I think this is good advice. If you're 99% sure you're going to end up paying for the thing, just skip the free trial and start paying.
Lesson learned.
16 karma · joined March 7, 2022
Lesson learned.
Also (and I'm guessing you agree with this): When you tell a customer they won't be charged until a certain date, you should probably either (a) know their timezone and adjust the billing date relative to that or (b) know the earliest date that they might get billed in their timezone and quote them that date rather than GMT, or (c) assume they could live anywhere and don't charge them before that date hits in the last possible timezone. Or just don't provide a date at all if you can't get the system to behave predictably.
(Some quotes below are from your child comment, but I wanted to respond to all of them in one place)
> Everything else is on the OP trying to game their system and screwing up.
I was attempting to use the free trial as designed -- a few days free, and then (if everything goes according to expectation), begin paying. Not sure how that's gaming the system, unless you feel that signing up for a yearly trial with the likely outcome of switching to monthly billing is "gaming the system." I would call it taking them up on their offer.
> The billing being slightly early seems like the only thing vimeo have done wrong here.
I'm glad you agree this was wrong. I live month-to-month, and their billing error could've been quite catastrophic for me. It brought my account below my monthly rent, which is due in a few days, certainly before I would get any sort of refund from them. Yes, this is not a good way to live, but it's my financial situation at the moment. Luckily I was able to get Venmoed the $240 from a family member which I instant-deposited into my bank account. I'm incredibly fortunate to have that privilege. Having a $240 charge pulled from your bank account sooner than agreed upon is a big deal for a large percentage of the world.
> doesn't rise to "predatory" in my book
Understood. In my book, it's predatory to offer a free trial for hosting content, and then when someone wants to switch from annual to monthly tell them the only way to do that is to have a lapse in the hosting.
Imagine you built a web app. You decide on a host, and -- oh look -- they have a free trial! Awesome. You sign up for the trial, give them your credit card info, post your website to Show HN.
People are visiting the site! You're rising on Show HN! Comments and the whole lot.
As your trial nears the end, you try to change from yearly to monthly billing. You find out the only way to do this is to... email support? Okay I guess. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt.
You reach out to support. And they inform you that you'll have to let the billing lapse in order to do this. When it lapses, the website will go down.
You're rising on Show HN, people are engaging with the site, and now you have to face the idea that hundreds of people will see a dead site... UNLESS you just pony up and pay the yearly fee. Now you're weighing paying more, or having your content disappear for a percentage of your visitors.
To me, this is clearly designed to force you into yearly billing. If that ain't a predatory practice in your book, I can accept that. We'll just have to disagree on the definition of predatory.
> they simply never bothered to build something to handle this extreme edge case
Again, I can accept you think this is an extreme edge case. I think that switching from yearly to monthly before your next billing cycle must be somewhat common, especially on a service as popular as Vimeo.
No idea if this is legit. I am remaining open yet skeptical. If it is a hoax, it's an elaborate one put on in Mexican congress under oath, so I consider it newsworthy for that reason alone. Not sure why the previous post about this was seemingly flagged and removed.
I'm not entirely sure whether I can early exercise. There's nothing about it in my contract though, so unless this is a default of some sort, I assume it's not possible for me. I can ask my employer though.
[1] https://serbinski.com/stock-option-compensation-us-and-canad...