They are not benefits, if you cannot use them. If you don’t fly to sits, only sit in your own country so cancellation just means staying at home, no loss of money, etc
If you, as an American were offered a years free pass to The National Trust visitor attractions in the UK, As a man , were offered a Gucci handbag, and as a person were offered a lifetime supply of Baked Beans, would that make the upgrade, and extra expense worth it, after all these are perks?
I have heard (my account is still active so I have not seen) this discount has been offered after subscription ends. As “please return, you will get a year of premium at the price of basic plan”.
I don’t see that would be very fair. Because I have sits booked until June and membership expires in March, I wouldn’t be able to have that offer. I would need to cancel my existing sits in order to get that, I would love to hear it from the horse’s mouth if this, in fact, is being offered. I’ll be mighty annoyed if it is! Well, just annoyed more
They don’t offer it before membership expires, they do after your membership has expired.
My case:
I have been a premium member for almost three years,
when I cancelled auto renewal, they offered not to cancel and get a discount of 20% or pause membership for three months and keep my account. I decided to pause it and gain time to test other platforms and see what I wanted to do.
Then I saw a desirable sit, which I applied for and, fearing I might forget about renewing, I reactivated auto renewal and chose 20% discount.
A few days later I checked when the charge was due and saw there was no discount, I realized there was a small type (tiny) at the very bottom of the page, where you need to fully scroll down in order to read it, that the discount is offered only once. I then decided to capture my reviews and forget about THS altogether, I let my membership expire.
Ten days after my membership had expired, I was cleaning my spam folder and noticed several emails from THS offering to rejoin as premium member for the same price as basic, which is slightly over 50% discount. In fact, I was offered all three options: basic and premium for the same price and standard for a higher rate. I had already gone through other sites and was hesitant about some issues, so I decided to rejoin and have another year to see what happens and what I decide.
… which, by the way (for once), makes perfect sense (if you´re a company). Why offer a discount before the expiration date? After all, a member may have second thoughts and just renew on their own accord. It’s a classic case of a company waiting to see if you’ll pay full price before they start “chasing” you with deals
If you choose this path, make sure you double check everything. The process it quite confusing, I thought when I pressed “continue” or something like that, I was continuing with the cancellation process but it actually meant continue with my membership in auto renewal. They also threaten to delete all your reviews and profile if you let your membership expire but it’s not true, my profile and reviews were intact when I signed back up.
It was also quite annoying to keep receiving my alerts after cancellation and there was no way I could cancel them on the app. I then tried on the website and was able to cancel saved searches. I still continued to receive alerts for favourites.
Wow. That’s kind of… um… not nice (I could think of other words). I remember when I considered not renewing during covid and I think I contacted member services to ask about that and they said reviews & all would stay up for Iforgethowlong in case I renewed again. Might’ve been a year.
“Only once”, so the fact that you didn’t take the discount right away but paused first and then renewed is why; do I understand that right? Also kind of, um, not nice.
[Edit: well I just tried this, turned off auto-renewal, it immediately popped up “how about 20% off?”, I clicked “apply discount” and it said “Discount not applied” and “can only be applied once”. The only option was to cancel the process – so it wouldn’t even let me turn off auto renewal. They’re not even doing it once. ]
I did manage to turn off auto renewal in the end, but it’s very tricky because it leads you to cancel the process of cancellation. I don’t remember exactly how I got there but I think there was some small type at the very bottom of that page, which would not show unless you force scroll down.
