Video on blog was $20, now $80. No notification = Bad business.
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Look at that. response tally is:
direct to Support & Matt — 0
WordPress staff replies in the forums — 2 -
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@letters… Our blog is a personal family blog. Posts are restricted and keeping the video on WordPress was the only way to ensure it wasn’t visible outside of our intended audience.
Oh, and I agree, $60 a year for video hosting is a huge jump.
Compare that to the costs for any other consumer video hosting service which, for the biggies, are zero. So I was fine with the $20 because I needed the space anyway.I havent priced disk space ont he internet but one check of Amazon S3 is
First 50 TB $0.150 per GB / month.
That’s 15¢ a gigabyte on Amazon.
WordPress’ Space Upgrade is $4 a GB.
So I guess the VideoPress pricing makes sense. ;-)
(or maybe WordPress ought to resell Amazon S3 space at $200% profit)@tellyworth… If you look at it from _now_ I can see your viewpoint.
If you look at it from the original viewpoint that, a $20 Space Upgrade gives you video. Okay, I pay for that. Oh, wait, suddenly, and without any direct notice, it doesn’t. What the hell?It’s like AT&T offering unlimited data for $20 a month. That’s the service. You buy it.
And then, without any notice to you, suddenly you can’t push photos to facebook or your blog. Well that’s because the owner of AT&T decided that the test is over and that pictures or video now cost $60 and the space to keep them costs $20. He did mention it in passing on one of the thousands of pages and posts on the company’s web site. But didn’t feel any reason to let you know that the service you paid for isn’t going to do what they said it would when you bought it. No formal announcement. You should just pay $80 for what you were originally told would cost $20.You know how the phone companies handle this?
The contract you signed is honored till you change it.
Even if you pass the 2 year end, the prices and services you were offered remain yours till you need to… add a handset, change your minutes, etc, which will NOW be at the new terms / rates.
When all the carriers made 9pm the new “night” of “nights & weekends” I still had 7 pm for nearly a year after my 1 year contract ended because that’s what I was offered when I bought my service. I was grandfathered in at the rate/service that I was originally offered. They honored the deal they offered me & I bought.That’s all I want here. Honor the service/price agreement I was promised.
WordPress can charge new customers anything they want, and those people can make their own cost/performance assessments based on that.Oh, and, @Tellyworth, I agree that the service is very good. Video is good. In fact, that’s part of the problem that @tbol3 notes: the need for all that space.
As Matt revealed in his casual post on this issue: “when you upload a video… we’ll crunch it into several different formats just right for streaming on the web, DVD quality, HD quality, and even optimized for iTunes and Miro.”
Can I delete all but the one version I want to save space? No. Who decided that my one video upload would have 5 + versions stored and counted against my available space. Looks like you’ll need a Space Upgrade more than ever, even if you “officially” don’t need one with the VideoPress upgrade.
You know, it just made more sense the old way: “Video is included in the Space Upgrade.” Because, well, if you’re uploading video, you’re gonna need a lot more space a helluva lot faster than if you were just pushing a couple appropriately compressed images per post.
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Raincoaster & Timethief, I appreciate the time you spend on these forums and my beef is not with you or the other volunteers like SacredPath who offer their time and knowledge to help.
I agree, Solutions = 0 but not through any fault of those like you who are dedicated to make WordPress a great place to create.
My beef is with Matt & those who,
A) enacted a rate/service change not indicated when the service was originally offered & purchased,
B) never directly notified any of the paying customers who were already relying on that service,
C) failed to honor the agreements that were sealed when the service was paid for by the customers. -
I quite see your point, and thanks for that. WP.com is a great service with communication skills that need improvement. I’ve clashed with them over that issue myself from time to time.
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Monday, Noon, central. Still no direct response from the mothership.
I hope they realize they way they did what they did wasn’t in the spirit of “awesome features and improvements that you see here every month.”(1) Maybe they’re discussing ways to straighten this out, and how to best inform those who still don’t know they won’t be able to upload video after May 11th, 2010 (2) unless they are prepared to also pay $60 in addition to whatever Space Upgrade they may already be paying for.
Maybe WordPress will do something great.
Maybe they’ll be like Apple and say nothing because customer’s aren’t worth clear, caring communication.
I hope for the former.———————
1. http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2009/12/08/november-wrap-up-3
2. http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2009/05/11/videopress
Matt is not clear as to when the “one-year free video upgrade” actually started and when it expires. Just one of the many problems in this fiasco. -
Hold the presses, I received an e-mail from, well, someone named Nick. Didn’t give leave a last name so I don’t take it all official that they’re really dealing with this issue. I’ll pass along what he had to say because I’m sure there are many people interested in this issue, even if they aren’t posting here.
Nick said, and I still dont’ know if this is the official WordPress word on this:
“We will not delete your content and it will continue to be available even if you do not renew the upgrades. Where did you read that we would?”The point is that I never read WordPress wouldn’t.
For a company in the business of enabling communication,
WordPress really needs to do better at communicating.Show me the page where you explain, in detail, by date:
– When the Space Upgrade _no longer_ included video?
– When those with the Space Upgrade were secretly gifted with a temporary Video Press upgrade?
– When will that VideoPress upgrade end?
