we're ready to launch Beeminder Premium for real

[dreev]

I think there’s a more fundamental reason Paul is All Wrong:

The whole point of paying for N>1 month is that you get a big discount
by committing for the whole N months. So we don’t auto-cancel you
early or even give you credit for not using all of the chunk you paid
for. If you’re not sure you’ll use a big chunk, pay at higher
frequency. Like Bethany says, it’s pretty crazy generous that we
auto-cancel these subscriptions at all! (Or just crazy slimy that not
doing so is the norm.)

One other quick thing to respond to for those who may not hear me say
this all the time:

If they’re failing often enough to get a higher tier, you’re probably
delighted that they’re going to start making custom goals they then
might proceed to fail.

I just pointed this out in the blog comments but it turns out only 6%
of our revenue is from people who make one pledge, fail, pay it, and
walk away. Most people put up money, fail, pay up, put up more money,
fail again, and keep doing that indefinitely. Except they’re obviously
not just failing. They could do that without Beeminder for much
cheaper! They’re in fact mostly staying on on their yellow brick roads
punctuated by occasional derailments, the cost of which is well worth
it for the value Beeminder provides. Because Beeminder makes you fail
less. If you never fail you’ll never pay, but then you must not have
needed Beeminder in the first place.

On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 10:33 PM, Bethany M. Soule bsoule@beeminder.com wrote:

Wait, are not subscriptions typically auto-renew whether you like it or
not? If credit cards didn’t expire I’m pretty sure I would still be paying
for AOL circa 2004 in Pullman WA, a website about historical undergarments
circa 2010 and a hundred other things that seemed worth it for a minute and
then about which I promptly forgot.

If Beeminder were a service with discrete units of service, such as a
Netflix clone where you paid per view of movies, or a cell phone plan where
you are paying for minutes I might expect behavior like you describe -
essentially rollover of unused units of service. But given that Beeminder
(and premium) is a service where you are paying to access and the entire
point is long-term goal setting and behaviour change – something I would
have trouble thinking of in discrete units-- it seems to me that stopping
charging your credit card once you go away is incredibly generous given the
precedent.

<3 B

On Apr 2, 2013 8:13 PM, “Paul Fenwick” paul.j.fenwick@gmail.com wrote:

Paul, your frequent derailer miles idea is smart. It reminds me of
another
idea a friend just gave us: a partial refund of your derailment if you
re-up.
We’re nervous about ideas like that since they mitigate Beeminder’s
sting.
And of course that sting is our whole value proposition!

It’s not very much of a sting reduction, and it does mean that your
biggest
earners automatically start getting priority support and features.
If they’re failing often enough to get a higher tier, you’re probably
delighted that they’re going to start making custom goals they then
might proceed to fail.

Also to Paul, your confusion about what an auto-canceling subscription
means:
I’m thinking it doesn’t matter much. In your version you could save
money by
buying a year but having it last 2 years by using Beeminder every other
month. In practice I think you’d either use it every month or you’d stop
altogether.

My biggest worry is users feeling slighted if they interpreted
‘auto-pause’
the way I did, and then discovered it wasn’t the case. For example, sign
up
for a year, use bmndr for two months, stop using it for whatever reason
(failed/succeeded all goals), and then coming back six months after that.
Discovering six months of lost subscription when they expected an
auto-pause
is going to be awful.

I’d be inclined to explain on the second page (where one confirms the
subscription) that account plans come with an auto-renew, but this
won’t happen if (a) you ask it not to (available via settings → Beemium),
or
(b) your beeminder account is inactive (no data submitted in the last 30
days).

The opt-out is in settings for choice architecture reasons. Requiring
just an itty bit more effort to opt-out will result in higher auto-renew
rates.

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[Paul_Fenwick]

Oh, I should have said that you want to think about what to do about
people wanting to game the premium levels. Do you suspend people’s
custom goals if they drop below Bee Lite? Do you get people to pay
some pro-rated amount for skipping levels if they adjusted them using
Beemium? Are you just happy that the number of people gaming these
goals will be low enough that you’re happy for them to gain some level
of advantage because you’ve got some of their money regardless?

