Do Perks really cancel old renewal rates?

I almost bought the perk for bigger bags, but fortunately I notice the resulting subscription had a huge jump in price; according to the checkout page I would lose my $89.88 annual rate, and it would jump to the higher current rate?

I thought they were supposed to be a reasonable addon, not break my main subscription.

You have a special rate that is grandfathered in.

Once you change it by adding to it then it will cancel that special rate.

Has happened in the past but usually its when the credit card expires if you don't get an updated card in fast enough

Lots of issues with folks that have lifetime accounts and trying to use perks. Might be fixed. Have not kept up on it.

You probably just blew their minds that the $90 renewal exists.

[Side note: That's what I have as well so I'll never subscribe to addons cause I see all the hoops the unlimited subs have with their 500 cash claim. I'll just be happy with $7.50 a month.]

I'm glad I waited to do mine, I won't be bothering, I have 2 lifetimes and a grandfathered sub, its just not worth all the messing around for so little.

Mission failed successfully!

The subscription for the perks should be completely independent of the subscription for the account.
That way there would be no messing up of lifetime or grandfathered rates.
Just a new monthly (or please, 3 month, 6 month, yearly) charge to the payment source on filr for the perk.

The thick plottens!!

Totally 1000% agree with this!

Andarriel

Smart. Once the duct tape is in place, it's a good idea to never mess with it.

Grandfather ...explain.

What was the deal that was grandfathered?

1 year - $89.99.

It's been so long since I've been on the deal I forgot when it started.

for a short while they offered a 74 a year plan, but that was many many many moons ago.

They also mention in the FAQ on the main site under Perks. Although it references a 24 month I take it to mean ANY previous special subscription. I don't trust them much when it comes to messing around with subscriptions

Will I be able to purchase Perks if I have a grandfathered 24 Month Membership plan? EverQuest Perks are not compatible with older 24 month recurring memberships. Players with this type of plan will need to re-subscribe to a newer plan to enjoy EverQuest Perks.

https://help.daybreakgames.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408498927379-EQ-Perks-FAQs

1. When will lifetime subscribers be able to get the 3, 6 and 12 month option.
2. Lifetime subscribers do not have a billing cycle so " The same models will apply as shown above for adding a perk when it does not align with your billing cycle, as well as canceling or switching a Perk." is meaningless.

I 100 percent agree that perks need a much cleaner purchase screen, not tied to anything except being a paying subscription. As they are now many of us have to choose them vs our current sub getting messed with.

I wish I could accurately remember the soe screw-up that gave us the 89.99 or grandfather rate as some call it. Basically in the offer they used a bad word in commerce, that meant "Forever" and while they don't or didn't like it, they have done the right thing and honored it for a long long time.

I bought the perks on one of my lifetime accounts. The only issues I had were that I could not buy anything longer than one month recurring, and after the first month, the recurring seemed to fail, and I had to set them up again. An annoyance, but not a major issue.

I'm not too surprised that agreeing to a modified subscription would forfeit your grandfathered rate. My cellphone carrier works this way where just sneezing on the terms of service to one of my family member's decade+ grandfathered unlimited plans causes the rate to explode & caps/etc. to kick in.

I totally agree it sucks and is incredibly annoying from a customer perspective, but from a business perspective its not surprising. In fact from a DBG customer's perspective, its definitely not given the 2018's special annual membership offer basically repriced anyone that took it from their old plan to the new rate and gave some special goodies cheap, once.

Part of the messy execution is probably how clunky and cobbled their legacy systems are and how many grandfathered plans were already in the billing system.

Actually, Lifetime subscribers DO have a "Billing Cycle" You can see the billing cycle based on when you are allowed to collect your 500 Daybreak/Darkpaw (whatever it is now) Cash. That is your renewal date. So while Lifetime subscribers do not pay anything on this date it is something that is recorded in the system.

The Perks should in no way have ever been tied to your existing subscription, period. I would even argue that the marketing of the Perks is such that your average person of average intelligence would see the ad and interpret it as being separate from your Subscription.

The whole way they dealt with the perks is incredibly surprising from a business perspective. They could have made considerably more money already by not tying the perks to subscriptions. There are a number of people who want the perks but not a subscription, the perks are good at all points in the game, but the subscription is only really good when you are either wanting to play on a TLP server or you are playing at the top end of the relatively current game.

