The new advertisements seriously suck.
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long time user who also bought the app like many other people here. I want to be clear about this. I would rather use a worse, less functional app than use an app that has ads in it that I can only remove by paying a fee, a fee that is being charged to me in bad faith. There are many alternatives to what you do and I’m happy to go elsewhere.
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I’m okay with an ad being somewhere, maybe in the discover page or the bottom of the podcast page, but if where it is interrupts how I use the app, I’m done.
I’ve already cleaned up my library and am ready to resubscribe to everything on some alternatives that seem good, but I’m still hopeful Pocket Casts changes course. -
I’ve been using AntennaPod for 3 days now with no complaints. I was able to export all of my subscriptions out of Pocket Casts and into AntennaPod without issue.
I just want something that is going to function, not show me ads, and work with Android Auto.
Automattic has every right to pursue their business objectives however they want to. They’re just not taking this app in a direction that I’d like to go, with monetization tiers that I’m comfortable with. And I do feel like I’m being double dipped, having paid for the ad free version of the app in the past.
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This is so disappointing. I paid for an ad-free experience. (In fact, I paid for the app on both Android and iOS because I like the service so much that it was worth purchasing twice across different devices!) Now, you’re asking me to pay again? Again?! For features that I’ve already paid for?
There are plenty of other options out there. I’ll look for a better one.
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Here is another soon-to-be-ex-user. I paid for this app several years ago. To be honest it wasn’t my first choice. but overcast didn’t support long podcast feeds back in this days. I was really happy with Pocketcast. But NOW you show me advertisements and I have to pay extra for don’t see them??? I don’t need those extra features. I don’t need to sync between devices. I listen to podcasts on my mobile. I can take it to almost everywhere I go and I can listen to podcasts. That’s why it is called a mobile device…
So long -
Created an account just to lodge my annoyance at the ads being in the app. It’s pretty ridiculous to be featuring ads in an app that aggregates other peoples content. It’s like having ads in a browser.
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I’d be happy to pay to get rid of the ads, but the current Plus plan is just ridiculously expensive if you have no need for the other features!
Here in Germany it costs 44,99 €/year just to get rid of ads and this is not going to happen!To highlight how out of touch this price is, these are the prices of some competitors in Germany:
- Castro: 24,99 €/year
- Overcast: 17,99 €/year
- Castbox: 21,99 €/year
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I’ve started an article on https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Pocket_Casts to document this incident. I don’t have time to fill it out fully since I’m meant to be working, but please feel free to expand on it where it is currently lacking.
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I paid for the app 10 years ago. I told any of my friends who were looking for an app about it, praising it’s UI and fair pricing. Honestly, I wouldn’t have minded paying another small fee to remove ads, as I understand that continuous maintenance isn’t free, but what’s gonna happen now is that I will tell everyone about how they pulled this garbage and how tone-deaf their responses were. People say “any press is good press”, but seeing how the play store rating tanked from 4+ to 3.5 in a week I’m not so sure about that.
If you’re on android, I strongly encourage everyone to check out AntennaPod as an alternative, as it has by now improved its UI and matched just about any important feature I can think of. I’d also just rather donate to a proper open software project five times over than ever subscribe to plus.
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To be clear, “no ads” is absolutely a feature I paid for when I purchased Pocket Casts many years ago—in fact, it was the only paid feature I actually wanted. So no, I do not still get access to the features I paid for.
Like many others here, I’m also outraged by these massive banner ads. I can understand the need for a steady income stream but it’s clear you deliberately left the change out of the release notes and decided against notifying your users about it. I’ll stay a few more weeks to give you an opportunity to get it together and reverse this terrible decision, but I really have no interest in supporting a company that treats its users like rubes.
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same here, I think this will be the last week I use Pocketcasts ever again. I paid for this app back in 2015 before the service was ever a subscription-based model. Obviously what was sold to me then was not what we have now as an ad-free experience was promised when I bought the app the first time. Completely unacceptable.
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I too purchased Pocket Casts for Android in 2014 and have used it nearly daily since then. I echo everyone’s sentiment, at the end of the day I just want the ads gone, I really don’t use any of the premium features.
For those of you who want a solution (Android only), I uninstalled the app, then downloaded version 7.95 from APKMirror. After rolling back to an older version the ads were gone, problem solved. Just make sure you go to the app page on the Play Store and turn off automatic updates. As long as you don’t update the app you should be fine for the time being.
Hopefully the company does the right thing, so we don’t need to resort to workarounds like this.
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This is what happens, a company gets acquired. Then the parent company gets their claws in to maximise profit.
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I purchased Pocket Casts many years ago. Ads were just removed from my account after having emailed support and the CEO, getting the the form response that said my purchase didn’t count (and to pay the $40/year), then late last night getting an email that the ads have now been removed. They are gone. Meanwhile I have already moved everything to AntennaPod and really hate how Automatic have handled this, including their CEO who only changed course after being called out on it. He made me a “Non-Champion” of his product even though I got what I wanted after a week.He either lied on Hacker News about it or just didn’t know what was going on in his own company.
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Adverts seem to have vanished from my app (android beta) without me having complained directly – and I did see https://blog.matthewbrunelle.com/podcasts-you-altered-the-deal-so-i-will-alter-your-app/ (I’d no idea I could just fork PC if I’m displeased)
But I’ll just be happy for now, and just reiterate that I’m not adverse to handing over some money to support the app. I just don’t want to have the adverts I paid to make go away hanging over me as a threat.
There was no need for all of this.
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Yeah, looks like the review bomb was effective, i’m on non-beta and the banner ads are gone here too. But the damage is done, and it’ll take a long time for them to rebuild lost trust.
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Looks like there is a second thread about this, where one of the staff members just confirmed that they are rolling back the ads:
https://forums.pocketcasts.com/forums/topic/advertisements-are-unnacceptable/#post-11090
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Yes, we have removed all banner ads for now. Moving forward, purchasers of the app before September 2019 will not see any banner ads when the banner ads are relaunched.
I want to take a moment to thank the community for their incredible support of Pocket Casts. Your feedback has been invaluable in helping us improve the app, and we genuinely appreciate your input. We’re committed to making Pocket Casts the best podcast experience possible, and your contributions make all the difference. Thank you all!
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Update: after seeing reports of the ads being removed, I emailed support again for confirmation (after previously being told that ads would remain and being offered a reduced subscription price which I refused). I received this response today:
“Yes, we have removed all the ads for now. Once we relaunch it, we will ensure that app purchasers (accounts created before September 2019) will not be shown the ads. Rest assured, your account will no longer be shown the banner ads. Feel free to let us know if you have any more questions that we can cover.”
So that’s the end of that then. Although in the meantime I have uninstalled the app and migrated everything over to AntennaPod already… What a faff!
Pocket Casts Forum 