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 4:54 PM, Paul Fenwick paul.j.fenwick@gmail.com wrote:

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 4:33 PM, Bethany M. Soule bsoule@beeminder.com wrote:

Wait, are not subscriptions typically auto-renew whether you like it or
not? If credit cards didn’t expire I’m pretty sure I would still be paying
for AOL circa 2004 in Pullman WA, a website about historical undergarments
circa 2010 and a hundred other things that seemed worth it for a minute and
then about which I promptly forgot.

Well, you still need a way for people to cancel their subscription
other than having their credit card expire, right?.

I have an aversion to things which auto-renew, simply because my
default behaviour (like most humans) is “do nothing” and then I get
charged. I’m the sort of person who’ll pay for a six-month
subscription up front and then immediately unsubscribe, so I have to
make a conscious opt-in decision to renew in six months time. I would
not be surprised if this sort of behaviour was common amongst the sort
of people who would find beeminder appealing.

Plus, I game everything. Do I need a custom goal? Okay, I’ll buy one
month of Bee Lite, create all the custom goals I need, and then
cancel the subscription, presuming that my custom goals stick around
(if they don’t, then that’s a motivation for me to remain a
subscriber). Do I want to move to a high pledge level? I’ll buy one
month of Beemium and get that adjusted.

I think that not auto-renewing is incredibly generous, but as
previously discussed my interpretation of the text was very different
the actual reality. I’m not saying that you should have an
auto-pause that works the way like I thought it did in my head¹, but
you don’t want people thinking it works that way by accident. This can
be easily avoided with a hyperlink / hover-text on auto-pause,
explaining what it actually means. (Or maybe that’s explained after
hitting subscribe but before confirming my subscription? I haven’t
pressed any of the buttons yet.)

<3 P

¹ The auto-pause that I’ve described is common in a few games targeted
at a casual audience. Puzzle Pirates immediately springs to mind as
having many ‘30 day’ features that don’t tick down if you don’t log in
that day.

[Paul_Fenwick]

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 4:56 PM, Daniel Reeves dreeves@beeminder.com wrote:

I think there’s a more fundamental reason Paul is All Wrong:

o_O??

I think it’s pretty clear that my words are being interpreted in a
different fashion to that in which they were intended. So let’s try
this again from the top.

I personally found the text “If you stop using Beeminder, we
automatically pause your plan” to be ambiguous. I think it would be
improved by having a hover-text or hyperlink which explains this in
more detail.

Paul

[Paul_Fenwick]

Also, on a brainstorming note, other things which you might want to
consider for paid subscriptions are things for stats/data nerds.
Things like the turquoise swash, skinny purple line, CSV download,
plotting all data points, and even possibly SMS data entry could well
be made subscription-only features.

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 5:27 PM, Paul Fenwick paul.j.fenwick@gmail.com wrote:

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 4:56 PM, Daniel Reeves dreeves@beeminder.com wrote:

I think there’s a more fundamental reason Paul is All Wrong:

o_O??

I think it’s pretty clear that my words are being interpreted in a
different fashion to that in which they were intended. So let’s try
this again from the top.

I personally found the text “If you stop using Beeminder, we
automatically pause your plan” to be ambiguous. I think it would be
improved by having a hover-text or hyperlink which explains this in
more detail.

Paul

[dreev]

o_O??

No, sorry, I was just piling on. I do see what you mean, and we do
need to explain auto-canceling, and we’re definitely glad you pointed
out that there are multiple possible interpretations. I was mostly
objecting to the term “auto-renewing” since that kind of makes it
sound presumptuous when in fact it’s a million times less so than
other subscriptions to web services (except maybe the game example you
cited). I mean, if it’s “subscribing” to a “premium plan” then it goes
without saying that we charge you monthly or yearly or however often.
We just want people to appreciate how differently we’re doing this in
automatically suspending subscriptions people aren’t using instead of
just laughing all the way to the bank every month at all the people
who’ve forgotten to cancel.

