Ask HN: Enough is enough on screwing your loyal customers: re: Pingdom
What do I mean? Example:
Pingdom is currently offering 70% discounts for new customers. You pay for a year, you get a 70% discount.
Normally I would be OK with this. But with Pingdom, your not only screwed by the discount if you choose to remain with them but your screwed upon your renewal that you do NOT get the text messaging bundle.
With Pingdom, if you have an outage you can tell it to send you an SMS message as well as an email.
When you sign up for Pingdom you get 250 of these included with your signup. If you RENEW though, which happens automatically after your year is up. You DO NOT get these text messages.
You have to buy them separate, and the cost is an additional ~$40 I believe.
So not only do you NOT get the 70% discount. You do NOT get your text message allocation refilled.
You are literally getting screwed every time you renew. So what do you do? Delete the account, sign up as new, and re-enter all of your hosts, settings, checks, etc. It's a pain in the ass.
Is this acceptable and reasonable?
To me, it is not. I voted with my dollar. I went to a competitor and I've been very happy. I went to nodeping.
I emailed Pingdom about it and while I think they run a good service -- they don't know crap about building loyalty. In the email, they essentially said they have no plans to change it... and I'm guessing they never will until more customers switch.
/end rant