Chiming in here since I noticed this thread linked to my thread from a few years ago.
Update on my situation (the original thread is locked for some reason): I still haven’t used Beeminder since my original post, and this is still mainly is the reason why. I stand by everything I said:
- While I don’t think the word “greedy” is helpful, it’s true by not letting you jump to amounts that actually motivate you (even though you’re paying a monthly subscription), BM is putting making money > making users awesome. This isn’t an assertion/projection, Dan said this is why you can’t short circuit.
- I find all the other defenses of the pledge schedule very flimsy, especially because if new/naive users were actually the problem, there’d be other ways to get around it.
- The claim “short circuiting would cost BM money” is a testable, empirical prediction. I would bet (~75%) it’s wrong.
- Not directly related, but came up in the other thread — whether BM would make more money with a lifetime plan is also testable. I bet it would. After my post, I even had someone privately message me asking if I’d sell mine to them (!). I paid ~$300 for my lifetime plan, and then ~3x that amount in pledges over a few years. I’m not even sure I would have signed up had I had to pay monthly.
All in all, everyone (and all the customers and people on this forum) at BM seem like very nice people, but like you @geoxcaliber I find all this very frustrating and have no plans to use BM anytime soon.