I always thought it is rather common to have free users limited to FAQs and articles/tutorials rather than access to 24/7 phone (and other) support.
(please excuse my ignorance here, but I haven't seen this mentioned)
Self-help timetables are unlikely to be acceptable to the third and fourth parties.Any technical or implementation issue is likely to be high priority for the customer. People tend not to have small payment issues even for nominal amounts.
On top of that your service should not need that much support to begin with.
Are you sure you're not just piling on here?
Are you ?
I didn't see a sign at the door that said that only chargify customers can speak.
> For instance: why should Chargify not need that much support to begin with?
Because every other payments service that I've ever used (and that's quite a few of them) didn't need that either.
Download integration guide, spend a day figuring things out, test, fire & forget.
> Are you sure their business model isn't "get people to pay a premium for support"?
It could be.
> Are you sure you're not just piling on here?
Yes, I'm quite sure. For the record, I built 'webpay', one of the very first web payment services so I have a bit of knowledge in what goes in to a payment service and a bunch of people I know run an IPSP. When this whole thing blew I put up a bunch of things that were not too hot about how this was/is handled and that was before anybody else wrote as much as two lines about it. If you want to accuse me of 'piling on' then I'm sure you could find a better example to make your case.
Nobody incurs this sort of brand damage for research purposes.
It is not reasonable to take offense at a business getting their initial pricing wrong. Everybody gets their initial pricing wrong.
I seriously think Chargify might be making a bigger communications error now than they did by pulling the bandaid off on their new prices. They're creating uncertainty about whether they'll revert to old pricing, or create some "wash the dishes for your meal" freemium model. If they need to be charging this new rate to make the business make sense, it's their business, and it is fundamentally and totally and categorically their call to make.