Bye, Evernote! Have been 'upgraded' from long-term 'Premium' (59.99€) to 'Personal' (99.99€) without any 'upgrade' notice!!

[Feitz 212]

Last time I checked my subscription on Oct. 10th it said that my next renewal on Nov. 22 would again be 'Premium' at 59.99 €. 

Being suspicious I checked again today and surprise, surprise, my Premium subscription had been silently  'upgraded' to 'Personal' at 99,99€. 

I haven't received any note of the coming 'upgrade', no eMail, no notification in Evernote. The only way to find out was actively checking my subscription page in the account settings.

I was aware that Premium is no longer available for new customers but I have not received any information from EN that existing Premium subscriptions would be 'upgraded'. 

@Federico Simionato This is not how I expect a company to do business with long-term customers !!!  They manage to plaster you with update notes for V10, so it should be possible to inform customers of an end to their existing subscription plan. 

Before the 'upgrade' I intended to pay for another year and see how EN develops and whether V10 would eventually transform into something usable.

They made the decision for me, so I will cancel my subscription and use the remaining month to move my stuff out of Evernote.

Evernote indeed was my second brain for more than a decade but with V10 being the utter rubbish I will not pay 100€ and eventually be forced to use V10.

 

[PinkElephant 8,279]

Check your Spam folder, ask support.

[agsteele 2,975]

It was announced that Plus and Premium plans were being withdrawn when a user next renews. All were upgraded to Personal until the renewal date. You get a reminder of the new rate about a month before renewal.

At that point you have the option to do nothing and renew at the new rate, drop to Free or leave completely. Leaving completely feels, to me, like cutting ones nose off to sleep the face. On Free you at least keep access to your notes and can continue to use your account subject to Free limits. That can give you the chance to make a plan without losing anything.

 

[Feitz 212]

Just now, PinkElephant said:

Check your Spam folder, ask support

I regularly check my spam folder. Why should I contact support?

[PinkElephant 8,279]

You read the answer by @agsteele ?

You should check your Spam folder because that’s the first place to check if you miss a communication.

You may contact support if you want to communicate with EN - the forum is user2user.

[Feitz 212]

1 minute ago, agsteele said:

It was announced that Plus and Premium plans were being withdrawn when a user next renews.

Assuming that every user checks the forum regularly, which probably 99% don't. 

I read about this possibility some time ago, that's why I checked mid October and saw that my renewal would be at 59.99€. Since then there was NO notification nor any news on the forum I am aware of.

If I was convinced that V10 would develop into a viable solution for me I would probably bite the bullet, but for the time being I don't see this.

Someone mentioned that he intended to cancel and then got a 40% rebate offer if he stays, if that happens I might reconsider.

I found a very good alternative for me that I wanted to test further before the switch but I will have to speed that testing up to see if it works as advertised (not Bear, Notion, Devonthink etc.).

[Feitz 212]

4 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

You may contact support if you want to communicate with EN - the forum is user2user.

I know but support was unresponsive last times I checked and this topic might concern other users as well.

[agsteele 2,975]

2 minutes ago, Feitz said:

Assuming that every user checks the forum regularly, which probably 99% don't. 

I'm not sure I first saw it in these forums but whatever. You have time to make your plans. Good luck with whatever you decide. 

[Feitz 212]

Just now, agsteele said:

Good luck with whatever you decide. 

Thank you, I'll post my solution if it works out as planned.

[Feitz 212]

9 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

You may contact support if you want to communicate with EN

In my book not me but Evernote should communicate when they set you to a more expensive subscription plan...

[WilliamL 658]

Is this a joke? How many times do they need to announce the price changes before the penny drops? It’s utterly astonishing someone is posting this acting as if this is new or hidden information, unless they have been on Mars avoiding this change is some feat. 

[Feitz 212]

Just now, WilliamL said:

Is this a joke? How many times do they need to announce the price changes before the penny drops?

Point is, they didn't announce it outside of the forum, and on the forum it was by far not clear how long existing premium subscriptions would continue.

It is standard practice to write an email to customers when a price rise occurs to give them the opportunity to accept it or not.

[PinkElephant 8,279]

No problem from my side with discussing it here.

But in general to reach EN there is support, and there is the feedback function. The forum is user2user.

[bmcl26 521]

They do write to customers four weeks before renewal.  I was fortunate to have a renewal date two days before the new rates were applied to existing subscribers which was one month later than they were applied to new customers.  I renewed at the same rate as last year.  I have just checked my account and it shows next year's renewal price as the same as I paid this year.  I fully expect to get an email four weeks ahead of next year's renewal quoting the updated price.  This has been the same every year since I joined in 2011 so no great surprise.

[Feitz 212]

5 minutes ago, bmcl26 said:

They do write to customers four weeks before renewal.

If that happens I'll post it here. So far no communication whatsoever and they already 'upgraded' me on the subscription page.

I would assume they inform you before or at least at the same time they put you on a different and more expensive subscription model which. 

[WilliamL 658]

38 minutes ago, Feitz said:

and they already 'upgraded' me on the subscription page.

Wait hold on a sec, so they have not billed you yet but upgraded you? - ie given you all the benefits of the pro tier but for less than the rest of us paid for it?We should be the ones complaining if people are getting upgrades from lower cost tiers to the same as ours for less money surely?

If your billing isn’t due yet, you won’t get the email yet, it will come when billing is near, until then if I have understood you correctly you have been upgraded for free and seem to find this insulting….im bewildered. 

[s2sailor 2,341]

1 hour ago, WilliamL said:

Wait hold on a sec, so they have not billed you yet but upgraded you? - ie given you all the benefits of the pro tier but for less than the rest of us paid for it?

Well, in one sense, he was downgraded, like we all were.  Under the old plan premium was the top tier.  Now it is professional. When they converted all of us premium users over to the new plan, premium members were moved to the new personal plan.  If you wanted to be in the top tier again you have to upgrade to professional. IIRC the new personal plan was similar (maybe same) as the old premium plan, so not really a downgrade.  I saw it more of a plan name change.

