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Surprise, pay $1000

forestwalk.ai

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Re: Surprise, pay $1000

#191

Post by gblargg »

greg-m wrote: post #108

Hey folks - Greg here, I do product at Blacksmith. I want to say upfront - we've never pursued these invoices. If someone feels they didn't get value from the service, we've eaten that cost and always will. There's a bit of an implicit policy decision on our side here that we did a bad job of communicating - I want to clarify that, and then talk about how we can fix it. First, we wanted to let customers start using B…

> we've never pursued these invoices.

Reminds me of the company Tado, who was testing to see if people would pay by making them think they would have to even though they didn't. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfAchfFXghc

Re: Surprise, pay $1000

#192

Post by gblargg »

greg-m wrote: post #180
kmoser wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I want to say upfront - we've never pursued these invoices. At first glance that sounds admirable, but the flipside is that it implies Blacksmith knows they're being shady: if you know you're not going to pursue it, why did you invoice the customer in the first place? This sounds less like you're forgiving a charity case and more like you're waiving an invoice because the customer identified it as unethical to begi…

Hey there - I partially disagree! We issue an invoice because the customer did consume the services - a lot of folks appreciate that, since it gives their AP team a real cost to work from instead of a ballpark of us vs. GitHub. My "we never pursue these" comment wasn't about us knowing the charge was shady - it was to clarify we have no strategy of chasing people/litigating over invoices they weren't aware of, which…

The terms state

> Alternatively, for larger contracts, You may request to be billed via invoice.

> By providing payment information, You authorize us to charge Your credit card for usage fees or, in the case of invoice-based contracts, agree to make timely payments as specified in the invoicing terms.

And at the top there's a Try For Free button that says no credit card is required. This strongly communicates that this free trial won't incur any costs until you add a card or agree to be billed via invoice.

A simple change of the text would make people a lot less surprised. Warn them that if they go over they will be billed. In the bill clarify at the top that they don't actually have to pay if they don't want to.

Re: Surprise, pay $1000

#193

Post by gblargg »

inigyou wrote: post #167
baobabKoodaa wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main issue is that you deceptively communicated what happens at the end of the free trial. You decided to use the wording "disruption", which implies that workloads will be stopped, which is the opposite of what happened. This is deceptive and predatory. I will never use your software and after this happened I am AMAZED that anybody else (particularly OP, but also anybody who read this post) will continue to trus…

This whole incident supplied them a lot more publicity. I had never heard of them before today. Since today, I'm more likely to use them, not less, because now I know they exist. I couldn't be less likely than zero.

This story is also educating people so if they do use them, they know in advance how they bill so won't be surprised.

Re: Surprise, pay $1000

#194

Post by greg-m »

gblargg wrote: post #192
greg-m wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey there - I partially disagree! We issue an invoice because the customer did consume the services - a lot of folks appreciate that, since it gives their AP team a real cost to work from instead of a ballpark of us vs. GitHub. My "we never pursue these" comment wasn't about us knowing the charge was shady - it was to clarify we have no strategy of chasing people/litigating over invoices they weren't aware of, which…

The terms state > Alternatively, for larger contracts, You may request to be billed via invoice. > By providing payment information, You authorize us to charge Your credit card for usage fees or, in the case of invoice-based contracts, agree to make timely payments as specified in the invoicing terms. And at the top there's a Try For Free button that says no credit card is required. This strongly communicates that th…

Agreed - we've made this copy change to the free usage email now, and the change to add a toggle for preventing runs when you run out of credits is going through CI.

Re: Surprise, pay $1000

#195

Post by gblargg »

zephen wrote: post #138
namenotrequired wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be perfectly crumulent if it was explicitly communicated in advance.

There are two possibilities here: 1) They intended a bait-and-switch, where they were going to go after everybody for non-payment. According to the article, they might not even have a leg to stand on here. 2) If you take the quote from the company at face value, they realized that their free quota would be insufficient for conversion for some customers, and decided not to shut off services in the middle of evaluation…

> In this instance, the bill is a communication in advance -- if you provide a credit card in order to keep using our services, we want to get paid for everything you used after the free limit.

That would be much more acceptable. If it worked out and you want to continue, you won't have a problem paying for the overage. If you decide it's not for you, then you can walk away and owe nothing. If it were communicated that way it would be a different situation.

Re: Surprise, pay $1000

#196

Post by esafak »

_pdp_ wrote: post #188
esafak wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also note that managing self-hosted runners with Kubernetes is no walk in the park.

Haha, we don't use Kubernetes. It is a single large server with plenty of space for runners. It is as simple and boring as it gets. The only fun part is that we use Firecracker for the actual runners. It is provides nice isolation and it is very easy to work with.

https://fireactions.io/ ?

Re: Surprise, pay $1000

#197

Post by idjsndndn »

tonnydourado wrote: post #152
Terr_ wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes me think of bank overdraft fees. They are another kind of "soft" cap, pitched as an automatic convenience to the customer... But in practice they are too-often deceptive and harmful. https://www.library.hbs.edu/working-knowledge/are-banks-the-...

When one of my sisters got her first paycheck from her first real job, she didn't knew much about banking, and thought that the overdraft limit on the ATM was her actual salary, so she just withdrew the whole thing. I think it took over a year, maybe two, to pay it all back.

[dead]

Re: Surprise, pay $1000

#198

Post by watermelon0 »

inigyou wrote: post #166
arusahni wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We still use GitHub Actions but our monthly bill is now flat because we pay for a server. Caveat here being that GitHub is exploring charging a usage-based fee for self-hosted GitHub Action runners [1]. While they've halted it for now, it's something worth being aware of as you assess your costs. This is probably a drop in the bucket compared to the order of magnitude savings you've described. [1]: https://github.b…

Allegedly this is because whenever you have a self-hosted runner, it's actually a Microsoft-hosted runner that is notifying your runner and then polling for it to complete. I wish I was joking.

Self-hosted runners make a ton of API calls during job execution, so they might not be completely wrong here.

Re: Surprise, pay $1000

#199

Post by watermelon0 »

inigyou wrote: post #167
baobabKoodaa wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main issue is that you deceptively communicated what happens at the end of the free trial. You decided to use the wording "disruption", which implies that workloads will be stopped, which is the opposite of what happened. This is deceptive and predatory. I will never use your software and after this happened I am AMAZED that anybody else (particularly OP, but also anybody who read this post) will continue to trus…

This whole incident supplied them a lot more publicity. I had never heard of them before today. Since today, I'm more likely to use them, not less, because now I know they exist. I couldn't be less likely than zero.

Why would you want to use a provider, that resorts to shady practices, especially since there are a lot of alternatives out there?

Re: Surprise, pay $1000

#200

Post by inigyou »

watermelon0 wrote: post #199
inigyou wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole incident supplied them a lot more publicity. I had never heard of them before today. Since today, I'm more likely to use them, not less, because now I know they exist. I couldn't be less likely than zero.

Why would you want to use a provider, that resorts to shady practices, especially since there are a lot of alternatives out there?

Who cares how bad the free trial experience is if the paying customer experience is good?
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