So this isn’t meant to be a post bashing the devs/owner of OpenSubtitles. This is meant simply as awareness.
A few months ago I signed up for the VIP tier at OST ($5/mo for 1000 downloads a day) for a bit to populate my catalogue of videos with subtitles as my father uses my Jellyfin server and he’s lost a lot of his hearing. I also wanted to support the development a bit. At first the service seemed to be downloading a bit, but then it stopped. I waited a few days and it would download at most one or two a day (despite a few thousand videos not having any subtitles). I look around online and found that OST had changed their API and the Jellyfin plugin still needed to catch-up with a newer release. No big deal, so I just waited.
Then the update released which specifically stated that the changes to the API calls were made. I waited a few days, nothing. I uninstalled the OST plugin and reinstalled, still nothing.
So I figured something was wrong either on my end or the server-side, but I didn’t want to bother getting into it. I’ve been planning to rebuild my Jellyfin server with newer hardware with HW acceleration for decoding and encoding. I sent an email to OST support explaining what I’ve been seeing and asked if I could get a refund.
The person who responded asked for logs so that they could help troubleshoot. So I obliged.
They said it wasn’t much help and to get even more logs. Which I provided again.
I even removed over 14 thousand “[query]” lines to make the logs more readable. They said there wasn’t anything there that was useful, and asked me to try again. I indicated that Jellyfin has a scheduled job that checks for missing subtitles and pulls as needed once a day. But I said that at this point I’m just looking for the refund.
A while passes by but then I get a notification that the subscription is going to be renewed again, so I cancelled before that happened and reached out again about the refund. At this point it was more about the principle of the matter as I originally just asked for a refund and that got side-stepped into a support request.
Then I got this as a response:
Which resulted in this:
I waited over two weeks to write this post. I wanted to wait and see if somebody replied back to me with even just an apology or something. If they had originally told me that doing refunds is hassle for them I would have let it go. But telling me off and then deleting my account is just… special. I was astonished at the response and cannot fathom that being the response from any company taking payments for a service.
And I’m not holding a grudge of any kind and I get it, I used to do IT support and some days can be tough dealing with annoying emails. But in my defence all I asked for was a refund because something wasn’t working. In any case, I just wanted to bring this to the attention of the Self-hosting community so that others can make more informed decisions. To be clear, I’m not advocating anyone to pull support. In face I think they should have more support as it’s an invaluable service. Despite the treatment I still plan on getting the VIP subscription again at some point after I rebuild my Jellyfin server. But I also don’t think that customers should be treated like this.
Oof. Devs, don’t talk to customers or users like this. Ever. You have no idea what’s actually going on at the other end of the conversation. “Sorry we couldn’t help you,” is all this person needed to say, but now a whole bunch of people are going to stay the hell away from OST paid subs.
This is why you always have a customer service team. You need a layer of people that can actually have a modicum of respect for the user base between them and the devs, or at least the illusion of it.
There’s some FOSS software I’d be happy to support financially if it weren’t for how rude and unhelpful the devs and their chosen spokespersons are. I won’t name them and start fights, but if you’re here on self hosted, you might have an idea who I’m talking about. I know it’s hard work and they’re doing it for free but the poorly-conceiled contempt for users that have anything to say except “Thanks, your the best” is a very ugly look, and it’s unfortunately pretty common. It’s not endearing, makes me less likely to want to help out.
but now a whole bunch of people are going to stay the hell away from OST paid subs
I have a use case similar to OP’s with my father, and was looking at a solution for subtitles. I was looking at their site yesterday. I guarantee you I will stay away from them now.
This is exactly why such things need to be addressed and talked about though. Sure, this could be a one off. But if even a single other person has experienced similar, it points to a pattern.
OP also asked for a refund and ignored them wanting full logs to see if the issue was on their end. If it’s on OPs end, why would they be entitled to get money back?
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Oof. Devs, don’t talk to customers or users like this. Ever. You have no idea what’s actually going on at the other end of the conversation. “Sorry we couldn’t help you,” is all this person needed to say, but now a whole bunch of people are going to stay the hell away from OST paid subs.
This is why you always have a customer service team. You need a layer of people that can actually have a modicum of respect for the user base between them and the devs, or at least the illusion of it.
There’s some FOSS software I’d be happy to support financially if it weren’t for how rude and unhelpful the devs and their chosen spokespersons are. I won’t name them and start fights, but if you’re here on self hosted, you might have an idea who I’m talking about. I know it’s hard work and they’re doing it for free but the poorly-conceiled contempt for users that have anything to say except “Thanks, your the best” is a very ugly look, and it’s unfortunately pretty common. It’s not endearing, makes me less likely to want to help out.
True. I once considered subscribing, some years ago, but customer reviews of OST convinced me not to. Looks like i made the right decision.
I have a use case similar to OP’s with my father, and was looking at a solution for subtitles. I was looking at their site yesterday. I guarantee you I will stay away from them now.
I get where you’re coming from, but it could have been a single person having a really bad day. It happens to everyone.
I’m just suggesting you consider that also.
This is exactly why such things need to be addressed and talked about though. Sure, this could be a one off. But if even a single other person has experienced similar, it points to a pattern.
Very true. Good point.
OP also asked for a refund and ignored them wanting full logs to see if the issue was on their end. If it’s on OPs end, why would they be entitled to get money back?
So you didn’t fully read the mails either, did you?
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