[gazumped 11,766]

1 hour ago, WilliamL said:

so they have not billed you yet but upgraded you?

The OP said "my next renewal on Nov. 22 would again be 'Premium' at 59.99" so no immediate upgrade,  just an out of date notification. 

As it happens Evernote put up the prices (in April) and notified users (well,  they told me) a month before the actual date of the actual new prices applying.  I feel Evernote is worth the cost so I renewed.  I didn't renew with my car or household insurance,  because their prices went up too - in their cases,  unacceptably.  I went somewhere else.  It happens. 

If Evernote's price increase seems unreasonable,  then the sensible thing to do is to find an alternative.

 

[s2sailor 2,341]

3 hours ago, Feitz said:

I haven't received any note of the coming 'upgrade', no eMail, no notification in Evernote. The only way to find out was actively checking my subscription page in the account settings.

I was first aware of the change coming in the forum, but I just checked my email history.  My upgrade date is Aug 24, and they sent me an email on July 27.  I saw the account name change earlier in my account as well.  I think they just flipped the switch on all of the accounts at once.  They could have done it differently but it was probably easier to convert the plans all at once.

 The big issue is deciding if you want to continue with the price hike and stay on v10, or move on to something else.  There are many options and opinions out there.  Good luck with your decision.

[agsteele 2,975]

14 minutes ago, s2sailor said:

When they converted all of us premium users over to the new plan, premium members were moved to the new personal plan.  If you wanted to be in the top tier again you have to upgrade to professional. IIRC the new personal plan was similar (maybe same) as the old premium plan, so not really a downgrade.

Unless you were a Premium plan subscriber locked in to an even old price in which case you kept exactly the same service you'd always had, at the old price (which did get an increaseawhile back) but minus a few of the new features. The rest of us, having been re-branded as Personal, subsequently had an increase in price to the new levels.

I think the old Plus and Premium plans were inevitably going to go and, it seems, now is the time.

[PinkElephant 8,279]

There were Premium users who had a permanent rebate. These were not lifted to the new Personal level, which had some additional features for the same price as full old Premium.

So a group of Premium users stayed on Premium.

With any other company it would have been „up or out“ with the next renewal. Only old EN management decided to leave the plans open for renewal by existing subscribers.

The new team is now fixing this - anybody who got some years of a cheap subscription donated should be thankful for this.

Forward looking if somebody finds value, he will stay. If not, EN has best in class export options.

[Feitz 212]

1 hour ago, agsteele said:

I think the old Plus and Premium plans were inevitably going to go and, it seems, now is the time.

This is not what I'm complaining about. They can charge whatever they want, it's their business decision.

But every other company I had a subscription with sent you a notice well in advance that prices are going to go up. Not Evernote, they silently moved me to a different and more expensive plan without bothering to notify me in advance and give me a choice to accept or reconsider.

If I hadn't actively checked my subscription page I would probably only have found out through the higher than before annual payment and would then have to deal with a customer service that - at least currently - is nonexistent in order to get a refund.

So to sum it up for current Premium subscribers: check your subscription page to avoid an unpleasant surprise.

[WilliamL 658]

17 minutes ago, Feitz said:

This is not what I'm complaining about. They can charge whatever they want, it's their business decision.

But every other company I had a subscription with sent you a notice well in advance that prices are going to go up. Not Evernote, they silently moved me to a different and more expensive plan without bothering to notify me in advance and give me a choice to accept or reconsider.

If I hadn't actively checked my subscription page I would probably only have found out through the higher than before annual payment and would then have to deal with a customer service that - at least currently - is nonexistent in order to get a refund.

So to sum it up for current Premium subscribers: check your subscription page to avoid an unpleasant surprise.

I am so utterly confused, they have not billed you anything, correct? If so what’s the issue, they could create the flying pink elephants tier and it would be irrelevant unless it ether a) led to loss of features or b) led to unexpected billing. It seems neither of these things has happened and you are protesting a name change that makes no difference to you currently and means in the future you pay what everyone else has to, which it seems you already knew was the case. 

I honestly cannot fathom what you are complaining about. 

[VincentC 275]

Seems like I have been aware of the price increase for Evernote since forever so, just to be sure my own "wet" intelligence engine isn't hallucinating like those new fangled dry AI engines are - 😀- I checked.  And I immediately found this post from last April on the Evernote blog (which is what I think @gazumped was referring to in his comment earlier:

An Update on Evernote Pricing and Upcoming Features

And a Google search for "Evernote Price Increase" brings up number of sites that have been relaying the information since that blog post.  Of course, Evernote should be (and, in my own experience, is) communicating with subscribers individually about the fees they are paying.  But I hope others do not leave this thread under the impression that Evernote is somehow being sneaky about price increases.  I am personally quite comfortable with the level of communication from Evernote about this, both publicly and through individual messages to me about pricing for my own account.

Vinnie

[PinkElephant 8,279]

I checked again and don't understand all the fuzz.

The subscription is due on November 22nd 2023. Learning it now is 4 weeks ahead of the due date, which is industry standard.

EN offers monthly subscriptions as well, for a slightly higher price. Even if somebody feels overwhelmed by checking so many competitors, he can simply quit the yearly subscription and subscribe by the month, until he reached a decision.

Again, what's the fuzz ?

[Feitz 212]

49 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

Learning it now is 4 weeks ahead of the due date, which is industry standard.

I learned it by accident, having verified on Oct. 10th, that Premium will be renewed at 59.99€ and a couple of days later it was set to 99.99€/Personal. 

I have a contract with them and I don't want to have to search and find information of price increases on the web. I expect a proper notification of any change in my subscription (both price and altered features). That's the fuzz...

If you find this lack of business communication normal or 'industry standard' then I'm at a loss...

