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Bit.ly's shady business model

ozkatz.github.io

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Re: Bit.ly's shady business model

#21

Post by andrewvc »

This is absurd. I was the CTO at a startup with a small budget and looked into bit.ly. You know what I did? I looked at their damn TOS, because when you're running a business you look at ALL your third party service's TOS's. ESPECIALLY the free ones.

It was quite nice of bit.ly to voluntarily cut your bill. Instead of learning something valuable about how the market works you've shifted the blame to someone else.

You would do well to reflect on these events and ask yourself why instead of accepting your own error here you've pushed the blame onto bit.ly.

Re: Bit.ly's shady business model

#22

Post by davidblueit »

eduardordm wrote: post #11

If you click on "pricing" you will see this: "STARTING AT $995/month". I think that's pretty clear. Maybe the service changed and they started to charge and they didn't notify you. Link: https://bitly.com/a/pricing And a quote: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" - Robert J. Hanlon. --- Edit (please read this) Oz Kats said: "as of april last year when we signed up for bit.ly th…

there's no link to that page before signing up... no link from the home page that i can see. I think that's pretty unclear

Re: Bit.ly's shady business model

#24

Post by Tomte »

So basically you used a service that costs money, you didn't pay any, and now you're peeved that they'd actually like to collect?

> They could have dropped any other amount they wanted

They probably told you "the usual amount". Are there any grounds for suspicion that they are quoting you some outrageous price?

I don't see what could qualify as "shady" here.

And btw: from a very possible point of view they might think you didn't forget to read the small print, you deliberately tried to defraud them by acting as if you were non-commercial.

They can't look inside your head.

Re: Bit.ly's shady business model

#26

Post by Cakez0r »

I think it's perfectly reasonable that bit.ly would want to charge for heavy usage of their service and are unwilling to spend their resources helping another company migrate away from their service because they decided they don't want to pay for it. It's unfair to call out bit.ly as having a shady business model when you build a service that relies on a third party and don't even bother to do you due diligence and find out the licensing costs!

Re: Bit.ly's shady business model

#27

Post by Mvandenbergh »

So the only place that this mysterious information was documented (apart from Bit.ly's website) was in the TOS. In other words, the contract governing the relationship between the two businesses. Who would ever expect to look in such a place?

Re: Bit.ly's shady business model

#28

Post by quadlock »

It's one thing to not read the whole TOS for services you consume and pay for, but ignoring it when using it commercially? Don't blame them and call them shady. They have to pay their employees and server costs to provide you the service.

Re: Bit.ly's shady business model

#29

Post by davidblueit »

dangoldin wrote: post #3

Although it sucks I wouldn't claim it's a shady business model. It seems more like the obvious one - make the custom URL option paid and they have their pricing clearly laid out - https://bitly.com/a/pricing And you have a few days to crawl the URLs and see what you get.

the way the site is structured, the pricing only seems to be for the Bitly Brand Tools. There doesn't seem any other pricing info for just link shortening

Re: Bit.ly's shady business model

#30

Post by eduardordm »

davidblueit wrote: post #22
eduardordm wrote: post #11

If you click on "pricing" you will see this: "STARTING AT $995/month". I think that's pretty clear. Maybe the service changed and they started to charge and they didn't notify you. Link: https://bitly.com/a/pricing And a quote: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" - Robert J. Hanlon. --- Edit (please read this) Oz Kats said: "as of april last year when we signed up for bit.ly th…

there's no link to that page before signing up... no link from the home page that i can see. I think that's pretty unclear

"Learn More" then "Pricing" or any page that shows the product has the pricing link on the navigation bar.
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