![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Fuck you with a porcupine.
No, seriously. You people. I can't even believe this one.
See, okay, a month or so ago,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jkivela, who is far sweeter than any human being deserves to know, bought me six months of paid time for my account, because, basically, I was bewailing that I did not have the money at that very moment to extend my paid time and having six icons was like having no freaking hands. Or however many I had. Whatever, maybe it was fifteen.
Today, I decided to uploadgraeae's Machines Of Destiny icon to comment to someone else's journal about a list of roleplays.
It turns out, this is not easy to do. I still had the 60-some icons that were inactive clogging up my account, and as far as I could recall from the last time this happened, I would have to delete every single goddamn one of the inactives AND one active (the one I wanted to replace happened to be an active) in order to put in the new icon. Ergo, the smart thing to do, since I intended to anyway was to buy an extra six months of paid time and then get a twelve month subscription to the extra userpics.
The part that makes me go "Bwuh?" is that, apparently in Livejournal's world, a gift is no longer a gift. Never mind that I absolutely refuse to sign up for automatic payments for something that I am not sure I plan to use that much longer (and bear in mind, if I had that confidence I would be a prime candidate for a Permanent Account, but no longer) but 6A is about two spinning clusterfucks from losing me entirely. The fact that we have gone some months without a spinning clusterfuck simply means that we're that much closer to the next one. Never mind that I am paying for things I don't want, like the continued modification of the site (see above about spinning clusterfucks) in with the things I do want. Never mind that there are increasingly fewer of the latter than the former. Never mind that the plateau in blogging has hit my flist, and hit it hard. I know a lot of people have wandered away from LJ in the last few months - in some cases due to changing personal circumstances, in others for reasons I know not.
Getting back on track: in LJ land, you used to be able to stack paid time - so that if I bought six months of paid time, it would run sequential tojkivela's gift, meaning that my actual paid-time expiration date would be, like, April 19th, 2008.
Used to.
In LJ-land right now, I would be given a prorated payment for the portion of time I have between my current expiration date and six months from today. Add to this the automatic credit card thing, which sounds a) way too freaking complicated to actually deal with and b) VERY VERY VERY much the way Encore got in BIG trouble when it was first introduced, many a moon ago: If you don't tell us you don't want this service, then we will continue to charge you for it even if you don't want it. And frankly, at this point, I am NOT giving my credit card to ANYONE who wants autopayments EXCEPT my webhost.
So basically, despite the fact that I am ready to buy! My credit card is in hand! I am already buying! I could not possibly, in LJ of today, actually buy a goddamn thing.
Except extra userpics and THREE WEEKS of paid time.
In fact, and I apologise that I am airing laundry in public, that makes whatjkivela did a hindrance rather than a gift and an expression of the fact that he as a person cares enough for me as a person to buy me a gift. It renders the gift meaningless because it is now actively obstructing me in doing something I want to do. And that pisses me off, because it was a gift, from a person I care for a lot and I don't want to resent that he took that time and made that effort (I don't, fyi, I'm just saying that if I were a meaner person I could). Gifts aren't supposed to fuck your shit up.
I can't go around now and buy userpics or whatever for my friends (not that I did that much, but occasionally), as far as I can tell. I suspect, in fact, that they're trying to drive people to the virtual gifts or something, instead of paid time.
I have three conclusions to come to from this.
1.) I will be writing a letter about this tonight. I have been meaning to followtheferrett's idea about writing to praise or complain once a week. As I lack a Treo to remind me to do it, it's not yet taken hold. However, this seems like a good start.
2.) LJ really really does not want anyone's business. If I can't GET six months of paid time when I BUY six months of paid time (and yes, I understand how prorating works, I know I'm not paying for time I'm not getting), if, in fact, they expect me to be johnny-on-the-spot about buying more paid time the very second my current paid time expires, they are mental. That's like going to the store and saying "I want this loaf of bread! Except only part of it! No, really, only part of it! I have no intention, ever, of needing or wanting an entire loaf of bread, so can you sell me two slices and then I'll come back and buy more slices for my sandwich tomorrow? And can you arrange for someone to mug me at the checkstand?"
3.) Whatever the hell they're planning to do in the next year is going to terrify the fuck out of me. Seriously. I can't think of any reason to actually alter the previous method that does not involve terrifying site changes. Come on - enough of us pay for every single transaction on our credit cards that micropayments are actually not appealing - I currently don't, but that's because of my bank, not anything else. Why on earth would I want to give LJ, let's say, $25.00 in two payments that I would have formerly paid a dollar on each transaction when I would infinitely prefer to give them one payment that I would formerly have paid a dollar on?
So fear what they plan, whatever it is. And you know what? It could in fact be the responsibility of the credit card companies or the states or something else, making them break the payments up that way. It could be related to the fact that they a) will not refund payments and b) are dealing with an audience (now, thanks to their attempts to be MySpace) that does not, in some numbers, have their own credit cards - mommy and daddy will get less pissed about their precious' using their credit card if they're only docked a non-refundable $1.81 rather than $15.00, but that's fallacious logic at best. And if it was anything out of their control, why would they not say that, in big type, all over the payment page?
In other words, if a corporation can't point a finger and say "Due to the Sorbanes-Oxley Act, we are required to not sell you sequentially-running paid-account add-ons, and we apologize for this," that means they can't point that finger.
Fear LJ. Their plans are scary.
No, seriously. You people. I can't even believe this one.