[Feitz 212]

1 hour ago, WilliamL said:

I honestly cannot fathom what you are complaining about. 

'If I hadn't actively checked my subscription page I would probably only have found out through the higher than before annual payment and would then have to deal with a customer service that - at least currently - is nonexistent in order to get a refund.'

[PinkElephant 8,279]

First world problems …

Even if, support usually refunds during the first 60 days. 

As I already said, a lot of fuzz about nothing (my opinion).

[WilliamL 658]

39 minutes ago, Feitz said:

'If I hadn't actively checked my subscription page I would probably only have found out through the higher than before annual payment and would then have to deal with a customer service that - at least currently - is nonexistent in order to get a refund.'

Except that is an assumption as numerous people have already tirelessly pointed out - Evernote send notification emails as billing nears. You are getting near that point now. To be clear you have not been billed without notice as your billing is not due yet, but here you are kicking off as if some great injustice has been committed against you alone. I don’t get it and can neither understand nor have any patience for the position your trying to take. 

[mackid1993 989]

1 hour ago, WilliamL said:

Except that is an assumption as numerous people have already tirelessly pointed out - Evernote send notification emails as billing nears. You are getting near that point now. To be clear you have not been billed without notice as your billing is not due yet, but here you are kicking off as if some great injustice has been committed against you alone. I don’t get it and can neither understand nor have any patience for the position your trying to take. 

We also have to assume that the notification email wasn't lost, buried by other emails and missed, or gone into spam and this was user error. Either way the price increase and discontinuation of grandfathered plans was publicized a long time ago. People should be grateful they got a grandfathered discount for a such a long time when most others had to pay a higher rate rather than complaining that their free ride is over under the new ownership that is trying to turn the business around so it can survive long term. If the previous owners did away with these plans and raised prices sooner rather maybe they wouldn't have been in a position that they'd have to sell the company.

[WilliamL 658]

40 minutes ago, mackid1993 said:

We also have to assume that the notification email wasn't lost, buried by other emails and missed, or gone into spam and this was user error. Either way the price increase and discontinuation of grandfathered plans was publicized a long time ago. People should be grateful they got a grandfathered discount for a such a long time when most others had to pay a higher rate rather than complaining that their free ride is over under the new ownership that is trying to turn the business around so it can survive long term. If the previous owners did away with these plans and raised prices sooner rather maybe they wouldn't have been in a position that they'd have to sell the company.

That’s what puzzles me, I don’t get the complaint there, other than the fact change, that was previously announced has in fact occurred, now I HATE change, go read my comments when BS took over as evidence lol, but that doesn’t seem to be the issue here. 

Good point re the change needing done to improve cash flow before. BS sure don’t seem reluctant to make big changes if they feel they are needed.

[mackid1993 989]

27 minutes ago, WilliamL said:

That’s what puzzles me, I don’t get the complaint there, other than the fact change, that was previously announced has in fact occurred, now I HATE change, go read my comments when BS took over as evidence lol, but that doesn’t seem to be the issue here. 

Good point re the change needing done to improve cash flow before. BS sure don’t seem reluctant to make big changes if they feel they are needed.

I dislike that the price is so much lower in the EU. The Personal plan in Euros is about $100 USD and the Professional Plan is $130 USD when converted from Euros. They really need to correct their US pricing if anything.

[PinkElephant 8,279]

I completely agree that the feeble way the old management handled „tough“ issues surely contributed to not being able to make the business profitable.

Maybe they felt they were not yet in a position to pull it through. But sometimes you have no choice, you make it or you break it.

For a management team, being sold by the owners means you broke it, big time.

[Bill Corrigan 0]

I was first told of this change in April, and then i got an email reminding me of it recently, about 4 weeks before my annual subscription renews. Well I'm now retired and I have to cut expenses. I will drop to the free version, but I'm willing to pay 1 months subscription to the professional level so I can extract all my PDFs, in a batch process. There's no way to do that with the current Premium or the Personal which they want to put me on. BUT THEY WONT LET ME CHANGE FROM ANNUAL TO MONTHLY! Why not? And they don't answer my billing support question. I've been a paid subscriber for 9 years. 

[mackid1993 989]

11 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

I completely agree that the feeble way the old management handled „tough“ issues surely contributed to not being able to make the business profitable.

Maybe they felt they were not yet in a position to pull it through. But sometimes you have no choice, you make it or you break it.

For a management team, being sold by the owners means you broke it, big time.

BS has a history of buying struggling products and turning them around. They know how to make tough business decisions that are painful in the short term but better in the long term. That's what we are seeing here. Short term issues like price increases, support restructuring, backend changes that may lead to downtime all for better long term sustainability. They are fully aware in the short term people will have a knee jerk reaction and leave but in the long term many will decide to come back and those that don't properly weren't profitable customers anyway. 

[PinkElephant 8,279]

We always had a bunch of fellow users here who at the same time complained about real or imaginary shortcomings of the app and services - and „proudly“ announced they didn’t and will never pay a dime.

It seems the music is about to stop, and then the party will be over.

From my personal review of the market there is no other serious developer who believes that „Free for all, forever“ would be a sustainable business model. I don’t think there is any easy plan B for those who want it all, except paying for what they expect.

I always believed it to be a suicidal ratio to have 10 or 15 non performing accounts for each performing one. You run out of paying users faster than you can convert non paying users into subscribers.

[mackid1993 989]

57 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

We always had a bunch of fellow users here who at the same time complained about real or imaginary shortcomings of the app and services - and „proudly“ announced they didn’t and will never pay a dime.

It seems the music is about to stop, and then the party will be over.

From my personal review of the market there is no other serious developer who believes that „Free for all, forever“ would be a sustainable business model. I don’t think there is any easy plan B for those who want it all, except paying for what they expect.

I always believed it to be a suicidal ratio to have 10 or 15 non performing accounts for each performing one. You run out of paying users faster than you can convert non paying users into subscribers.

