Hacker News Reader

Comment by deng | Hacker News Reader

I'm probably not the only one who got an email from "Brandon Saltalamacchia" with

  We're giving you a full 30-day trial of Kagi Professional because we know you'll      
  love it. Click "here" to activate your trial, no strings attached.

Well, clicked on it, saw that OF COURSE it'll convert to a normal subscription after the trial, which I usually wouldn't have a big problem with, but this is clearly a string that is very much attached. This kind of BS communication does not leave a good impression on me.

View on HN

Trial does not convert to subsription automatically, you got that wrong. It is just how Stripe trial code works. We may may mistakes from time to time but Kagi is not and never will be in the business of BS communication or deceiving customers. Fighting against those kind of practices and bringing sanity to the web is the entire reason I started the company.

Thank you for chiming in, it is really appreciated. This is what I see when trying to redeem this:

https://imgur.com/a/NJvCagh

I apologize for getting this wrong, but I hope you can see that it is very hard to parse this any other way than "This is a Kagi Professional subscription, which is free during the first 30 days and will cost you $11.90/month afterwards".

(Unfortunately, I cannot edit my parent post anymore to correct this)

Hi - I am the engineer @ Kagi who works on billing things.

From my understanding (at least with the way we do trials at the moment), it will always say "and then X per month" even if the trial is to cancel at the of the period. I do not believe Stripe (our payment processor) has any options to change this behavior from their built-in checkout page that we use.

The options they do let us control (and options we do set) are if there is no payment method given during the trial - it will cancel it at the end of the trial. If a payment method is given during the trial, then Stripe will it set it to auto-renew by itself (and as far as I know, this is true for if a payment method exists beforehand).

Stripe does not let us control this like it does for no payment method, but we can do a simple workaround on our end to get around this. For what it is worth, there is a warning email is sent out 7 days before if it will renew.

As Vlad (freediver) mentions though, it is definitely not our intention to be misleading or anything like that. I hope that makes sense and clears things up.

A few weeks ago, I saw a blog post here about their new billing policy[1]: if you don't use Kagi during a month, they'll pause your subscription. Personally, because of this one feature of their subscription, I don't feel too bad about such "trial schemes".

I'm not affiliated with Kagi, nor am I a paid customer.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42944371

Again: I usually would not have a problem with this at all. All I'm asking for is honest communication. It's not difficult. In this case, just write: "If you subscribe to Kagi Professional now, we'll give you the first month for free!". I probably would have taken that offer.

I got that email too. When it wanted my credit-card number I didn't have my wallet by my side so I thought I'd do it later. When I remembered the next day and wanted to give it a try again I was told I had already used the code.

Guess not then.

Heyo, did you try recently? We had some bugs initially but released some fixes to make the experience better afterwards.

If you try again - it should work just fine. If it does not, you can always contact support@kagi.com and we'll get it fixed asap.

As for the credit-card number, the form should not ask you for a card. It will ask you for your name and address for tax purposes, should you continue the trial afterwards but it will not ask for your card number. We've had some other people mistake this form for a card form as well. (and if it somehow is, then definitely contact support with screenshots because that is not expected)

Hey Seth!

Thank you for reaching out, sorry I only just now saw it. I just tested it and it indeed work without any problems now and I successfully started my 1 month professional sub. I think what confused me about needing a credit-card was the stripe(? I think) checkout form :D But you are right, it didn't actually want my credit-card number after putting in my address.

Much appreciated the help!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com