The scenario I laid out is less than Zwift…Zwift is $15 / month. At $125, TR is $10.41.
Wahoo Systm is $15 / month, $129 / year…
In addition, there is the opportunity cost of changing plans…how do you analyze historical data, the hassle of changing over, etc.
And you would still have a 34% discount vs. the current TR yearly rate.
So would you walk at $125 / year?
Again, not trying to be an ass, I’m trying to move past an emotional reaction and see where the rubber really meets the road.
Yes I’d walk.
To wit. I am a lifetime gold member of a calorie tracking app; cronometer. I paid a large sum up front in its early days to have gold access forever. The business went subscription and now the gold membership is worth a lot on a yearly basis. They transitioned to a subscription model when the started to scale. Instead of booting me to a yearly subscription or limiting my features, they have honored the gold membership promise. This has been after many many years later and counting.
Another app where I paid upfront, Ulyssess, which said they’d have gold access forever if you paid upfront, went back on that promise a few months after taking my money and rolled me over into a yearly subscription. I ended my subscription and have been able to convince many people to not deal with the program because they do not honor their promises.
Look, fundamentally, a promise was made. Trust has been built and formed. A breach of that trust means I wouldn’t be able to trust the company in the future. I wouldn’t trust someone who went back on their word for similar reasons. It is simple.
I would suggest that if they really want to develop additional new things that expand beyond what the app had originally intended…they go get external funding, develop new business lines (i.e. streaming a live workout / q.a. session over twitch) or monetize existing free services (i.e. podcast) for increased cashflow, or even undertake the development of a tri-focused separate app as many of the ambitious project ideas fall under that. There are options outside of hosing subscribers who have supported the company for many many years by going back on a promise made in the early days.
I think there is a vast difference between a few months and the legnth most Legacy customers had their subscriptions. This can be seen as both a positive and negative.
And I think there were assumptions made on all parties about what composed that promise…please see Nate’s post above.
Oh, if you want to see things change quickly, just wait and see what happens if they get outside investments.
This analogy is still flawed.
The bike analogy is this:
You are renting a bike for $3K a year. For that price you get complete support to keep the bike working, tuned, all equipment safe and functional and ready to ride at a moment’s notice. For the last 11ish years, every so often, when you go jump on the bike you notice they’ve upgraded it. In fact, it’s not even the same bike any more it’s been upgraded so often. The frame, wheels and components have all been replaced with new stuff over the years. This is a pretty good deal and you sense that there is an implicit promise from the company that they will continue to do this indefinitely for $3K per year.
Now you’re being told, if you keep paying $3K per year, it will continue to be maintained for you, new tires, new pads, wheels trued etc. It’ll be safe and functional in its current form.
But, if you want it to be upgraded to 13 speed next year, or ABS the year after that (don’t laugh, you know it’s coming) you’ll need to pay $5K per year going forward. As a matter of fact, it might continue to increase depending on market conditions.
I don’t think I’m opposed to seeing my rate go up with time. I think the legacy pricing program could be transformed into a guarantee to have fixed pricing for N years, and then to change with the market. I’d probably leave pricing alone for customers who have been continuous subscribers for the first 1-3 years.
I don’t like tiered programs.
I seriously doubt I’d walk at that price. At those figures, I wouldn’t have enough incentive to switch knowing what I know about Zwift/Systm.
You know what I’d pay full price for, happily? TR pushing workouts into zwift. That’s my dream.
Also, I know you aren’t being an ass. It’s cool.
well… i may have jumped the gun too early assuming that they will do what they vented about doing on the podcast so, ok… lets chill, wait and see
If i had to re-write my post i would summarize to two key points: 1 - They can’t have my money both ways. 2 - I’m not an investor on TR, i’m an user of TR. That completely changes the perspective on how you’ll see these price increases and the way they are justifying it to us.
I haven’t read all 731 posts, but a quick question. Isn’t every one grand fathered in. If prices were to go up, wouldn’t those who are at the old $189 become grand fathered following @Nate_Pearson promise?
More than one way to increase capital than just increasing prices.
I’m grandfathered in at $99 yearly. I have considered other training systems, xert, suf mainly, but with AT coming online and new things always rolling out, I’m staying on board here. When considering those, it feels almost unfair that I pay so little, but Nate is trying to keep his word about grandfathering in this price. I respect that. Would I pay more for new features? Absolutely.
Thanks for the response…again, these are the kinds of details that a more structured research project could get at.
Yeah, I posted on the “Zwift Premium Membership” thread that I would gladly pay $5 / month to push my TR workouts into Zwift and they can split the proceeds. Similarly, they could charge Zwift members an extra $10 / month for access to TR workouts through Zwift.
The effect for legacy users is that the price would increase, as expectation is all new features available at no extra cost. Rationality doesn’t factor in when emotions are at play. Entitlement is being threatened.
That’s an odd reading of the comments by legacy users. Where does “entitlement” come from when all that has been done is an application of promises made and future expectations based on past behavior?
We’re having this conversation without understanding the data. What percentage of the user base does not pay the current full rate? What is the churn rate? How many of the users that do not pay the full rate (grandfathered/legacy) who continue to pay annually would have churned without the grandfathered pricing promise?
Nate has all this data, we do not, being bitter toward the “sense of entitlement” that legacy users have isn’t helping the conversation, nor is making assumptions about how people should respond to a price rise and/or breaking the original promise.
I’ll say it again, I’m one of those users would have churned years ago if it weren’t for the pricing cap, that “feature” is what has kept me paying TrainerRoad annually for going on 8 years now, I suspect there are many just like me.
I totally support this assessment. When adaptive came out, the sleeper feature was trainNow. Spinning that out into its own product without the baggage of calendaring and periodisation is the sub product. But nobody on legacy wants to just get that. So the discussion on what to do with legacy users is separate from the decision on product.
Paraphrasing Khoi Vinh of Subtraction.com. Design is improved not by adding features, but subtraction.
Ditto. Unfortunately, TR has made a number of promises through the years that have remained unfulfilled for far too long. That certainly plays a role in how I view this issue. Personally, if TR had fixed their previously released features as promised prior to developing additional features such as AT, I’d have no problem paying more. As it is, I don’t even want to continue paying the $99 a year I’ve been paying. I think that is a lot of what we are seeing on this thread. The legacy pricing issue is just the straw that’s breaking the camel’s back for a lot of us. TR has acknowledged AT needs further work and have said they are working to improve it. Those of us that have been around long enough to enjoy legacy pricing have heard the same thing said about many of the other features TR has developed, but the improvements never came. Why should we pay more under the assumption that TR will actually improve AT such that it functions as intended for a broad base of users? The pattern that they have established through the years is that they will leave AT as is and move on to developing the next big marketable feature.
Please read my previous posts. I believe I have communicated those quite well.
Copy that. I didn’t know you had prior posts with related info. Looking now.
Upon review, I have a different take on those points and don’t consider any of those “promises” or broken, but that’s just me.
We’ll just have respectfully agree to disagree. As someone that has been renewing their TR membership based on comments on this forum from TR staff members clearly indicating that they were going to provide master’s plans to address my aforementioned posts and fix the calendar such that we could import other activities…it is just terribly disappointing when those drag out for years while even more unperfected features are continuing to be released. The fact that my first post has received the most likes in this entire thread is a good indication that I am not alone. Cheers!