Most services that are sustainable offer a free trial and then have paid plans. It just makes more sense. I think doing away with the free tier and simply warning free users that they will have to export their data out and/or pay (maybe with a substantive discount for the first year) may better than having a highly restrictive free tier that will likely just foster ill will. It may be smarter for them to rip the bandaid off and sunset the free plan.

Personally I'm reluctant to rely on something free.

[PinkElephant 8,279]

Actually I use Free plan accounts quite often.

Let me explain: I am freelancing, projects, running teams, the like. I often have to use my clients IT, because they won’t leave foreign devices into their network.

What I do is setup a Free account for each client. I share a project notebook from my Professional account to the Free account - this notebook is the only one I really use there.

The Free account is solidly protected by a good password plus 2FA, as my main account. When I am on my clients hardware and network, I will only open the „client“ account. Even if they would play „man in the middle“ they can only get at their own information - the one they do already own.

For my own part, I can easily bring some stuff into the project, like a template or similar, to be used there. But the account structure shields every clients information from all others.

This works for me, and is a fair concept for my clients as well. When the project is done and documented, I simply erase the shared notebook, and dump the Free account to comply with my NDA.

That‘s why I run a few Free accounts at any time. I will see how this works out in the future. Probably shared notebooks from paid accounts will not be counted - we will see.

[mackid1993 989]

13 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

Actually I use Free plan accounts quite often.

Let me explain: I am freelancing, projects, running teams, the like. I often have to use my clients IT, because they won’t leave foreign devices into their network.

What I do is setup a Free account for each client. I share a project notebook from my Professional account to the Free account - this notebook is the only one I really use there.

The Free account is solidly protected by a good password plus 2FA, as my main account. When I am on my clients hardware and network, I will only open the „client“ account. Even if they would play „man in the middle“ they can only get at their own information - the one they do already own.

For my own part, I can easily bring some stuff into the project, like a template or similar, to be used there. But the account structure shields every clients information from all others.

This works for me, and is a fair concept for my clients as well. When the project is done and documented, I simply erase the shared notebook, and dump the Free account to comply with my NDA.

That‘s why I run a few Free accounts at any time. I will see how this works out in the future. Probably shared notebooks from paid accounts will not be counted - we will see.

It would be great to be able to share a notebook with a non-Evernote user and collaborate with them on it without them making an account. At some point I'll be planning a wedding and I'd like to use Evernote, but my fiance has no need for Evernote and won't pay for an account. It would be great to give her a password protected link she could open and work on the notebook in her browser. Something like that may work for your situation because you'd just have to open the link on your clients network.

[PinkElephant 8,279]

The public links to notebooks were removed 3 years ago. I seriously don’t miss this specific feature. Others do, for their use cases.

[Crunkface 1]

I understand what Feitz said and I agree, they should have reached out to the individuals on the price increase.

It's not that he was unknowingly getting more features for free, it's just that it feels like he can get charged extra without notice of he never checked the forums and he felt betrayed by a platform that he put so much trust in.

EN should send individual emails and not just say it was on the forum, that is a duplicitous practice that basically allows them precedence to hide more malignant policies in the future. Transparency is the key to any consumer business.

[trex 1]

I agree... just adding here that I had a price increase without warning either.  I just checked my email, junk folder etc.  I have plenty of old Evernote correspondence, but nothing announcing a price increase, nothing from 4 weeks ago.  Makes it hard to trust this company.

[gazumped 11,766]

28 minutes ago, trex said:

I agree... just adding here that I had a price increase without warning either.  I just checked my email, junk folder etc.  I have plenty of old Evernote correspondence, but nothing announcing a price increase, nothing from 4 weeks ago.  Makes it hard to trust this company.

You can trust them to give you a refund if you contact them soon after the renewal - even if you had the warning,  but now decide it's too expensive they will give you a refund.  Don't get where all this "some kind of scam" thing is coming from.  It's a big company.  If things go wrong, they fix them.

[Feitz 212]

35 minutes ago, gazumped said:

Don't get where all this "some kind of scam" thing is coming from. 

Never said it was a scam, it is just not how business should be done. Why go through the hassle and ask for a refund if this can be avoided?

If you get a 4-week heads-up before you are 'promoted' to Personal and you don't want to go that road there is hardly enough time to find an alternative, test it thoroughly and then move 23.000 notes (at least in my case) out of Evernote and migrate it to the new tool.

If you don't get the notification there is hardly enough time to properly prepare for the migration. Who knows if it is even possible to export all my data after the fallback to Evernote 'free', so this has to be done well in advance.

BTW.: if you try to cancel they offer a 40% discount for the next year for 'Personal'. Depending on how my own testing goes I might reconsider for the next year, in case BS manage to develop V10 into something usable (currently for me it is not, but your mileage may vary).

[Feitz 212]

3 hours ago, Crunkface said:

Transparency is the key to any consumer business.

Exactly, thank you. Evernote used to be my 'trusted' platform where my whole personal and professional life is stored.

[WilliamL 658]

Interesting how on Reddit there is complaints because people are receiving the emails regarding price increases… so they are being sent out as Evernote said they would be. Yet here we get this nonsense about hidden secret charges from a company not communicating, which do I believe…. 

 

[Jon/t 1,376]

11 minutes ago, Feitz said:

If you get a 4-week heads-up before you are 'promoted' to Personal and you don't want to go that road there is hardly enough time to find an alternative

Pretty much every company I deal with gives a months notice on price increases. My car insurance renewal comes a month before it ends, so does my home insurance, mortgage, gas company, electric, phone, internet provider, everyone give 30 days notice on price increases.

A months notice is being transparent. Not being transparent would be not telling you and then charging you.

Why should Evernote be held to higher standards?

[agsteele 2,975]

19 hours ago, Bill Corrigan said:

BUT THEY WONT LET ME CHANGE FROM ANNUAL TO MONTHLY! Why not?