As for gameability, we are delighted to have you help us explore the
corner cases! So far I think we’re just going to handle them the
most generous way (allow subscribing for a month and canceling just to
do a one-time short-circuit, etc) and reevaluate if more than a
handful of people are exploiting the loopholes. You’re also right that
the API lets you do all the customizing of the goals that Bee Lite
does.

Brainstorming note: SMS is a good candidate. I’m not sure about CSV
download – that might feel like we’re holding your data ransom. We’re
proud that we’ve had that since the very beginning and might not feel
good about yanking it now. I guess all existing users could be
grandfathered, but still. I’m also adding fancy data nerd features
like the turquoise swath to the premium feature candidates. Good
point. Anything confusing to newbees but valuable to veterans is a
perfect candidate to make premium.

Man, pricing/freemium is tricky! Really appreciate all the help in
thinking this stuff through.

–
http://dreev.es – search://“Daniel Reeves”
Goal tracking + Commitment contracts == http://beeminder.com

[dy1]

Have only skimmed thread but agree that auto pause is confusing.
Better to just go with people’s default that it will be auto renew and
since you’re cust svc is good, super easy to cancel.

From what I just saw on instacart - people don’t really blink at auto
renew but confusing or changing terms ignites anger.

I would also consider a plan expensive enough you can include personal
training via Skype. Like once a month get a video call from a
Beeminder coach to better understand how your goals are going. Not
exciting for us since you feel accessible as our friend but people
love access.

Sent from my iPhone

On Apr 3, 2013, at 3:53 AM, Daniel Reeves dreeves@beeminder.com wrote:

o_O??

No, sorry, I was just piling on. I do see what you mean, and we do
need to explain auto-canceling, and we’re definitely glad you pointed
out that there are multiple possible interpretations. I was mostly
objecting to the term “auto-renewing” since that kind of makes it
sound presumptuous when in fact it’s a million times less so than
other subscriptions to web services (except maybe the game example you
cited). I mean, if it’s “subscribing” to a “premium plan” then it goes
without saying that we charge you monthly or yearly or however often.
We just want people to appreciate how differently we’re doing this in
automatically suspending subscriptions people aren’t using instead of
just laughing all the way to the bank every month at all the people
who’ve forgotten to cancel.

As for gameability, we are delighted to have you help us explore the
corner cases! So far I think we’re just going to handle them the
most generous way (allow subscribing for a month and canceling just to
do a one-time short-circuit, etc) and reevaluate if more than a
handful of people are exploiting the loopholes. You’re also right that
the API lets you do all the customizing of the goals that Bee Lite
does.

Brainstorming note: SMS is a good candidate. I’m not sure about CSV
download – that might feel like we’re holding your data ransom. We’re
proud that we’ve had that since the very beginning and might not feel
good about yanking it now. I guess all existing users could be
grandfathered, but still. I’m also adding fancy data nerd features
like the turquoise swath to the premium feature candidates. Good
point. Anything confusing to newbees but valuable to veterans is a
perfect candidate to make premium.

Man, pricing/freemium is tricky! Really appreciate all the help in
thinking this stuff through.

–
http://dreev.es – search://“Daniel Reeves”
Goal tracking + Commitment contracts == http://beeminder.com

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[musegarden]

I agree with Paul on the point of the smartphone apps being available to
everyone. I know one of the reasons I have been using Beeminder so
consistently is that the mobile app makes it easy to input data and I am
often on the go. I can’t see myself sticking with it as well if that wasn’t
a feature for all new users.

Allison

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 7:17 AM, David Yang david.g.yang@gmail.com wrote:

Have only skimmed thread but agree that auto pause is confusing.
Better to just go with people’s default that it will be auto renew and
since you’re cust svc is good, super easy to cancel.

From what I just saw on instacart - people don’t really blink at auto
renew but confusing or changing terms ignites anger.

I would also consider a plan expensive enough you can include personal
training via Skype. Like once a month get a video call from a
Beeminder coach to better understand how your goals are going. Not
exciting for us since you feel accessible as our friend but people
love access.

