{"id":37095,"date":"2022-09-21T15:55:24","date_gmt":"2022-09-21T19:55:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=37095"},"modified":"2022-09-22T15:58:03","modified_gmt":"2022-09-22T19:58:03","slug":"fogbugz-auto-upgrades-free-and-dormant-plans-to-paid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2022\/09\/21\/fogbugz-auto-upgrades-free-and-dormant-plans-to-paid\/","title":{"rendered":"FogBugz Auto-Upgrades Free and Dormant Plans to Paid"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joseph Ruscio<\/a> (Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n

@FogBugzTeam\n sending me an email today that you are auto-upgrading and intend to start charging me tomorrow for a free account I haven’t logged into for (checks notes) … 13 YEARS is a bold move.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Aleksandar Vacić<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

If your account is inactive for a long time then FogBugz\/IgnoreTech will remove it. Their support page says they do that.<\/p>\n

But does not delete the account actually. They keep it anyway.<\/p>\n

So yesterday (!) they sent me an email that they are automatically upgrading my account to some paid tier and starting today (!) they will begin charging subscription.<\/p>\n

For a service account which does not even exists anymore.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

I used the free plan for 8 years or so and can’t really complain about it becoming paid. Were I still using FogBugz, it would be worth the cost. But this was not handled well. First, they shouldn’t start auto-billing accounts that were dormant. Second, the communication was terrible. I received an e-mail on September 16th saying that they would start billing in one month. Then I received a second e-mail<\/a>, which I almost skipped over because it seemed to be saying the same thing, except that this one said they would start billing on September 17th, i.e. 6 hours<\/a> from the time the e-mail was sent. That e-mail contained a link to a FAQ, which redirected to Zendesk—it was kind of a red flag when they stopped using their own product for support—and the URL returns a 404 because the Zendesk account is closed. Fortunately, unlike some others, I was able to log into my account and close it.<\/p>\n\n

alexjplant<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

I’m more concerned about them affecting my credit score... these clowns haven’t a legal or moral leg to stand on but there’s no way to cancel the free account that I haven’t touched for 7 years. The hyperlink to my instance 500s and their support portal is either broken or disallowing new user registrations (despite me trying three browsers, two devices, and spending 10 minutes in the dev console manually enabling various buttons for password setting on the new account page and trying their ZenDesk URL instead of the custom one). Any emails to their customer success address tell users to log into this nonfunctional support portal.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Anil Dash<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

I don’t recommend anyone do business with them, whether as a customer or anything else; I was CEO of Fog Creek when we decided to sell FogBugz, and if I knew the difference between what we were told ahead of the deal and what happened after, I never would have approved it. I didn’t see that they’d done this latest shitty thing until now but I really lament that they’ve sunk to an even lower new level.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n