First of all CANCEL your account.  THat simply takes you out of the  automatic renewal on the annual plan. Once your account drops to Free you can then resubscribe on the monthly deal.  Or you can contact Billing support and they will be likely to assist with a switch to monthly billing.

[PinkElephant 8,279]

It seems that some people had more an emotional than rational relation with EN (I won't call them fanboy, but you get the idea). Now they feel pushed away from their longterm "aquaintance". At least many reactions speak for this explanation - I can't take them serious, because they are completely out of relation to the subject and amount in question. If I would go berserk every time I sink 50 bucks on something, I would be running around all day long, banging my head against something solid.

Luckily I have a rational relation - value is superb, price is a little ouuuuch, so let's subscribe for another year (which I did in summer).

[gazumped 11,766]

...And if anyone here can point to a company whose systems have never,  ever made any kind of an error...  I'd say you must never have tried their services or software.  

In a former life I worked in a department collecting the financials from companies around the globe.  We'd spent months - and a lot of cash - setting up a system to collate results in different currencies and different languages,  boiling them down to a single group sheet for the Head Office Board (who had notoriously short attention spans).

We were about to go into the Big Meeting to unveil the results,  when we found a mistake.  I was shocked...  when the Group CFO pulled a little bottle of correction fluid out of a suit pocket and fixed the error with a biro.  He grinned at my expression and said something to the effect of  'we're human - mistakes happen' (except it was less repeatable).

Doesn't matter how big a company is - stuff happens.  Deal with it.

[angeatrg 25]

Quote

It seems that some people had more an emotional than rational relation with EN (I won't call them fanboy, but you get the idea)

@PinkElephantI see only one fanboy in every discussion and answer in this forum, and he is pink.

Maybe for once show a little understanding because its getting very suspicions how often you side with EN without even releasing that this kind of practice is not ok, they knew damn well that upgrading the price behind the user knowlege will work for enough users since most of us don't take time to screenshot or record everything.

I also got a discount when I cancel 2 month ago, then few days ago they remove this discount and give me the regular price.
 

[gazumped 11,766]

2 hours ago, angeatrg said:

this kind of practice is not ok,

Hi.  There's a Forum Code of Conduct you should read about attacks on other users here,  which is definitely not OK.

If you were referring to a company increasing the cost of their subscription,  announcing it publically and emailing users,  I'd say that's happened to me on several of my installed apps and whilst I agree with you it's not OK,  your only choices are to pay or move on.  A lot of the folks in this thread have already paid.

[Bill Myers 458]

People have a right to be angry with Evernote, and to cancel their subscription if they feel the solution or customer service isn't to their liking. People have a right to complain to Evernote, for that matter.

There's no need for anyone to announce their departure from Evernote in this forum, though. Just cancel, leave, and move on with your life.

There's also no need to insult fellow forum members. This isn't the first time I've seen someone take a potshot at @PinkElephant. We all know that ignoring people we don't like is an option, right? 

While I think it's admirable to set the record straight when the "Bye Evernote!" crowd says things in anger that don't hold up to scrutiny, after a certain point it becomes wasted effort. I don't think these people are coming to the forum because they're in a mood to be reasoned with.

A couple of months ago, I started a new job as a salesperson for a small IT solutions provider. And we've actually faced a problem similar to Evernote. For many years, my company held the line on prices for service contracts only to finally have to raise them this year due to economic forces. Some customers reacted negatively to what they perceived to be a steep increase. We've realized we would have been better off raising prices a bit every year. People -- even businesspeople, whom we serve -- are less apt to do the math than to react emotionally.

Studies have shown there are many ways in which we consumers act irrationally and against our own interests (and I am not saying I'm immune, BTW). Sometimes we are our own worst enemies.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,985]

Most anyone can look around their house and see something that they acquired based on an irrational response to something. And maybe a mark on a wall that resulted from a different irrational response.

[PinkElephant 8,279]

Some would probably be wise to invest into a rubber chamber at home. Prevents damage to the fists and forehead.

The amount we discuss here is laughable (just needed a full refill for my car tonight, could have bought a full year of personal instead. It will be converted into exhaust fumes within a week). If somebody doesn’t feel the service is up to the price, there is a simple solution.

Why such a decision needs to be „advertised“ here like a heroic fight against the dark forces escapes me. Hard to believe that forum members are all grown up, responsible human beings.

[mackid1993 989]

A weeks worth of groceries for two is much is about the cost of EN personal for a year. I'm not saying not to eat for a week but I'm just putting the amount of money in perspective. If you aren't using the full featureset than maybe something like OneNote or Apple Notes makes more sense for a pure notetaking use case. One you add in tasks, document management/ocr, AI I personally find a lot of value in the package here since I use these features and other solutions don't do it all in one place as well.

This thread literally exists because of a mistake, either EN make a mistake and didn't send a notification, or the user made a mistake and missed a notification or expected a notification sooner than it was meant to be sent out. Either way they offer a generous refund period and I would assume a week or so prior to renewal there would be a reminder anyway. This isn't SiriusXM or the cable company where they make it hard to cancel.

No company is going to provide time for a user to transition out. They have a generous free plan (for now) and still won't delete any data even with a note limit if you drop down to free. You can always export your data and leave or pay for a month while you transition out. I think there is a lot of emotional and honestly entitled reactions to these price increases rather than people realizing that it's just business and no one is forcing you to stay no one really cares what PKM app you use if any.

[Bill Myers 458]

1 hour ago, mackid1993 said:

A weeks worth of groceries for two is much is about the cost of EN personal for a year.

You're so right! I told my wife we wouldn't be eating this week because I need Evernote!

1 hour ago, mackid1993 said:

I'm not saying not to eat for a week but I'm just putting the amount of money in perspective.

Seriously? NOW you tell me? After my wife tells me she's divorcing me?