Sent from my iPhone

On Apr 3, 2013, at 3:53 AM, Daniel Reeves dreeves@beeminder.com wrote:

o_O??

No, sorry, I was just piling on. I do see what you mean, and we do
need to explain auto-canceling, and we’re definitely glad you pointed
out that there are multiple possible interpretations. I was mostly
objecting to the term “auto-renewing” since that kind of makes it
sound presumptuous when in fact it’s a million times less so than
other subscriptions to web services (except maybe the game example you
cited). I mean, if it’s “subscribing” to a “premium plan” then it goes
without saying that we charge you monthly or yearly or however often.
We just want people to appreciate how differently we’re doing this in
automatically suspending subscriptions people aren’t using instead of
just laughing all the way to the bank every month at all the people
who’ve forgotten to cancel.

As for gameability, we are delighted to have you help us explore the
corner cases! So far I think we’re just going to handle them the
most generous way (allow subscribing for a month and canceling just to
do a one-time short-circuit, etc) and reevaluate if more than a
handful of people are exploiting the loopholes. You’re also right that
the API lets you do all the customizing of the goals that Bee Lite
does.

Brainstorming note: SMS is a good candidate. I’m not sure about CSV
download – that might feel like we’re holding your data ransom. We’re
proud that we’ve had that since the very beginning and might not feel
good about yanking it now. I guess all existing users could be
grandfathered, but still. I’m also adding fancy data nerd features
like the turquoise swath to the premium feature candidates. Good
point. Anything confusing to newbees but valuable to veterans is a
perfect candidate to make premium.

Man, pricing/freemium is tricky! Really appreciate all the help in
thinking this stuff through.

–
http://dreev.es – search://“Daniel Reeves”
Goal tracking + Commitment contracts == http://beeminder.com

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[dreev]

Oh man, this is why we can’t have nice things!
You’re saying that we can just do the standard slimy thing with no
explanations or fine print needed (it’s what everyone expects, after
all) but if we want to do this super sensible and (relatively
speaking) generous thing (automatically not charge you if you haven’t
used Beeminder lately) then we have to add so much explanation that it
makes people suspicious, or even angry at being mislead that
auto-canceling meant something even more generous.

I really like it how we have it now. Simply, “If you stop using
Beeminder, we automatically pause your plan. We only want your money
if you’re actively getting value from Beeminder!”

Maybe we could change “pause your plan” to “stop charging you”, to
avoid the interpretation Paul points out.
I think I’ll also change the headings from like “$64 for 7 months” to
“$64 every 7 months” just in case you fixated on that phrasing and end
up surprised at being charged again 7 months from now.

(Yeah, after some tweaking, I’m liking this. Basically avoid the
ambiguous term “pause” and never give the impression that you’re
paying a one-time fee, except if you buy lifetime. We’ll push the
tweaked version later today. Thanks again, everyone! Keep the feedback
coming!)

PS: Reminder of this offer:
I’m curious if anyone can figure out how we compute the discount
percentage quoted above the slider. First one to do so gets a Beemium
subscription for the price of Plan Bee (or Plan Bee for the price of
Bee Lite)!

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 4:17 AM, David Yang david.g.yang@gmail.com wrote:

Have only skimmed thread but agree that auto pause is confusing.
Better to just go with people’s default that it will be auto renew and
since you’re cust svc is good, super easy to cancel.

From what I just saw on instacart - people don’t really blink at auto
renew but confusing or changing terms ignites anger.

I would also consider a plan expensive enough you can include personal
training via Skype. Like once a month get a video call from a
Beeminder coach to better understand how your goals are going. Not
exciting for us since you feel accessible as our friend but people
love access.

Sent from my iPhone

On Apr 3, 2013, at 3:53 AM, Daniel Reeves dreeves@beeminder.com wrote:

o_O??

