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Comment by davidu | Hacker News Reader

They renewed me without any reminder. I had forgotten about the service. That's irksome. And I'm willing to bet a VERY LARGE number of the renewals were people just like me.

There is no business there, and worse, they auto-renewed people without a single reminder it was coming.

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Same here. They did offer a refund in the email. My thoughts were that I like the idea and I didn't want to hit them with a refund. I switched off the auto-renew thinking I bet they'll send me an email to say my subscription is expiring and decide then if I want it again.

I'll bet 80% of subscribers have done likewise since the emails went out and next years update will be less rosy...

It sounds like they're just letting the campfire burn itself out, and I doubt next year's renewals are all that great of a concern. They wanted to get one last renewal in (to be "profitable") under the radar before essentially announcing that it is done.

You had already turned off auto-renew, and they billed you anyway ?

As far as I understand, he turned off auto-renew after they charged him and expects to be sent an email once his account expires so that he can decide again.

I received an email reminder with the subject line "Your App.net subscription will renew soon" two days before they charged my card.

I was waiting for them to do more with app.net than just a Twitter clone. I guess I'll be waiting a long time!

It would be really interesting to take a look at the finances, see where the money went.

The money went to payroll. That's always where the money goes. Sometimes it's payroll with a dash of marketing.

sometimes it's fucking _all marketing_, i worked at a place who burned through user acquisition and just spent that money on more user acquisition, but that's the exception, i think. ;)

The APIs allow developer to do significantly more than just be a "Twitter clone". Just a few examples:

File storage: https://directory.app.net/app/182/filebase/

Mobile group chat: https://directory.app.net/app/238/whisper/

Personal memory log: https://directory.app.net/app/229/ohai/

IRC style chat rooms: https://directory.app.net/app/145/patter/

Happened to me too.

I emailed them and gave me a refund.

Eeek, that's a bit slimy. The only reason I didn't get auto-renewed is that my credit card had expired.

Hey Matt, just to clarify, the reason you didn't get auto-renewed probably has more to do with the fact that they're billing annually combined with the fact that your credit card had expired. When billing monthly, about 4 out of 5 credit cards that are expired will just keep approving transactions that are recurring.

You may already be aware of this, but I mention it because it's a pretty common mistake to assume that expired cards will result in failed payments across the board, so if you didn't already know you may want to double check that there aren't other services you're not still paying for. ;-)

Not to mention, you still legally owe the service money even if your credit card isn't working. Many companies will automatically cancel your service, but if they don't, you're on the hook (since you did order the service).

Interesting, I was not aware of that! In this case, they chose to downgrade me to a free account.

Same here. I wonder how many cancellations they get today.

Follow-up: They renewed me. I downgraded my account. Rather than give me until the expiration of my term, I've now been downgraded immediately to the free tier. Now I'm going to ask for a refund.

Same for me, never got a reminder and the option to delete both accounts.

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