There are not that many grandfathered subscriptions in the system, and further the subscription system is no way clunky or cobbled together. The Billing systems are not at all held back by the game. It is rather disingenuous to imply that they are. It is quite easy to manage far more subscription types, than EQ has ever had.

You're wrong. That's not a renewal date, & DBC claim date aren't fully/always synched to billing cycles. Case & point 1 year subscription holders get monthly claims too between their 1 year renewal... Same concept with Lifetime but it's just each month we get a DBC claim. It's not a billing renewal date, there's no $0.00 transaction charged to lifetime membership holder's credit cards on the DBC date.

Actually from an advertising & disclosure perspective, it's seems clear: https://www.everquest.com/membership

Step 1: Pick a membership plan (outlines the current rates), also as the OP points out they even disclose or make it very clear your recurring rate is going to change before checkout.

Step 2: Pick your perks (outlines how much you'll pay based off the number of perks you select.

Finally: It presents a total of what you're rate will be... Even if you're an existing member, and I repeat when you check out (as the OP pointed out), they disclose your rate will change, so they're covered.

As I explained with my cell phone example, it makes sense because they're giving you a difference package/service level. They're effectively renegotiating your price of the base service as a precondition of offering the perks.

Again, they did something similar with the 2018 Winter Extravaganza's 1 Year Membership + Bonus. Anyone who took that deal for 1 year membership + the AllAccess games' bundled premium items got moved over to the new standard rate. They made getting the items at a discount contingent upon a rate change.

Just EQ has undergone multiple plan/price changes, and two monetization model changes. (Original Free to Play/3 Tier & later All Access), and has had plenty of promo. rates over 20+ years.

To illustrate how these changes have historically impact people they eventually even resulted in issues where people losing their "gifted exempt status" in the transition to AllAccess.

https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/exempt-account-change.219891/

There are countless threads where issues between the systems are impacting Lifetime members, Krono members, etc... The desync between the game & the actual billing system were so complicated the Devs solution was to remove the ___ days of membership left counter used to remind people to resub. So there is a history of the systems not getting along.

With that in mind I'm still comfortable inferring that it's possible could be some system limitation that prevents them from even accommodating the grandfathered rates.

Again, I agree the way they're handling it is little disappointing, but I still view it as reasonable, but again that's just my opinion.

The DBC claim dates are 100% of the time the same as when the billing would be on the monthly basis. If you are a yearly or Lifetime subscriber, and you subscribed on the 24th of December, then the 24th of every month is when your DBC claim date is. Not sooner, not later. They have the year recorded. Acting like it is difficult to use the same system to manage the Perks billing cycles separate from that is ludicrous.

You're confused on what advertising is. Advertising is when they market it to us, not when they sell it at the creation of an account. When they informed everyone of it and marketed it to us, they gave the impression that the perks were separate, they are priced separate from the subscription fee. The Pricing for the Perk packages for all time limits are not saying that they require you to drop your existing subscription and get a new one. They say that you have to pay this in addition to your existing subsciption. Everyone I knew expected the billing for the perks to be separate from the billing for subscriptions when they announced it. Additionally, what you mention here is aimed more towards those who do not have a membership plan, not those adding something to their existing plan.

Cellphone examples are always awful for examples, and especially in this case because they do not market them the way that you claim. All cellular carriers are required to always give the full price for the packages, they are not allowed to advertise services ala cart and revoke agreements when you add onto your existing plan. If you have a special discounted 4 year contract at $60/mo (when it would normally be $100/mo) with no data, and then half way through they offer or you add a 10 GB data plan for an $40/mo; you are only going to be paying $100/mo not $140 a month as you seem to claim.

You must have missed the fact that everyone complained about that and they restored the previously existing deals that people had. As they have done pretty much every time that they have done similar promotions.

It is much more likely that his account just had never gotten unflagged as being an active guide in the billing section, then when the new change to billing came with a different way that they handled

You're making a lot of assumptions here. There is a difference between the Devs adding something, but not taking account of Lifetime subscribers since we are such a small portion and the check for them being different. The Devs removed the # of days left was due to issues with it causing issues from a UI perspective on Lifetime Subs, and just not calculating things right in game. The systems weren't desync'ed the game just did not always calculate the time correctly. If the systems were actually desync'ed then those people would not have still had their subscription status as opposed to new things not working correctly.

There is nothing at all to infer that the billing system is incapable of handling the minimal number of grandfathered subscriptions that actually exist and the normal subscriptions and adding the Perk subscriptions separately, as is standard across the world.