No, sorry, I was just piling on. I do see what you mean, and we do
need to explain auto-canceling, and we’re definitely glad you pointed
out that there are multiple possible interpretations. I was mostly
objecting to the term “auto-renewing” since that kind of makes it
sound presumptuous when in fact it’s a million times less so than
other subscriptions to web services (except maybe the game example you
cited). I mean, if it’s “subscribing” to a “premium plan” then it goes
without saying that we charge you monthly or yearly or however often.
We just want people to appreciate how differently we’re doing this in
automatically suspending subscriptions people aren’t using instead of
just laughing all the way to the bank every month at all the people
who’ve forgotten to cancel.

As for gameability, we are delighted to have you help us explore the
corner cases! So far I think we’re just going to handle them the
most generous way (allow subscribing for a month and canceling just to
do a one-time short-circuit, etc) and reevaluate if more than a
handful of people are exploiting the loopholes. You’re also right that
the API lets you do all the customizing of the goals that Bee Lite
does.

Brainstorming note: SMS is a good candidate. I’m not sure about CSV
download – that might feel like we’re holding your data ransom. We’re
proud that we’ve had that since the very beginning and might not feel
good about yanking it now. I guess all existing users could be
grandfathered, but still. I’m also adding fancy data nerd features
like the turquoise swath to the premium feature candidates. Good
point. Anything confusing to newbees but valuable to veterans is a
perfect candidate to make premium.

Man, pricing/freemium is tricky! Really appreciate all the help in
thinking this stuff through.

–
http://dreev.es – search://“Daniel Reeves”
Goal tracking + Commitment contracts == http://beeminder.com

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–
http://dreev.es – search://“Daniel Reeves”
Goal tracking + Commitment contracts == http://beeminder.com

[Apneet_Jolly]

Daniel -
Well, you already told us you were doing a time value of money calculation, using the discount, and you have the exact function for how you compute the % in the source…so what do you need figured out here? I’ll take a Plan Bee sub

Btw, I prefer the “”$64 every 7 months"" wording.

-Jolly

var rate = 0.03;         // generous discount rate (36%/year)
var rr = 0.001666666667; // real rate (2%/year)
var months = steps[ui.value];
var discount = Math.round(100*(
  1-((Math.exp(months*rate)-1)*(Math.exp(rr)-1)/
     (Math.exp((months-1)*(rate-rr))*
      (-1+Math.exp(rate))*(Math.exp(months*rr)-1)))
));

// = If the user picks the lifetime.
var discinf = Math.round(100*( // discount for lifetime subscription
(1-Math.exp(rate-rr))/(1-Math.exp(rate))
));

-----Original Message-----
From: akratics@googlegroups.com [mailto:akratics@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Daniel Reeves
Sent: Wednesday, April 03, 2013 3:39 PM
To: akratics
Subject: Re: we’re ready to launch Beeminder Premium for real

Oh man, this is why we can’t have nice things! You’re saying that we can just do the standard slimy thing with no explanations or fine print needed (it’s what everyone expects, after
all) but if we want to do this super sensible and (relatively
speaking) generous thing (automatically not charge you if you haven’t used Beeminder lately) then we have to add so much explanation that it makes people suspicious, or even angry at being mislead that auto-canceling meant something even more generous.

I really like it how we have it now. Simply, “If you stop using Beeminder, we automatically pause your plan. We only want your money if you’re actively getting value from Beeminder!”

Maybe we could change “pause your plan” to “stop charging you”, to avoid the interpretation Paul points out.
I think I’ll also change the headings from like “$64 for 7 months” to
“$64 every 7 months” just in case you fixated on that phrasing and end up surprised at being charged again 7 months from now.

(Yeah, after some tweaking, I’m liking this. Basically avoid the ambiguous term “pause” and never give the impression that you’re paying a one-time fee, except if you buy lifetime. We’ll push the tweaked version later today. Thanks again, everyone! Keep the feedback
coming!)

PS: Reminder of this offer:
I’m curious if anyone can figure out how we compute the discount percentage quoted above the slider. First one to do so gets a Beemium subscription for the price of Plan Bee (or Plan Bee for the price of Bee Lite)!