[Bill Myers 458]

1 hour ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

Most anyone can look around their house and see something that they acquired based on an irrational response to something.

Speak for yourself, pal. That life-sized fiberglass Superman statue I bought from Sharper Image back in the day was a STEAL at $2,500!

[mackid1993 989]

3 minutes ago, Bill Myers said:

You're so right! I told my wife we wouldn't be eating this week because I need Evernote!

Seriously? NOW you tell me? After my wife tells me she's divorcing me?

You definitely still need to prioritize your expenses. Food > Evernote. 😛

[angeatrg 25]

Why you are trying so hard not to understand is that people are more angry about how Evernote is communicating with customers, for example only few ago a major outrage was not acknowledge for a whole before users start complaining and now Evernote offered discount few months ago only to revert back later.

But since the forum is an echo chamber with the same soldiers trying to side with Evernote nothing come from this discussions.

[PinkElephant 8,279]

Not communicating … every subscriber receives a notification 4 weeks before the subscription becomes due. Either by mail or through the store holding the subscription.

That’s standard for all of my apps, done.

The outage was no outage, it was a server upgrade that didn’t affect many users, some (like me) had a slowing and some couldn’t use the app for some hours. EN staff has communicated within a few hours after forum messages popped up that a) since the server itself was running they had not been aware of the impact it had for some users and b) the reason and the mitigation. Since they couldn’t identify the users with an impact, they couldn’t notify directly.

Where did you say is a communication issue ?

As a long term user I don’t remember a time when we had more communication from EN staff - but many when there was less. If it is „enough“ can’t be answered - some would still like more at a level when others cry „stop spamming“.

The problem is IMHO something else, as already posted: Some users seem to have lived in the believe they don’t have a subscription, but a „relation“. And they behave as if their „relation“ should pamper them a bit more. Sorry to say, no Supernanny around, it’s a commercial setup.

[Bill Myers 458]

4 hours ago, angeatrg said:

Why you are trying so hard not to understand is that people are more angry about how Evernote is communicating with customers, for example only few ago a major outrage was not acknowledge for a whole before users start complaining and now Evernote offered discount few months ago only to revert back later.

But since the forum is an echo chamber with the same soldiers trying to side with Evernote nothing come from this discussions.

No, I daresay everyone here fully understands how angry some of you are. It's coming through loud and clear. Ear-splittingly loud and clear.

It's just that some people are trying to point out that the reasoning behind your anger may not be correct. Informing a customer of a price increase 30 days before their subscription renewal date isn't uncommon in the tech world.

There is no echo chamber, by the way. At least a couple of the forum members participating in this thread who I think you'd identify as "the same soldiers" have been critical of Evernote over the last few years, both in forum threads and elsewhere. They just don't agree with you in this circumstance.

Still, you have a right to feel angry if you wish, and a right to walk away from Evernote. I just don't understand why you have to let us know about it. This forum is mostly frequented by other Evernote users. You leaving isn't of great interest to me. 

 

[CalS 5,292]

There is the option of letting folks ventilate and just leaving it be.  Particularly at this point when this pretty much a repeat fest.  And nobody's mind's a changing.

[Bill Myers 458]

25 minutes ago, CalS said:

There is the option of letting folks ventilate and just leaving it be.

True. It does mean accepting something I don't like but is out of my control. I feel like "I hate Evernote" commentary crowds out users just helping users, and I wish it was the other way around. But... it doesn't matter what I like or don't like. It just is what it is. I can ignore posts and threads I don't like. I can even stop coming to the forum if that's what's best for me (without announcing my departure from the forum, of course).

[agsteele 2,975]

I have a carefully curated list of individuals whose contributions generally leave a sour taste in my mouth stored in the ignore user list.

I'm aware that I might have had my name stored in a similar list for other users.

[Feitz 212]

5 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

Not communicating … every subscriber receives a notification 4 weeks before the subscription becomes due. Either by mail or through the store holding the subscription.

That’s standard for all of my apps, done.

No, they don't. To get back to my initial post, I was on 'Premium' on October, 10th and had been 'promoted' to 'Personal' when I looked again on October 24th.

No message whatsoever from BS.

That's why I started this thread to give people a heads-up to watch their subscription and avoid having to ask for  a refund if they don't agree with the new rate. 
If you don't agree with new conditions you need time to prepare for a migration, therefore it is essential to get a warning well in advance. For me there's no harm done since I actively watched my subscription but not everybody does. Generally these processes are automated, so an email in advance would not be any additional hassle on their part.

This has nothing to do with the amount they charge for 'Personal' or being a fanboy for Legacy or needing to invest in a rubber chamber to avoid damage to my fists and forehead , as you implied in your previous posts.

You capture every thread that's critical about Evernote and fill it with sarcastic rants, ridicule anyone who is not in line with your 'rational relation' towards Evernote and in the end this leads nowhere, leaving threads bloated and totally off the point. 

Evernote has not been delivering good value for money during the last few years, V10 is barely usable after three years and still lacks stability and essential features from Legacy, so criticism is coming quite naturally. Feedback about Evernote outside of the forum is not good so it would be wise to at least make provisions for a migration out of evernote at any rate in case they go belly-up.

[s2sailor 2,341]

16 minutes ago, Feitz said:

No message whatsoever from BS.

That's why I started this thread to give people a heads-up to watch their subscription and avoid having to ask for  a refund if they don't agree with the new rate.

If you haven’t already have you confirmed that the email Evernote has on record is one that you still use and check?  Assuming you purchased this directly from Evernote (I don’t know how the stores handle this) they are likely using some automated script to send out the information on subscriptions renewals.  We know this “mostly” works since many of us have received the emails.  Since you haven’t, it would be helpful if you reported the omission to Evernote.  Then maybe they can figure out what is wrong with their automated system so others won’t also miss emails.  If you are affected, others probably are too.

[Feitz 212]

Just now, s2sailor said:

If you haven’t already have you confirmed that the email Evernote has on record is one that you still use and check?

