I don’t use Pocket like very many other people so I feel like I need to add. My use is keeping up with my thoughts & discussions throughout my day. I’m disabled and backed as a Founder and it has been so helpful. I don’t have a lot of disposable income so I had been using the free pro to figure out if it would work. My suggestion would be a tier between free and pro. I love the summaries and the lists it generates but I don’t need all the different ai choices, all the different kinds of summaries or some of the other bells and whistles. Maybe y’all can find a middle of the road tier?
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I’m in a similar situation. I use it as a writer to transcribe my ideas through the day. The summaries aren’t really meaningful for me. I don’t need all the features but I do need access to my notes beyond 14 days.
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Thank you for clarifying but, like the rest on this thread, I don’t agree with the thinking. You’re locking us out of our data and we have to pay to access it, that’s a problem. We don’t have a native integration to either Dropbox or Google Drive. How do you propose we access our data before we retire our pocket devices? Please advise and thank you. I guess this is not going to work out after all.
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If you’re not taking away unlimited summaries, and you also plan to store past summaries behind a paywall in case free users upgrade to pro, then is that admitting that this new 14-day retention policy is paying more so for the team and app development than it is for compute costs? I get that both cost money but I think longer access to summaries is one of the most fundamental use cases of an AI device like this. Unlimited summaries is quite meaningless if you have limited access to them, and at this point just makes it seem like a good marketing buzz word. I think when most of us became founding members and took a chance on your product, we felt that unlimited access to our “unlimited” summaries was implied. We may have made a different choice otherwise.
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It seems like this decision is here to stay regardless of any feedback the community has, and honestly, I can respect that. I don’t think changing to 14 day history is a deal breaker, actually. It’s the way it was executed that is really the problem.
I think its a huge slap in the face to your original backers, as well as to those who referred their friends and family to Pocket.
I do hope for the long term success of Pocket, but I can no longer confidently refer folks to Pocket given that these kind of changes affects my reputation as well. Hope that provides a little food for thought.
Edit: well, I’m happy to be proved wrong in this case - thanks for listening to user feedback, Pocket team. I will continue to refer folks to pocket, knowing they listen to feedback and are willing to pivot as needed!
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I’m in the same situation. My company was looking at buying 7 of these but they are now on hold and looking at other options, despite my high praise and my experience in working with the Engineers directly…
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They’re locking us out of our data, and we have to pay to access it; that’s a problem. We don’t have a native integration to either Dropbox or Google Drive. *****No one seems to want to answer this question —>>>How do we access our data and save it locally or to our own cloud? I asked this same question back in October, when the 30-day deletion was announced, and received no response. C’mon guys. This is how you treat early supporters? Are you sure? You just bricked my device and are holding my data hostage.
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One thing about pocket that I will say they did very well is marketing and new customer engagement.
I’m wondering now if that backfired in that a lot of people bought into pocket but they’re not seeing the conversion to pro. This is why they’re now in a tough predicament.
Neither founders nor new users are converting, so they need some folks to drop off the platform and some folks to convert. They want to continue to give unlimited minutes (for now) to be a market differentiator.
It almost feels like a hostage situation. Buy pro to access your older data or else we’ll go out of business and your data will be gone anyway. Yikes, what a tough spot to be in.
Side note: I really don’t like that the team touted founders to be in the best position when in reality, they’re being treated the same way as a new user. As much as I understand the business side of it, the user experience has been very jarring for their early advocates.
Super side note: I wonder what the usage data really looks like. Are most users using under 300/600/900 minutes? That would make sense as to why reducing the number of minutes wasn’t the first lever pulled. However, it would still increase the costs quite a bit if there were a lot of low usage users, and thus, the decision to gate old summaries makes sense in that scenario.
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Hey Akshay and team,
I appreciate you taking the time to explain the change and the cost side of unlimited transcription and summaries.
That said, As a founding member, one of the advertised benefits when I backed Pocket was 90 days of cloud history. We believed in this product early, when there was very little to go on. It seems a bit unfair that we’re being treated the same as someone buying the product today.
I understand the need to make the business sustainable, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to retroactively remove a benefit that was part of what convinced many of us to support Pocket in the first place. I don’t think that we are being unreasonable with our request for the original 90‑day history benefit we were promised as founding members.
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First, I want to acknowledge that your team ultimately did resolve a subscription issue over the past week that was rather annoying to me. That said, it required significant persistence on my part to reach the promised outcome, and it was not a good experience overall. Still, we did get there, and credit where it’s due.
Now to the matter at hand.
I am not a lawyer, but I have been in this market long enough to offer a piece of practical advice: you should run this revised policy through your attorneys before locking it in.
As I see the situation, Pocket publicly advertised a specific benefit for Founding Members, people relied on that representation, and they purchased the product. Retroactively changing or removing that advertised benefit is where the risk lies. There is no amount of wording, including “we reserve the right to change terms”, that will prevent someone from attempting legal action over this. And someone will.
The core issue is not pricing or sustainability. It’s that this was a clearly advertised feature tied to the Founding Member purchase. U.S. Consumer Protection laws, and especially those in California, exist precisely for situations like this. If a regulator or agency decides to take interest based on a complaint, it costs consumers nothing to initiate that process, while it can impose a very real burden on the company.
To be clear, this is not said vindictively and it is not a threat. It’s friendly advise simply shared from experience, and as a warning you would be wise to take seriously.
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I am a new customer and recently purchased three units for my small startup team. Delivery took over a month from the date of purchase, during which time we waited patiently rather than pursuing competing products. Because the items were delivered approximately one and a half weeks ago, we are still within the 30-day return window.
While we appreciate the product itself, the recent and abrupt change to your Terms of Service is a significant concern and ultimately a dealbreaker for my team. The original 90-day terms were a material factor in our decision to choose your product over competitors. Altering those terms retroactively for early customers undermines trust and reflects poorly on customer stewardship.
As a founder, I would expect that financial planning, projections, and funding needs would be addressed internally rather than shifted onto early and loyal customers. Early adopters are the foundation of any growing business, and changes of this nature risk damaging both customer confidence and brand reputation.
There are clear paths forward that would demonstrate integrity and accountability:
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Secure additional funding to support your original commitments.
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Honor the original terms for all customers who purchased prior to this change.
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Apply the revised 14-day terms exclusively to new customers with full transparency at the point of purchase.
I strongly encourage you to reconsider this decision and its broader implications for customer trust and long-term brand equity. I will be watching this closely for the next few days before I pack our Pockets up and ship them back to you, only to go spend our money with another company with integrity. Thank You. JL
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Quick update for everyone following this thread: we’re keeping free history at 90 days. Unlimited transcription + unlimited summaries remain unchanged.
Full update is here: https://community.heypocket.com/t/update-90-days-stays-were-not-making-the-change/1375?u=akshay
Appreciate the feedback. Keep it coming.
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Well done. Thank you.