I can’t find the “annual” subscription option anymore. I am being careful what I click though, as I don’t want to restart my subscription by accident (I have one day left). Some people on Reddit are saying that the annual option has ended, but you’ve obviously found it.
It’s interesting that it reverts to the “monthly” subscription at the end of the 360 day period, rather than renewing for another 360 days.
I just don’t like them. Why can’t they just be straight like Qobuz and all the others?
if you click on “change plan”, then there is an option there as below. I was also given the option when I tried to unsubscribe (but didn’t complete). I’ve got a few more days left so leaving its little longer before I go for it.
Ah thanks. I don’t get that on my account as there’s an “undo cancellation” button instead at the moment. That will probably change today when my subscription runs out.
I won’t renew though; I’ll just keep Qobuz.
Too much time has elapsed for me to recall the details, but in financial markets iirc, there was a 360 day calculation for interest.
Why it applies to tidal……no idea. Sharp practice but i’m another looking at this afresh, while I enjoy Qobuz, Tidal is used on first gen.
Earlier this year, I wanted to change email address and failed to find if it was possible, so binned and then subsequently restarted.
In view of the Tidal issues on other threads re hi-res, makes you wonder just how robust an ongoing op this service might be!
Rather than wait a few days, I went ahead and upgraded to a year. Thankfully they seem to have added my unused days to the end.
You mean 360 days!
My Tidal subscription has now expired. I went to see if I could find the annual option. I was surprised to see in the Tidal app on my iPhone they were inviting me to rejoin for £13.99 a “month”. On my laptop the price is £10.99.
Absolutely - the key is how they word things. As you say, if they stated the charge was for a 30 day period then fine, but if they call it a Monthly charge they must legally charge you only once per calendar month. I agree that it’s not trivial.
I don’t know which body would be best to take the issue to though…
1 Like
Mental, i didn’t realise it was like this when i used tidal, back in the day with my NDS.
Can’t be right can it, doesn’t look very legal to me at all.
I’m not sure either, would depend on your country, someone like Consumer Advice would be a good place to start. Possibly the Advertising Standards Authoritity has remit in this area.
Here in NZ my mobile plan renews every 28 days, the electronic version of shrinkflation. Whether you prrsonally think this is a big deal or not, cumulatively these are BIG £££/€€€/$$$.
1 Like
They may have changed their billing period over time Dunc.
I wrote to BBC Watchdog about it. I haven’t heard back as it may not be the biggest issue drawn to their attention.
It’s not really that they charge every 30 days that annoys me; it’s that they steadfastly claim it to be monthly, in both their advertising and T&Cs, whilst refusing to admit that anything’s wrong at their customer support.
3 Likes
I’m just amazed at the lengths companies will go to nickel and dime their customers today. I’d cancel in a heartbeat if I had a tidal subscription and they pulled this on me. It’s not the amount, it’s the principle - if enough people did this, they’d soon change their tune!
4 Likes
Deleted, please remove.
2 Likes
I tend to get irritated by rather trivial things too
The ideal would be for them to charge on the same date each month, but that would not be feasible every month if you started a subscription say on the 29th-31st of the month.
If they could charge on the same date or closest to it you’d also then find your effective daily charge to be higher some months than others.
It’s soemthing I’d probably not get too worked up about though I might point it out to them.
Are you paying for Qobuz monthly? If so how does that work for you? I pay annually for Qobuz, I think it’s marginally cheaper but may be wrong.
I also have Apple Music for the family but ditched Tidal a while back, especially when I saw how little I was using it (I was on the £19.99 tier where they sent a summary of top listens and payments to those artists - this made me realise that some months I wasn’t even listening to 10 different artists).
Tidal was a nice luxury extra, but with general cost of living pressures almost £240 for 360 days barely used wasn’t worth it. Same for Roon and Audirvana which got cancelled due to little usage.
It’s an interesting observation in itself though - I must check if some of my monthly Apple subscriptions are on a specific date or every 30 days. Annual subscriptions always seem to be cheaper, but for some services I may only want/need them for a few months.
I use Pay As You Go for family mobile phones which have all been purchased outright (and are fully functional but becoming dated). 3 Mobile’s top-ups last 30 days and it’s quite a pain because I can never remember when they expire due to multiple changing dates. Nearly dumped 3 when I had annoying outage last weekend but when their systems were updated for me (no one else in the family oddly), the monthly data had increased significantly on the base tier which was good but their new menu system on the top-up line is awful, and it was pretty bad before.
1 Like
I’d have to wonder if you’re considering buying the subscription via the Tidal app from Apple’s AppStore if Tidal are passing on the ‘Apple Tax’ of 30% or so of revenue from the subscription to the customer rather than absorbing it themselves. Many services charge the same subscription price for in-app purchases vs online website subscriptions you could manually sign-in to the iPhone apps with, but in these situations Apple is taking a significant amount of the subscription for hosting the App/subscriptions on their platform.
I hadn’t thought of that: you’re probably right. Apple do seem to have a virtual monopoly on iOS app sales.
I pay for Qobuz annually. You get 12 months for the price of 10. I used to pay monthly and they always took payment on the same date.
1 Like
Same here. I only used Tidal occasionally, when Qobuz might not have an album that I was looking for. I find the most complete services are Apple Music and Spotify, but neither are satisfactory for my requirements when playing on my Naim. I haven’t missed Tidal at all so far.
I’ve never tried Roon. I have Audirvana but it’s the legacy version that you only paid for once; and I haven’t used that since Qobuz became native on Naim!
I’ve heard of others doing this but apparently they’re now only accepting payments from Argentina issued cards for Argentinian accounts and having their accounts cancelled for falling foul.
Only if you sign up through the Apple app store. Just sign up on the Tidal website to avoid giving Apple extra cash in return for absolutely nothing.