I'm using the same email since I subscribed in Feb. 2010. The 'promotion' to 'Personal' was between Oct. 10 and 24, so any mail would either be in my inbox or in spam (I have a 30 day retention period for spam). 

As I said, I noticed it in time to prepare for a migration and wanted to alert others to this. 

[s2sailor 2,341]

1 minute ago, Feitz said:

As I said, I noticed it in time to prepare for a migration and wanted to alert others to this

I’m not disputing that, I’m suggesting that you also report this to support so if there is a problem, they can fix it.  Notifying other users here is fine but those that frequent the forum likely already know about the plan and cost changes.

[Feitz 212]

12 minutes ago, s2sailor said:

If you are affected, others probably are too.

yeah, probably. I will  open a ticket.

[Bill Myers 458]

20 hours ago, agsteele said:

I'm aware that I might have had my name stored in a similar list for other users.

I suppose that's possible. But I've always found you to be pleasant, reasonable, knowledgeable and helpful. I'm not really sure how anyone could find your posts offensive.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,985]

On 10/28/2023 at 2:54 PM, Feitz said:

Evernote has not been delivering good value for money during the last few years, V10 is barely usable after three years and still lacks stability and essential features from Legacy, so criticism is coming quite naturally. Feedback about Evernote outside of the forum is not good so it would be wise to at least make provisions for a migration out of evernote at any rate in case they go belly-up.

Don't know if this is off-topic or not, but clearly people's experiences and opinions vary. I've found Evernote to be very good value for money, and use v. 10 with complete success many times every day. Nothing left out from Legacy seems to have been important to me. "Stability" is a broad term. There were issues with data loss and corruption in May and June when the new sync structure was first introduced, but those issues have largely been corrected. I've had some occasional issues recently, but nothing fatal. There have certainly been some problems since the Bending Spoons acquisition, but on the whole the thing works well for me.

Which is only my experience and opinion, which I do not state as a universal fact, as most people who are having bad experiences seem to do with their opinions.

As for Internet rumors of Evernote's demise ... 🤣. Every single year there seem to be rumors like this, and every single year they prove unfounded. But those who promote them (on Reddit or wherever) do get the attention they're seeking, so the rumors serve their purpose.

[Feitz 212]

7 minutes ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

people's experiences and opinions vary

Of course every post is an opinion.

[Jon/t 1,376]

11 minutes ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

Which is only my experience and opinion, which I do not state as a universal fact, as most people who are having bad experiences seem to do with their opinions.

 

Absolutely. I call it social media speak where folks just assume everyone else is the same as them and has the same experiences as them.

I used to work as a sort-of journo back in the day and we had to very obviously state if something was opinion or fact or you'd get fired😂

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,985]

5 minutes ago, Feitz said:

Of course every post is an opinion.

And yet if just said "Evernote 10 works great," would you say that I'm being a fanboy/defender/advocate?

[bmcl26 521]

On 10/28/2023 at 7:54 PM, Feitz said:

Evernote has not been delivering good value for money during the last few years, V10 is barely usable after three years and still lacks stability and essential features from Legacy, so criticism is coming quite naturally. Feedback about Evernote outside of the forum is not good so it would be wise to at least make provisions for a migration out of evernote at any rate in case they go belly-up.

Evernote V10 is working well for me as well. Is it perfect (not entirely, but then I have never found a piece of Software that is perfect as I doubt such a thing exists)? Although I did not like V10 when it launched, probably because it forced me out of my comfort zone, I soon found my way around it and have never missed any of the features that Legacy provided over V10. I binned Legacy more than eighteen months ago.

Does it offer me Value for Money? That is easy to answer at 24 pence a day (UK Professional Plan). It most certainly does.

I appreciate that this is not everybody's experience, but it is mine.

[Bill Corrigan 0]

On 10/26/2023 at 11:45 AM, agsteele said:

First of all CANCEL your account.  THat simply takes you out of the  automatic renewal on the annual plan. Once your account drops to Free you can then resubscribe on the monthly deal.  Or you can contact Billing support and they will be likely to assist with a switch to monthly billing.

Thank you this is what I needed to know. Evernote finally replied to my support request, 24 days after my ticket submission. I love Evernote, but they failed in this service support. I'm sure their SLA with me did not say "Meh, give us money and will get back to you when it meets OUR schedule, not yours." I appreciate your prompt reply to my message. 

[gazumped 11,766]

10 minutes ago, Bill Corrigan said:

Evernote finally replied to my support request, 24 days after my ticket submission.

I'd imagine they're sufficiently busy fighting various fires that they treat refunds as a medium to low priority.  You have access to your account and can rely that they'll repay your sub within a month.  Others will be locked out and needing urgent help.

[Bill Myers 458]

 

On 10/28/2023 at 2:54 PM, Feitz said:

Feedback about Evernote outside of the forum is not good so it would be wise to at least make provisions for a migration out of evernote at any rate in case they go belly-up.

It's wise for anyone to have an exit plan for Evernote or any other software they use, regardless of how healthy they think the company is. But I'd be cautious about using online forums as a gauge for customer sentiment in general. Given the number of people who use Evernote, I feel pretty confident in saying those of us who post in forums like this are in the minority. And I don't think we're representative of the whole customer base.

In the opinion survey industry, there's a term called "response bias." It means that the opinions of people who are willing to participate in surveys may differ from those who are not. In much the same way, I think there's a possibility that those of us who participate in forums may be different than those who don't. It may well be that Evernote's overall consumer base may have a much worse opinion of the product than those of us in these forums, or much better, or something in-between. We just don't know.

