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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

#131

Post by seec »

photomatt wrote: post #111
vorpalhex wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is PocketCasts maintaining? 1. A few kb of playlists and accounts 2. Probably a search service 3. Likely artwork caching It's not free to run this.. but it's not exactly expensive either. Many users pay and don't use the app very much. I am sure there are some super users who use a lot. And most apps continue to sell, make enough income to fund a few devs and keep the services on. Even with a one time payment. I…

We don't disclose Pocket Casts revenue directly, but we invest $millions a year in its development and hosting. It gets very broad usage and has over ten million of listening hours a week. There are clients maintained and new features developed for iPhone, iPad, MacOS, Apple Watch, Android Phones and Tablets, and an open web version.

I don't understand why you went with a single licence valid for all platforms. Clearly each client is a different product on each platform, even if it might have the same core functionality.

I don't know what the original price was and I understand why he is mad, but that was a poor business decision. If you overpromise that's kind of on you, plenty of companies have been burned by such behavior.

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

#132

Post by seec »

theshrike79 wrote: post #82
renewiltord wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no reasonable devil's advocate. The answer is that one-time fee apps are not sustainable. There are ongoing costs with most businesses and one-time fees do not capture that. Therefore don't sell them. Sell everything on subscription or you will eventually fail to serve your customers and everyone will be unhappy. If you're a big business, it's risky to buy open-source applications, so don't do that unless the…

One time cost per major version is sustainable, you won't get Silicon Valley rich on it, but you can make a living. Lifetime licenses only work in the beginning when you have people buying them at regular intervals, at some point the market is saturated and you need to have a subscription model. Case in point: Unraid. I have two grandfathered "forever" licenses and I'll never need a third.

Yes, the thing with one time purchase is that it should be as it is, right now. Not including updates and support forever.

By this standard, people should feel entitled to get an update on their fridge whenever a new compressor technology is available (or whatever, you get the point).

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

#133

Post by fullstop »

johanyc wrote: post #127
derektank wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Go…

When I bought the app they specifically listed "No Ads!" as one of the selling points.

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

#134

Post by fullstop »

jszymborski wrote: post #9
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…

> why does the author here feel so entitled People were promised they just needed to pay one fee to get the app. Then, they went to a subscription fee, but grandfathered in previous purchasers. Now, they've introduced ads. Their overhead is their problem, they sold me something and now they are renegging. It's like the first thing in the article, not exactly burried.

> but grandfathered in previous purchasers

If you bought the app only you weren't grandfathered into anything. You needed to have also bought the web player.

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

#135

Post by fullstop »

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…

> 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.

This is not true for people, like me, who only bought the Android version. We were not tagged with "Champion", but this was stated: "you’ll still have access to the mobile app features you paid for".

This was in the description of the app at the time:

"There are many more powerful, straight forward features help you make Pocket Casts yours and in case you were wondering, here’s what Pocket Casts DOESN’T have: ads, episode limits, pushy trials, feature bloat or plugins.

It. Just. Works."

Now I have ads, and when I try to dismiss them I am greeted with a pushy sales pitch for a subscription.

Life is too short for this, and I've moved on to another app. But perhaps this is insightful as to why some users are frustrated and upset.

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

#136

Post by g-technology »

Not a good month for me and entertainment. First I drop twitch turbo because they started showing ads and their support said, it happens nothing they can do about it. Now I need a new podcast app after using Pocketcasts since 2016.

Any Suggestions for iPhone that I can easily move to from pocketcast?

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

#137

Post by winkelwagen »

This is a great way to sour many customers for all products automatic owns. I don’t buy the “it must be a bug story.” They just flipped the switch and only deal with the squeaky wheels for people that complain.

Did I expect free updates and features forever. No, Only the bare minimum to keep it running.

Hell, if it was owned by a small company or an individual I wouldn’t mind donating to keep it maintained once in a while. I don’t feel the need for a subscription for a podcast app. The fanciest feature I’ve used in the past 10 years is the sleep after 15 min options.

Saddest is that they are advertising their own apps. Good to know which one to avoid.

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

#138

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#139

Post by [deleted] »

na2rboy wrote: post #125
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."

[deleted]

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

#140

Post by explodes »

carlosjobim wrote: post #41
jszymborski wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why does the author here feel so entitled People were promised they just needed to pay one fee to get the app. Then, they went to a subscription fee, but grandfathered in previous purchasers. Now, they've introduced ads. Their overhead is their problem, they sold me something and now they are renegging. It's like the first thing in the article, not exactly burried.

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.

If someone tells me one thing and delivers another I am never going to default to "happy" and be quiet because I "should be thankful" for the deal I did get.

I don't know what world that failing to keep your word is OK, but just because an entity is a company doesn't give them a free pass. No matter how good the deal is.

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