– What will you do for those who paid for the Space Upgrade thinking it was providing Video when, in reality, it was a much more expensive VideoPress upgrade they never knew they had that was doing the work? -
If there are blogs about WordPress for those who use the service, let me know so I can inform them of this issue and they can write about it what they want. If they don’t think it’s an issue, no coverage. If they see that their readers may be surprised when they can no longer upload video, and then further stunned that it’ll cost an extra $60, then they can post a news tidbit about it. But I don’t know who to tell.
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@littlesophia I agree that some of the finer points of VideoPress are not well documented. We’re working on that. (We’d rather fix stuff than make press releases)
Re your questions about when each upgrade started and finished, those are answered (briefly) here:
Space upgrades purchased after that date didn’t include video. Those who had active space upgrades on that date got a free 1 year VideoPress subscription, starting then. It wasn’t secret, it was posted on our news page and shown in dashboard notifications.
“we have now extended a one-year free video upgrade” – in other words, starting on that date, and lasting one year.
Thus, everyone who purchased a space upgrade when it was advertised as providing video did in fact get a VideoPress subscription that lasted at least as long as their space upgrade subscription. No active subscribers lost the ability to upload video, none were slugged with an extra $60 fee.
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I’m sorry, but that’s just plain wrong.
First, as a paying customer, I expect direct notification that my service has changed and how.
I first Purchased the Space Upgrade on June 1, 2008.
It was made clear at the time that this was the only way to host video ON WordPress.
No other option. No “test” period. No limited time offer.Then, as you attest, Matt posts on “Just Another WordPress Blog” (Not very official sounding, is it?) “for those that helped us test it we have now extended a one-year free video upgrade.” This was May 11, 2009.
This is in the middle of my Terms of Service, which didn’t end till June.
This CHANGED what I paid for in the MIDDLE of my active service.
I WAS NOT notified that what I paid for no longer did what I was paying for.A post on a blog does NOT count as notifying paying customers.
Think of how many services you use, home phone, cell, ISP, cable, water, electricity, gas, credit cards, bank loans, My Yahoo or Google, e-mail service, Facebook, twitter, campfire, wordpress, and on and on… Imagine having to check every single one of those companies, every single day, for possible blog posts that might, just maybe, indicate that a service you use has drastically changed. NO. It is the responsibility of those providing service to directly notify those served about any changes. You get the letters from the credit card companies all the time. “Our terms of service have changed…”
Direct. Individual. Notification.
BEFORE the change.NOT, “oh, and by the way, we already changed the service…”
So, without direct notification, in June 2009, I renewed by Space Upgrade to continue uploading video. But I paid for a service that did not do what I was told it did when I initially bought it because the provider failed to properly represent the service at renewal- indicating how it had changed since I first subscribed to it.
I never said any users “were slugged with an extra $60 fee.” You did.
I don’t want WordPress to make a “press release.”
That’s as useless as Matt’s after-the-fact blog post.I want paying customers to be respected so that they are notified of upcoming changes BEFORE they happen. The changes are explained in detail, with specific dates that don’t require someone else to use “in other words” to try and explain it. Those paying customers should then be given the option to continue using their service as paid till it expires (which WordPress did cover with the one year free VideoPress upgrade), or opt out and be refunded a pro-rated amount of their money. This way they do not pay for something that does not actually provide the service they were promised.
I’m dismayed that WordPress staff are still under the misguided belief that what has transpired is okay, right, or even legal. I’m dismayed that the proper treatment of PAYING customers isn’t a higher priority than “fixing stuff.”
This isn’t a “finer point” that is “not well documented.”
It’s an inter-state binding financial transaction / agreement.
You CAN’T just go and change a paid service on a whim. -
ya i agree I use squarespace for business services but for just blogging wordpress is awesome sorry they got you
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I agree. WordPress is an awesome CMS.
I pay for it with my business blog.
I have no issue paying for service- as long as I get what I pay for.I was marketed a service. ($20/yr Space Upgrade = video on WordPress servers.)
I bought it.
Then, in the middle of my paid contract, they took the video service out.
. . . (which is illegal by the way)
They didn’t notify me of the change. (which I also think is illegal, but I’m not sure)I had to find out on my own that was I used to pay $20 for, would now cost $80.
A 400% increase.
What other service increases that much- and keeps you as a customer?
What other service increases that much, and doesn’t feel the need to directly notify you, a paying customer, of the change?No.
The right thing to do is to “grandfather” those who bought the “$20/yr Space Upgrade gets you video” service until they terminate the Space Upgrade service they bought.I just notified all the readers of my blog that video will cease to exist on my blog, barring WordPress doing the right thing and honoring the contract I was sold.
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Littlesophia said, “What other service increases that much, and doesn’t feel the need to directly notify you, a paying customer, of the change?”
My only thought was….a credit card company. LOL
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Oh and I’m sorry if I might of made light of the situation, I do understand how important all this is to you. :/
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@aprilrein, Maybe WordPress will,
but all indications so far are no.Matt sent me a short direct letter. By short I mean one sentence.
He said he agreed with what staff have written here.That’s really disappointing that there wasn’t any more concern,
even if it was feigned concern.
WordPress isn’t even capable of that.
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