrunelle.com

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Re: Pocket Casts, you altered the deal, so I will alter your app

#121

Post by nearting »

photomatt wrote: post #116
Zagorath wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone who has ever paid for Pocket Casts, even before Automattic acquired it, should not see ads. If you did, that's a bug and we'll fix it. I appreciate that. I hope you do. But I do not for one second believe the truth of it. If it were true, you wouldn't have been having customer service respond to people complaining about this by trying to hock a paid subscription. In both emails and in your forums. This is no…

The product has had several different owners over the years. I can't speak for all of them, but we're trying to do right by people now. If you send me your account info, I'm happy to upgrade it.

You want to do right by people? Then put a big notice in the app, on your website, in the forums, etc., and refund subscriptions for anyone who's paid based on previously faulty information. If you're having folks to reach out to you over HN where you'll manually upgrade their accounts and shrugging your shoulders at being double-paid, then this is more of a PR stunt than doing right.

Re: Pocket Casts, you altered the deal, so I will alter your app

#122

Post by jrootabega »

Zagorath wrote: post #115
photomatt wrote: post #108

Howdy! There might be a misunderstanding: Anyone who has ever paid for Pocket Casts, even before Automattic acquired it, should not see ads. If you did, that's a bug and we'll fix it. Longer context: At Automattic, we take very seriously the sustainability of the promises we make to users of our products, including serving trillions of free requests to WP.com, Tumblr, Pocket Casts, and many other services over the ye…

> Anyone who has ever paid for Pocket Casts, even before Automattic acquired it, should not see ads. If you did, that's a bug and we'll fix it. I appreciate that. I hope you do. But I do not for one second believe the truth of it. If it were true, you wouldn't have been having customer service respond to people complaining about this by trying to hock a paid subscription. In both emails and in your forums. This is no…

> I appreciate that. I hope you do. But I do not for one second believe the truth of it.

Nor do I when I read passive-aggressive replies from Automattic on the Google Play store: "Hi Matthew! If you believe that your one-time payment entitles you to Plus access, which removes the ads, please reach out to us: [URL]. The banner ads help us sustain the app so we can continue making it available for free."

Re: Pocket Casts, you altered the deal, so I will alter your app

#123

Post by dallen33 »

photomatt wrote: post #108

Howdy! There might be a misunderstanding: Anyone who has ever paid for Pocket Casts, even before Automattic acquired it, should not see ads. If you did, that's a bug and we'll fix it. Longer context: At Automattic, we take very seriously the sustainability of the promises we make to users of our products, including serving trillions of free requests to WP.com, Tumblr, Pocket Casts, and many other services over the ye…

Talking outta both sides of your mouth, as usual. You’re a joke.

Re: Pocket Casts, you altered the deal, so I will alter your app

#124

Post by 0x6c6f6c »

TiredOfLife wrote: post #74
carlosjobim wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you never hear about free refills that they have in some restaurants. You're demanding more than a decade of free app updates for a small sum you paid ages ago. Why can't you instead be happy with all the value you got from the app? We aren't born to be small minded and stingy, look up to greater goals and a greater attitude in life. We only have so many years before it is cut from us.

Total Commander has done free updates for 31 years

Except those are not even close to the same type of software to fairly compare. A file manager has virtually no inherent servicing costs to pay compared to a podcast player.

Re: Pocket Casts, you altered the deal, so I will alter your app

#125

Post by na2rboy »

photomatt wrote: post #108

Howdy! There might be a misunderstanding: Anyone who has ever paid for Pocket Casts, even before Automattic acquired it, should not see ads. If you did, that's a bug and we'll fix it. Longer context: At Automattic, we take very seriously the sustainability of the promises we make to users of our products, including serving trillions of free requests to WP.com, Tumblr, Pocket Casts, and many other services over the ye…

Are you lying or just not aware of what is going on in your own company? I paid for Pocket Casts many years ago and am now seeing ads. I just emailed support and got a form email that basically said, "Nah, pay us $40 a year."

Re: Pocket Casts, you altered the deal, so I will alter your app

#126

Post by jason217 »

photomatt wrote: post #108

Howdy! There might be a misunderstanding: Anyone who has ever paid for Pocket Casts, even before Automattic acquired it, should not see ads. If you did, that's a bug and we'll fix it. Longer context: At Automattic, we take very seriously the sustainability of the promises we make to users of our products, including serving trillions of free requests to WP.com, Tumblr, Pocket Casts, and many other services over the ye…

I also purchased the lifetime no-ads option, and now get ads. Support says you have to buy a subscription. This is a widespread issue that seems to be affecting most if not all users. If you check the reviews on the play store there are many hundreds of 1 start reviews over the last few days and the app rating has dropped from 4.2 to 3.7.

A thread was also pointing out in the google support forums for another app that did the same thing, ignoring a no-ads purchase and forcing a new subscription, and google asked to report the app from the store as this violates their terms of service

Re: Pocket Casts, you altered the deal, so I will alter your app

#127

Post by johanyc »

derektank wrote: post #14
wmichelin wrote: post #3

To play devil's advocate here, clearly there are hosting costs and maintenance costs beyond a one time mobile app payment 14 years ago. Kinda sped read the article so apologies if I missed it, but why does the author here feel so entitled to something that clearly the company feels unreasonable to continuously maintain? They're clearly a struggling business, it feels like this author has a personal vendetta against t…

I think it is sort of incumbent upon you, as a business offering a lifetime membership, to properly invest some of that initial fee, such that the returns cover future operating costs. Many other companies work on this model. If the bank refused to return the money I loaned them, I would rightfully be very upset. I think it's similarly fair to be upset about a company revoking lifetime memberships. This particular si…

> as a business offering a lifetime membership

> If the bank refused to return the money I loaned them, I would rightfully be very upset.

Everyone who bought the app STILL have access to the app. All features they paid for are still available (except if you consider no ad a feature).

The "correct" way to do it is change current app to classic and release a new app but that's quite cumbersome. I would like Apple or Google to offer an option to provide paid upgrade options.

Re: Pocket Casts, you altered the deal, so I will alter your app

#128

Post by johanyc »

Zagorath wrote: post #89
carlosjobim wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you can still use the app you paid for during the rest of your life. Nobody is forcing you to do updates to your phone, certainly Pocket Cast aren't forcing you to update your phone.

They didn't warn us ahead of time that there would be ads. The patch notes didn't even mention the ads! Shifty Jelly used to have legendary patch notes, but it's been a long time since that was true. And since app stores don't actually let you downgrade to a previous version, your comment is simply untrue.

I think apple and google should allow us to disable updates to certain apps.

Re: Pocket Casts, you altered the deal, so I will alter your app

#129

Post by johanyc »

tmaly wrote: post #99

I bought the app back when it was just three developers. Things started going down hill after NPR acquired them. I switched over to Spotify. The only gripe I have with Spotify is when my phone encounters a dead spot, Spotify puts up a modal "You're offline" and loses my place in the podcast.

do you have seperate queues for music and podcasts on spotify?

Re: Pocket Casts, you altered the deal, so I will alter your app

#130

Post by johanyc »

doubley2 wrote: post #98

I've been following the whole upset about the banner ad. As a podcast app, 90% of the time I have it in the background, and I'm not doomscrolling on the app. So the banner ad doesn't really bother me. The argument on a "lifetime subscription" also does not really apply here. The app was a one-time purchase and then made free somewhere in 2019. Their logic was that early app purchasers would still receive the same set…

Apparently they consider "ad-free" a feature
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