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 4:17 AM, David Yang david.g.yang@gmail.com wrote:

Have only skimmed thread but agree that auto pause is confusing.
Better to just go with people’s default that it will be auto renew and
since you’re cust svc is good, super easy to cancel.

From what I just saw on instacart - people don’t really blink at auto
renew but confusing or changing terms ignites anger.

I would also consider a plan expensive enough you can include personal
training via Skype. Like once a month get a video call from a
Beeminder coach to better understand how your goals are going. Not
exciting for us since you feel accessible as our friend but people
love access.

Sent from my iPhone

On Apr 3, 2013, at 3:53 AM, Daniel Reeves dreeves@beeminder.com wrote:

o_O??

No, sorry, I was just piling on. I do see what you mean, and we do
need to explain auto-canceling, and we’re definitely glad you pointed
out that there are multiple possible interpretations. I was mostly
objecting to the term “auto-renewing” since that kind of makes it
sound presumptuous when in fact it’s a million times less so than
other subscriptions to web services (except maybe the game example
you cited). I mean, if it’s “subscribing” to a “premium plan” then it
goes without saying that we charge you monthly or yearly or however often.
We just want people to appreciate how differently we’re doing this in
automatically suspending subscriptions people aren’t using instead of
just laughing all the way to the bank every month at all the people
who’ve forgotten to cancel.

As for gameability, we are delighted to have you help us explore the
corner cases! So far I think we’re just going to handle them the
most generous way (allow subscribing for a month and canceling just
to do a one-time short-circuit, etc) and reevaluate if more than a
handful of people are exploiting the loopholes. You’re also right
that the API lets you do all the customizing of the goals that Bee
Lite does.

Brainstorming note: SMS is a good candidate. I’m not sure about CSV
download – that might feel like we’re holding your data ransom.
We’re proud that we’ve had that since the very beginning and might
not feel good about yanking it now. I guess all existing users could
be grandfathered, but still. I’m also adding fancy data nerd features
like the turquoise swath to the premium feature candidates. Good
point. Anything confusing to newbees but valuable to veterans is a
perfect candidate to make premium.

Man, pricing/freemium is tricky! Really appreciate all the help in
thinking this stuff through.

–
http://dreev.es – search://“Daniel Reeves”
Goal tracking + Commitment contracts == http://beeminder.com

–
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Goal tracking + Commitment contracts == http://beeminder.com

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[dreev]

Oh, right, the source.
Ok, but to win you still have to paraphrase it in your own words!
(Particularly the “pay all at once for 94% off” which had me pretty
confused how to work out the math till I did it carefully from first
principles.)

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 1:28 PM, Apneet Jolly jolly@ajollylife.com wrote:

Daniel -
Well, you already told us you were doing a time value of money calculation, using the discount, and you have the exact function for how you compute the % in the source…so what do you need figured out here? I’ll take a Plan Bee sub

Btw, I prefer the “”$64 every 7 months"" wording.

-Jolly

var rate = 0.03;         // generous discount rate (36%/year)
var rr = 0.001666666667; // real rate (2%/year)
var months = steps[ui.value];
var discount = Math.round(100*(
  1-((Math.exp(months*rate)-1)*(Math.exp(rr)-1)/
     (Math.exp((months-1)*(rate-rr))*
      (-1+Math.exp(rate))*(Math.exp(months*rr)-1)))
));

// = If the user picks the lifetime.
var discinf = Math.round(100*( // discount for lifetime subscription
(1-Math.exp(rate-rr))/(1-Math.exp(rate))
));

-----Original Message-----
From: akratics@googlegroups.com [mailto:akratics@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Daniel Reeves
Sent: Wednesday, April 03, 2013 3:39 PM
To: akratics
Subject: Re: we’re ready to launch Beeminder Premium for real

Oh man, this is why we can’t have nice things! You’re saying that we can just do the standard slimy thing with no explanations or fine print needed (it’s what everyone expects, after
all) but if we want to do this super sensible and (relatively
speaking) generous thing (automatically not charge you if you haven’t used Beeminder lately) then we have to add so much explanation that it makes people suspicious, or even angry at being mislead that auto-canceling meant something even more generous.

