I saw the blue line request at the top of the page the first day of the renewal campaign, but was going to ignore it due to budgetary concerns. Then I got the e-mail request, spelling out the terms, that even though it was a bit early, it would be added to the end of the current subscription. So I figured I'd go for another year and clicked on the "Click here to extend your subscription term now" link.
So, instead of getting the choice of length of extension (1 or 2 years) all I saw was a button for 2 years. "My, how quaintly devious" I thought to myself. A knee jerk reaction would have been to try to find a way to get a message to Smugmug about what a crass bunch of kapitalists they were (spelling intentional), but I knew it was futile to complain, so I went ahead and pushed the Renew button. I "saved" about twenty dollars, but it was almost fifty more than I wanted to spend right now.
I guess it looks good to their board of directors if they can show more folks renewing for two years, but in the long run that is one year they won't be able to gain anything from an inevitable future increase. So next year will I get another request to "extend" my subscription at the higher locked-in rate of $59.99/1yr instead of whatever the new rate will be? And then tricked into another two years? What do they gain by that? Because by then I just might be of the mind that I could care less if all my photo work disappears from the ether.
Flickr is a good thing, and I'm not disparaging the site at all, feeling that it is worth what I have to pay for it. But playing around with the membership numbers is going to get them in deeper problems further down the line.
PF
