If there’s one more reasoned take on this thread it’s getting locked!
Please stick to wild speculation, condescension and (for my entertainment) throw in some nasty personal insults too.
You and your paying attention and adult behavior…Jesus. People like you make me sick.
This is exactly where I am and probably a lot of other people that are locked in at $99. I use TR 3 to 5 months a year, in fact the first year I used it for 2 months and then suspended my account in the summer. I re joined and then a legacy plan was announced that would lock me in at $99 if I stayed on a yearly plan. Every year I come close to canceling but stick with it so I don’t lose that price.
You are wrong.
Say complete costs for the company are $1M…low, I know, but it is a figure.
Say grandfathered subscribers contribute $200k…again just an illustrative number. That means the remaining users have to cover the extra which may mean that they have to pay nearly double to fill the gap. This all depends on the amount of users in each price level, which we do not know.
It isn’t about the cost each user causes on the company, it is bottom line that has been driving the difference between grandfathered prices and new user prices.
So in effect grandfathered users are being subsidised because they will get all features at the same price whereas new users have to pay more to cover the additional overheads.
I guess that’s why Nate wants to charge extra to extra features.
It seems like you have a mindset that doesn’t like to feel accused of being subsidized, but doesn’t like to pay full price. That’s fine. I won’t use the word again.
The point is just that having legacy subscriptions means that the cost of expanded investment in the company is borne primarily by new subscribers; the benefit of that expanded investment is shared by all subscribers. Whatever you call it 
, it sounds like Nate is concerned that they have limited options to increase prices only on new subscribers in order to afford that expanded investment.
I hope you are paying year round and are not dropping the service when you don’t use it. Dito for all new users. Don’t want the legacys subsidising your service, huh?
Same argument. We don’t know who is more profitable for TR. Also Nate wasn’t concerned. He talked about being in a position to add even more teams. The legacys are the obvious guess for additional revenue. However, that could also backfire immensely.
Plus 1% per Disaster Day 
Top notch post from @PhilSJones up there. Excellent analysis and insight.
I have been thinking, but not posting, a similar thought re: Nate sharing ideas / features before final. In a world where you can have a “direct” conversation with all your customers, sharing ideas this openly can be counter-productive.
I admire Nate’s openness and earnestness in doing so, but there are times when things need to be worked out behind closed doors, IMO. This is probably one of those times. Customers with Legacy pricing are (naturally) going to be protective of that status. Some who are at current rates are going to disagree with Legacy pricing.
You are never gonna reach consensus, or even a “majority approved” status. But in the meantime, a lot of emotion gets churned up and a lot of it is negative, which can ultimately hurt the brand.
Brilliantly put.
It’s not about consensus. It’s about getting feedback. The brand isn’t hurt by that. Quite contrary I would say, the openness and transparency are what makes TR so likeable in the first place. It’s what makes the brand. It’s the key difference to all the other clean polished competitors.
Someone who has been with TR for ~10 years has give between 900 and 1200 bucks towards the development of that new feature plus their data whether they ride a lot or a little they still provided data. Someone who joined yesterday has given between 20 and 190…
5 more years in the new user has given TR between and 945 and 1200 and the 15 year user is now at 1350 and 1800.
Nearly every step of the way the legacy user has already stepped up and paid more than the person who joined yesterday.
Users who stick around for legacy pricing and only ride 1-3 months a year are still providing data. While they may not have provided enough into to let TR know if they were on the couch or just riding outside, it still gives TR a data point of how fast someone “gets faster” after being gone for 9 months… data is data. Nate seems to not have done a ride since october… most legacy of legacy users, when he starts again that is still data.
But that’s the point isn’t it ? TR needs more funds to add the new features, new users have to pay $190 to get the same features if they subscribe for an entire year, if they only use it for 6 months of the year, they have paid more (5 months the same) into the same TR development fund, when there is such a large discrepancy between new/existing users, new users can’t help but feel that they are paying for existing uses to kept at a lower price, because without the new users, TR would either fold (costs increase with inflation) or have to stop development, which can only be amplified by other companies having a large user base and equal (and lower pricing) making them more likely to be loyal to them, not TR
If grandfathering was such a great deal for TR, the best thing they could do would be offer the annual subscription at $99, but only for the first time you subscribe, after that $189
I think you’re inferring a judgement from me where none exists. I am currently paying $99/yr which means, obviously, that 1) I am a legacy subscriber and 2) I have been paying “year round” for a while now. When I suggest that it might be unsustainable to maintain legacy subscription pricing, that means I would see a big jump in price too.
I’m just sympathetic to what @Skyewalkr said - “I’m just kind of annoyed to discover that others are paying less than I am” - and I foresee some unfortunate downsides to what Nate started off as a gesture of goodwill to longtime subscribers years ago.
I wouldn’t say I can’t stand it but I used it a bit back when it was free, looks like I got into the beta 12/24/14. I even went back and forth with Nate about using it overlapping with TR and tested some things.
Maybe used it a dozen times free and couldn’t be bothered.
Right…but you don’t need to open up the discussion to such a public level to get that feedback. It becomes too big and too hard to discern what the actual feedback is. Legacy members saying they’ll quit if the prices are raised, others saying they are willing to pay more, etc.
As I said, I admire Nate’s willingness and openness to have these discussions,but something that needs to be considered is that TR is significantly larger than they used to be and that sometimes requires a shift in how you interact with your customers.
No, it isn’t. Nate said more funds would allow for three more teams. That’s a want and not a need.
Why would they be paying for them? How would someone in their first year make up for let’s say 5 or 10 years worth of subscription fees?
You assume that giving up legacy pricing would benefit the revenue basis. I would argue it will likely hurt it. TR would lose a lot of users and experience quite unsteady cash flows and a pretty hefty seasonality pattern.
The grandfathered prices match the current competitor pricing. Systm eg is 129. Xert 100 bucks. Perhaps decreasing prices for new subscribers would actually attract more?
@Jonathan or Brandon becomes CEO, @nate becomes President or Chief Geek or something, problem solved and no promises broken…
All this talk of “investing in TR”, but unless there are shares in the company coming my way it’s really just a money sink for me. One which I think has been “worth it”, but will regularly evaluate the cost/benefit of vs competition. So far TR comes out on top, partly because my price is locked-in.
I like the player, workout catalog, plans, and PL rating system. If I found something similar for less I might consider switching, but the bar there is pretty high. And I’ve been entirely comfortable with the current pace of feature delivery. Yes, there are things I want (unstructured ride PLs), but there’s a lot of things other subscribers want and I’m patient. I get the impression tri-users have been getting the short end of the feature-stick for a while.
Ultimately I have to ask, just how big can TR get? Indoor cycling is very niche. Heck, often enough I’ll run into a cyclist that doesn’t know what Strava is. Rapidly increasing the feature delivery pace simply isn’t likely (imo) to grow the subscriber base in the kinds of numbers to justify the cost. To me, this is about being sustainable vs hyper-growth. There’s risk either way.
I would say the feedback is quite clear.
That’s one way to look at it. In my opinion that’s the TR culture and what makes them unique. That’s why many want to see them succeed.
I was talking about them 189 ( 240 monthly if they can’t outlay 189), me 100 , how could they not , 2 of their years could be 5 of yous
I wasn’t even talking about that, I was talking about the users perception
My entire point
I would suggest this is confirmation bias, because it is anything but clear.