I really like it how we have it now. Simply, “If you stop using Beeminder, we automatically pause your plan. We only want your money if you’re actively getting value from Beeminder!”

Maybe we could change “pause your plan” to “stop charging you”, to avoid the interpretation Paul points out.
I think I’ll also change the headings from like “$64 for 7 months” to
“$64 every 7 months” just in case you fixated on that phrasing and end up surprised at being charged again 7 months from now.

(Yeah, after some tweaking, I’m liking this. Basically avoid the ambiguous term “pause” and never give the impression that you’re paying a one-time fee, except if you buy lifetime. We’ll push the tweaked version later today. Thanks again, everyone! Keep the feedback
coming!)

PS: Reminder of this offer:
I’m curious if anyone can figure out how we compute the discount percentage quoted above the slider. First one to do so gets a Beemium subscription for the price of Plan Bee (or Plan Bee for the price of Bee Lite)!

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 4:17 AM, David Yang david.g.yang@gmail.com wrote:

Have only skimmed thread but agree that auto pause is confusing.
Better to just go with people’s default that it will be auto renew and
since you’re cust svc is good, super easy to cancel.

From what I just saw on instacart - people don’t really blink at auto
renew but confusing or changing terms ignites anger.

I would also consider a plan expensive enough you can include personal
training via Skype. Like once a month get a video call from a
Beeminder coach to better understand how your goals are going. Not
exciting for us since you feel accessible as our friend but people
love access.

Sent from my iPhone

On Apr 3, 2013, at 3:53 AM, Daniel Reeves dreeves@beeminder.com wrote:

o_O??

No, sorry, I was just piling on. I do see what you mean, and we do
need to explain auto-canceling, and we’re definitely glad you pointed
out that there are multiple possible interpretations. I was mostly
objecting to the term “auto-renewing” since that kind of makes it
sound presumptuous when in fact it’s a million times less so than
other subscriptions to web services (except maybe the game example
you cited). I mean, if it’s “subscribing” to a “premium plan” then it
goes without saying that we charge you monthly or yearly or however often.
We just want people to appreciate how differently we’re doing this in
automatically suspending subscriptions people aren’t using instead of
just laughing all the way to the bank every month at all the people
who’ve forgotten to cancel.

As for gameability, we are delighted to have you help us explore the
corner cases! So far I think we’re just going to handle them the
most generous way (allow subscribing for a month and canceling just
to do a one-time short-circuit, etc) and reevaluate if more than a
handful of people are exploiting the loopholes. You’re also right
that the API lets you do all the customizing of the goals that Bee
Lite does.

Brainstorming note: SMS is a good candidate. I’m not sure about CSV
download – that might feel like we’re holding your data ransom.
We’re proud that we’ve had that since the very beginning and might
not feel good about yanking it now. I guess all existing users could
be grandfathered, but still. I’m also adding fancy data nerd features
like the turquoise swath to the premium feature candidates. Good
point. Anything confusing to newbees but valuable to veterans is a
perfect candidate to make premium.

Man, pricing/freemium is tricky! Really appreciate all the help in
thinking this stuff through.

–
http://dreev.es – search://“Daniel Reeves”
Goal tracking + Commitment contracts == http://beeminder.com

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Goal tracking + Commitment contracts == http://beeminder.com

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Goal tracking + Commitment contracts == http://beeminder.com

[tkadlubo]

On 04/03/2013 12:14 AM, Daniel Reeves wrote:

Oh, sorry, yes, we need to clarify that somewhere. Freebees
(pledgeless goals) are just ones that start without a pledge. If you
derail you still have to pledge (not pay) to unfreeze. The idea is to
close the loophole where you create a new goal each time you derail so
you don’t have to ever pledge. “weight”, “weight2”, “june-weight”,
“for-real-this-time”, etc. Now only Plan Bee and Beemium folks can get
away with that.
I like that. Precommit-to-recommit closed one loophole into which I often fell. Now this feature
closes another one.

Best regards,

Tadeusz Andrzej Kadłubowski