See, okay, a month or so ago,
jkivela, who is far sweeter than any human being deserves to know, bought me six months of paid time for my account, because, basically, I was bewailing that I did not have the money at that very moment to extend my paid time and having six icons was like having no freaking hands. Or however many I had. Whatever, maybe it was fifteen.Today, I decided to upload
graeae's Machines Of Destiny icon to comment to someone else's journal about a list of roleplays.It turns out, this is not easy to do. I still had the 60-some icons that were inactive clogging up my account, and as far as I could recall from the last time this happened, I would have to delete every single goddamn one of the inactives AND one active (the one I wanted to replace happened to be an active) in order to put in the new icon. Ergo, the smart thing to do, since I intended to anyway was to buy an extra six months of paid time and then get a twelve month subscription to the extra userpics.
The part that makes me go "Bwuh?" is that, apparently in Livejournal's world, a gift is no longer a gift. Never mind that I absolutely refuse to sign up for automatic payments for something that I am not sure I plan to use that much longer (and bear in mind, if I had that confidence I would be a prime candidate for a Permanent Account, but no longer) but 6A is about two spinning clusterfucks from losing me entirely. The fact that we have gone some months without a spinning clusterfuck simply means that we're that much closer to the next one. Never mind that I am paying for things I don't want, like the continued modification of the site (see above about spinning clusterfucks) in with the things I do want. Never mind that there are increasingly fewer of the latter than the former. Never mind that the plateau in blogging has hit my flist, and hit it hard. I know a lot of people have wandered away from LJ in the last few months - in some cases due to changing personal circumstances, in others for reasons I know not.
Getting back on track: in LJ land, you used to be able to stack paid time - so that if I bought six months of paid time, it would run sequential to
jkivela's gift, meaning that my actual paid-time expiration date would be, like, April 19th, 2008. Used to.
In LJ-land right now, I would be given a prorated payment for the portion of time I have between my current expiration date and six months from today. Add to this the automatic credit card thing, which sounds a) way too freaking complicated to actually deal with and b) VERY VERY VERY much the way Encore got in BIG trouble when it was first introduced, many a moon ago: If you don't tell us you don't want this service, then we will continue to charge you for it even if you don't want it. And frankly, at this point, I am NOT giving my credit card to ANYONE who wants autopayments EXCEPT my webhost.
So basically, despite the fact that I am ready to buy! My credit card is in hand! I am already buying! I could not possibly, in LJ of today, actually buy a goddamn thing.
Except extra userpics and THREE WEEKS of paid time.
In fact, and I apologise that I am airing laundry in public, that makes what
jkivela did a hindrance rather than a gift and an expression of the fact that he as a person cares enough for me as a person to buy me a gift. It renders the gift meaningless because it is now actively obstructing me in doing something I want to do. And that pisses me off, because it was a gift, from a person I care for a lot and I don't want to resent that he took that time and made that effort (I don't, fyi, I'm just saying that if I were a meaner person I could). Gifts aren't supposed to fuck your shit up.I can't go around now and buy userpics or whatever for my friends (not that I did that much, but occasionally), as far as I can tell. I suspect, in fact, that they're trying to drive people to the virtual gifts or something, instead of paid time.
I have three conclusions to come to from this.
1.) I will be writing a letter about this tonight. I have been meaning to follow
theferrett's idea about writing to praise or complain once a week. As I lack a Treo to remind me to do it, it's not yet taken hold. However, this seems like a good start.2.) LJ really really does not want anyone's business. If I can't GET six months of paid time when I BUY six months of paid time (and yes, I understand how prorating works, I know I'm not paying for time I'm not getting), if, in fact, they expect me to be johnny-on-the-spot about buying more paid time the very second my current paid time expires, they are mental. That's like going to the store and saying "I want this loaf of bread! Except only part of it! No, really, only part of it! I have no intention, ever, of needing or wanting an entire loaf of bread, so can you sell me two slices and then I'll come back and buy more slices for my sandwich tomorrow? And can you arrange for someone to mug me at the checkstand?"
3.) Whatever the hell they're planning to do in the next year is going to terrify the fuck out of me. Seriously. I can't think of any reason to actually alter the previous method that does not involve terrifying site changes. Come on - enough of us pay for every single transaction on our credit cards that micropayments are actually not appealing - I currently don't, but that's because of my bank, not anything else. Why on earth would I want to give LJ, let's say, $25.00 in two payments that I would have formerly paid a dollar on each transaction when I would infinitely prefer to give them one payment that I would formerly have paid a dollar on?
So fear what they plan, whatever it is. And you know what? It could in fact be the responsibility of the credit card companies or the states or something else, making them break the payments up that way. It could be related to the fact that they a) will not refund payments and b) are dealing with an audience (now, thanks to their attempts to be MySpace) that does not, in some numbers, have their own credit cards - mommy and daddy will get less pissed about their precious' using their credit card if they're only docked a non-refundable $1.81 rather than $15.00, but that's fallacious logic at best. And if it was anything out of their control, why would they not say that, in big type, all over the payment page?
In other words, if a corporation can't point a finger and say "Due to the Sorbanes-Oxley Act, we are required to not sell you sequentially-running paid-account add-ons, and we apologize for this," that means they can't point that finger.
Fear LJ. Their plans are scary.
From:
no subject
From:
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So I'll do the support request first, then the nasty letter, Just In Case. They might well have an error somewhere that is reading wrong - it could have been written in such a way that paid time + gift time stacks fine but gift time + self-purchased paid time doesn't or something.
And I will, regardless of result, be complaining about automatic payments. The thought of my credit card info in the hands of a company I don't trust to keep providing a service I want is one to chill my blood momentarily.
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no subject
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This is the first I've heard of this sort of trouble...
Good luck.
From:
no subject
... my brain does not work today.