Comment on German thermostat company Tado locks previously free app behind fake paywall, claiming it's "marketing tests"

CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

• tiramichu@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  It was to figure out if they /really did/ start charging for it, how many people would actually pay.

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  • wewbull@feddit.uk ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I’d rather they found a business model that made them stable, rather than exploiting their current customers. Fact is, if they go bust then there’s à bunch of people left high and dry.

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    • tiramichu@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      One could argue that Tado should have had more certainty about their business model before they started selling promises they couldn’t keep, but that’s business I suppose.

      Presumably Tado anticipated they could capture customers on a free tier and upsell later, but it turns out that when customers have a fully functional basic tier, they generally don’t want to pay money for extras they don’t care about.

      And so now, Tado are left with an online service that costs them money to run, but no ongoing revenue. So of course they will try to monetise the subscription.

      Of course, part of the problem is that customers have almost been conditioned to expect cloud stuff to be free. And so that’s the price Tado tried to aim for, and now that is causing problems.

      Either way though, what they are doing now represents “changing the deal” Darth Vader style - the product previously was a one time purchase and then free after, and they are now trying to make it paid after selling it as free. And that is bad.

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      • wewbull@feddit.uk ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        If they brought out new features and charged for those I think most would understand. However since the V2 they basically done nothing in R&D. That’s 6-7 years ago.

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• cecilkorik@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  We can helpfully answer that for them by making sure they get sued.

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