This thread got me thinking about the days when I used Quicken to manage my personal finances. It got to a point where my opinion of the product quality and the technical support was extremely negative, and I was downright angry at Intuit and later Quicken Inc. (Intuit spun off Quicken into its own company). I would take every opportunity I could to give the product scathing reviews at e-commerce sites and anywhere else I could publicly bash Quicken. I was getting increasingly furious about the amount of time I had to spend getting help resolving issues like the sync not working properly. I told myself it would just be too hard to extricate myself from Quicken given how many years of data I had in there.

And then one day I thought, "What am I doing? This is nuts?" I canceled my Quicken subscription early this year and subscribed to another product. I did it to make myself happy, not to take my rage out on the company. They're still around, so as far as I know they've got enough customers to keep going, at least for the moment. I don't publicly complain about Quicken anymore or ask why other people have the temerity to disagree with my opinion about it. I don't think about the product or the company anymore. If they have many, many more successful years, God bless 'em. All I know is, I'm happier without them. That's what matters.

If I ever decide I have to leave Evernote, I'll leave the same way. Quietly. Happily. Because I feel the only good reason to leave a company is to make my life better, not make theirs worse.

A really great author once said, "If you're standing in [expletive deleted], you don't jump up and down on it to punish it, you walk away." If you feel that using Evernote is the equivalent of standing in [expletive deleted], you do have the option of just walking away and being happy about it. Just sayin'.

[CalS 5,292]

@Bill Myers  Agree with the sentiment. 

By the by, Quicken works well for me, so still using it.  😇 

EN, not so much - so not using it, for a couple of years now.  Coming back to the forums from time to time to see if the things I need ever get back in the product.  No joy to date.

[Bill Myers 458]

7 minutes ago, CalS said:

By the by, Quicken works well for me, so still using it.  😇 

EN, not so much - so not using it, for a couple of years now.

I guess according to the Internet social contract, we're supposed to be mortal enemies but I'm just not feeling it. I've seen your posts for years and I've always enjoyed them. I'm glad Quicken works well for you. I hope whatever you found as an alternative to Evernote is working well for you, too. And May the Force Be With You.

[CalS 5,292]

Yeah, it really is okay to have different views.  Dialog is becoming a lost art.  You don't think like me so you must be an idiot sort of gets in the way.  🤷‍♂️

[Swanny70 3]

Time to go - I've been using Evernote everyday for over 12 years but the 72% increase in price this year and the 142% increase in price since 2021 (for Australian customers) with negligible difference in functionality has done it for me.  A bit of AI and some new engagement with Bent Spoons??? does not represent value for me.

[PinkElephant 8,279]

The question is not whether they added „enough“ to justify a raise. We know the subscription was probably too cheap for years - or the strategy wrong - because EN never was profitable, for many years. But that’s not the question either.

The only question is whether you get enough value to justify spending roughly 2 bucks a week. This is the relevant question, and you can only answer it yourself.

[Blaine D 1]

On 11/1/2023 at 6:55 PM, Swanny70 said:

Time to go - I've been using Evernote everyday for over 12 years but the 72% increase in price this year and the 142% increase in price since 2021 (for Australian customers) with negligible difference in functionality has done it for me.  A bit of AI and some new engagement with Bent Spoons??? does not represent value for me.

 

I'm in the same boat. I suddenly got a massive price hike with no notice.  I only saw it after PayPal auto-renewed.  It's a joke! I have been a customer with them since 2012, and I'm furious at how hard it is to contact someone to dispute the charge.   The features have been very stagnant for the last several years.  It has been four days, and no response from support. This is what you get for the money?  

[PinkElephant 8,279]

7 minutes ago, Blaine D said:

…

The features have been very stagnant for the last several years. 
…

You must be still on a legacy client. It is deprecated since 3 years and will only see a loss of features. You can download the new version from the website. It has more new features than legacy has received in the 10 years before it was given up.

Users are usually notified 4 weeks in advance about an upcoming subscription charge. Check your Spam folder, and the email address in your account settings.

The old grandfathered plans are discontinued and can’t be renewed. You can decide to stay with the new subscription or leave.

Support is unfortunately quite busy at the moment. We hear about reaction time of 10 days currently.

This as a fast tour about what’s going on, from a fellow user (not support speaking …).

[Blaine D 1]

3 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

You must be still on a legacy client. It is deprecated since 3 years and will only see a loss of features. You can download the new version from the website. It has more new features than legacy has received in the 10 years before it was given up.

Well, now that I'm using Linux and my work blacklisted the Evernote domain.  I can't see any reason to stay anymore. Especially, with the new pricing structure.  You are right!  I can still use it on my mobile device, which has very limited functionality compared to the desktop client on Windows 11.   Thanks for the heads up on support.

[Uncle Monty 8]

So I have just received my email (good communication!) for the upgrade from Plus (£30) to Premium (£80) - ouch! Aaargghhh!

So I could drop to Free but lose the larger notes facility....? 

Or, I could change to OneNote? OneNote - hang on, I tried to use that once and it was terrible! Notion? - hmmmm, not easy to get going with, felt like overkill, abandoned.

(reminds me of my battle to drop Dropbox at £100/pa when I can use OneDrive for free - so I tried OneDrive and it never finished synching -- ever! So, still with Dropbox then...)

Having read this thread, I am now calmer and accepting of my fate: get on with my work using great products rather than worry about the extra cost and spending hours looking for cheaper solutions that are inevitably compromised...

As for @PinkElephant I have read your postings many times and they are always well-informed and useful. Thank you.

I have found my inner peace again.

[WilliamL 658]

2 hours ago, Uncle Monty said:

Having read this thread, I am now calmer and accepting of my fate: get on with my work using great products rather than worry about the extra cost and spending hours looking for cheaper solutions that are inevitably compromised...

This is the key point. If you don’t use Evernote as anything other than taking basic notes, anything could be a replacement really, even a pen and paper (I think they still exist lol). If you use any selection of features though a replacement becomes a journey of compromises into frustrations finding quickly features we though we could live without we want, then the jounery begins again to another app, and on and on. Hours lost, nothing gained. How do I know” cause I do it!