Chris Jennings

Tonight marks a day in history that I will never forget. While watching Jay Leno, I was presented with a post-monologue catastrophe in which I thought was a part of a bad joke gone totally, totally wrong. I was half right.

It turns out that NBC is trying to monetize programming by inserting annoying and obvious advertisements into the content of it’s shows. I rarely catch any television prior to Thursday (thank god for Lost), so it’s very likely that this isn’t the first time.

It all began when Jay introduced announcer John Melendez along with some random cockdiesel American Gladiator to ‘joust’ for a Klondike Bar. John began screaming loudly while hitting the gladiator in the side when the Neanderthal hit back with one devastating blow to John’s head. John fell to the floor like an over dramatic actor who was dying for work with one last chance to make it happen.

But this leads to the part I will never forget. The camera flashed back to Jay who was staring at the scene that had just unfolded, with obvious embarrassment and said “And they ask me why I’m leaving.” Cut to Klondike commercial. Okay, make that TWO Klondike commercials.

When asked what would you do for a Klondike bar? NBC responds, “Sell out.”

Update: Here’s the footage (fittingly jammed with ads), enjoy.

When news first broke of Shopify, I was ecstatic. A fully functioning, hosted shopping cart solution was a godsend for me as a web designer. I have several clients who thank me often for switching them over to such a robust, yet painfully simple ecommerce solution. After seeing the success that they’ve had, I have been quietly building a store of my own using Shopify.

Today I logged in to find out that: 1. The stats that are usually on my dashboard are missing, 2. the option to add a coupon is greyed out and there is now a link beside of it saying “upgrade your account.”

… I was at a lost for words. After further inspection, I was now listed as a “trial member” instead of simply having a free account. I was outraged. I wasn’t warned, offered an upgrade… nothing.

Here’s What’s New

For everyone that hadn’t activated their account before August 11th, 2007 you are now a trial member. You have 5 free orders to process before you are forced to upgrade. Those that had an activated account were granted a “grandfathered” tier in which everything stayed the same… unless they need SKU’s for more than 1000 products, then they will be forced to upgrade and pay the new monthly rate.

Here are the new tiers:

• Trial - $0/month - No coupons, 1 Block of Storage, 5 Max SKU’s, No Stats, 0% Transaction Fee, Can’t use own domain name.
• Basic - $24/month - No coupons, 1 Block of Storage, 1000 Max SKU’s, Basic Stats, 2% Transaction Fee
• Professional - $54/month, Unlimited Coupons, 4 Blocks of Storage, 2,500 Max SKU’s, Advanced Stats, 1% Transaction Fee
• Enterprise - $299/month (wtf!), Unlimited Coupons, 8 Blocks of Storage, 10,000 Max SKU’s, Advanced Stats, 0.5% Transaction Fee.

As you can see, things have changed. The lovable Shopify.com that I brag about to all of my colleagues and clients about is no more. To get the same features I was getting for free, I now have to pay $59 a month for.

Update - There is hope for some.

There is hope for those who had signed up before August 11th, 2007 but had not activated the payment gateway. Today I sent the following message using the Shopify support system:

Shopify, I have carefully been planning my launch for the past few weeks and I log in today to find out that since I didn’t activate my account, I haven’t been “grandfathered”. I feel that I too have been a loyal customer by simply telling my colleagues how amazing your free service has been so far.

I don’t think this is fair and would like to request that I be grandfathered as well. This is not what I signed up for, nor what I was promised - nor what I have been working on for weeks. I hope you all have the integrity to make this right.

Please help me resolve this.

Shortly thereafter I received an email saying that I was granted a “grandfathered” account. This shows integrity (and saves me $60/month), however, what about those people who we’ve all been raving to about the “free” Shopify???