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Comment by nikolay | Hacker News Reader

I have hundreds of cards! Why are you forcing me to do this?! I have no time! Honestly, I'd probably just move to my main card, which almost never changes! Tomorrow you may decide to do something again! I really don't have time to babysit this! You should grandfather all cards and allow customers to change them if they want, otherwise, they should be valid till their expiration date! You're asking us to do a lot of work during the holiday season - this is crazy, really!

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I don't quite have hundreds of Privacy cards, but I have quite a few, and many for subscription services. Though I understand and welcome the core reason for the change, forcing users to do this migration in December—of all months—really necessitates a grim view of the value of our time and energy.

The pre-paid debit product was limited, but far from broken. This could and should have waited another month. And the news shouldn't break on HN.

(I work at Privacy.com)

I'm super sorry for the inconvenience and for the limited lead time. Unfortunately, this change wasn’t fully within our control and was required by our card partners.

Then as someone else said, stop telling customers and users the exact opposite. I wrote more here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29432683#29449389

You tried to sugarcoat this - to pretend like forcing customers to change dozens of cards in December was exciting - and in the process, lost all trust. You could have simply described the problem honestly and transparently.

There needs to be more transparency about how your partners forced you to this course of action and on this timeline, because this is going to seriously hurt your reputation and business. That sounds like an abusive partner, who doesn’t care about you. Or they make for a convenient scapegoat.

FWIW, Privacy cards, like all credit cards, have expiration dates so you'd have to refresh all your cards eventually anyway.

What I'm wondering is: why am I hearing about this over HN and not an official notification or email? Did I just miss it?

> why am I hearing about this over HN and not an official notification or email?

I logged in (to create a new card, so I could try out Oracle cloud), saw the notification and searched my email (saw nothing..) and searched HN (saw nothing..) then posted it.

I'm really kinda shocked I was the first, and, even more shocked it blew up as much as it did. I just checked back now (11 hours later -- it's been a busy day testing out that oracle cloud account, among other things) and this went crazy.

Yeah, but they don't expire within 30 days!

Or at the same time

I agree with this. Not having to fiddle with changing cards was the main selling point that made me switch to Privacy, after my debit card was canceled 2 times in a month for “fraud” (it wasn’t -- they were legit purchases). I also have over a hundred cards, and subscribe to the paid plan. This is a huge inconvenience, especially given the short timeline and holidays. I wish this was handled better for older virtual cards.

Also, I haven’t received any email about this change.

I got the email yesterday. Those people live in ivory towers and probably don't use their own product! I have 4 weeks to move hundreds of cards, I'm a paying customer, and they just twist my arms to do this without actually thinking about making this easier for their clients! The prepaid status of the card was an issue, but when Divvy switched from MC to Visa, they had like 3+ months, when old cards worked, and you got the option to reissue them as Visa ones one by when at your convenience!

My main card changes all the time because it keeps getting somehow obtained by fraudsters, and then cancelled. I checked and this is true these days of many of my friends too.

It's definitely inconvenient when it does, especially when that involves updating a bunch of different accounts/vendors.

> I have hundreds of cards!

oh yeah, well I have 167 bajillion!*

*I really don't; I do wonder what you're doing with hundreds of monthly payments though.

You do realize that people use Privacy for business too, right? And virtual cards are not limited to monthly payments. I have one for a local coffee shop that I occasionally do an online order for.

Yes, those are not all recurring, most are just one per merchant, generated via 1Password.

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