8 ms·

I singlehandledly forced the replacement of Expensify at my company after some dodgy billing practices. They incrementally, yet substantially, raised our bill

by tomlor 5y ago

I singlehandledly forced the replacement of Expensify at my company after some dodgy billing practices. They incrementally, yet substantially, raised our bill over a period of eight months with no notification to us whatsover. It was hard to detect because our bills were already variable values per month (based on active users). When I discovered the higher rates we were paying I reached out to support and they said I wasn't notified because I elected to opt out of marketing emails. They wouldn't issue a credit either. I threatened to cancel service and they truly couldn't have cared less. So we dumped them. Very satisfying. It's a shame - the product was ok. But from my persepctive, F these guys.

kyleee 5y ago
Hah - the idea of changes to your contractual billing rate being classified as marketing emails... one really does see something new everyday in tech...
lugged 5y ago
We're also still reeling from the smartscan debacle. The thing that pissed me off the most is when they emailed some unsolicited BLM propoganda out to every one of our employees.
- 55555 5y ago
  HelpScout does this too.
eps 5y ago
It'd be nice to hear their version of this before I bother to get my butt off the couch and pick my pitchfork. The fact that fee increases weren't communicated because the OP was't subed to promo emails just doesn't smell right. As is the fact that it wasn't obvious from the actual billing statements. Ps. I remember their CEO (David Barrett) back from the p2p-hackers mailing list days. He ain't one of them Zuckerbergs. The exact opposite in fact.
- curiousgal 5y ago
  > He ain't one of them Zuckerbergs. The exact opposite in fact. I am not saying otherwise, just objectively speaking: money changes people.
  - teen 5y ago
    No, he was always a jerk.
- othertemp1234 5y ago
  David's a hardcore coder and a talented technologist, for sure, but... well, he believes whatever he believes at the moment very strongly. He has a very solid reality-distortion field. As an example, he really believed it was fine to have mechanical turk freelancers see people's receipts. He would say something to the effect of "people throw their receipts in the garbage where any sanitation worker can see them - this no different." I wasn't around when the mechanical turk stuff made the news, but it seems like it caught him totally off guard that people would be upset. I suspect that the conversation around the price increases went something like: David: There, I just sent a 3-page-long plaintext email explaining our price updates to everyone. Other Expensifier: Shouldn't we notify people who have opted out of those emails? David: If they opted out of announcement emails, they don't want announcment emails. Seems straightforward to me. Other Expensifier: Yeah, but, like, we don't have multiple opt-out channels. They can either get every multi-page plaintext missive you send, or they can opt out and miss significant price increases. David: Nope. They made their choice, we should respect it. Multiple opt-out channels are an antipattern. Anyway, the number of users who will be upset about this are vanishingly small - let's worry about the rest.
  - teen 5y ago
    Not sure about that, I interviewed with Expensify 10 years ago when they had about 2-3 employees. At the time, David clearly had no idea what he was talking about when it came to code. Remember when he posted that inflammatory blog post about not hiring .NET developers? David was super rude to me.
rexreed 5y ago
Not to mention their shady and undisclosed practices of using humans to read receipts when they pretend it's AI / OCR / NLP doing that. "Expensify has admitted that its declared AI product SmartScan, which is assumed to scan the expense receipts and categorize the details into corresponding expense pool through a machine process, was actually assisted by humans. Breaching privacy of users, the receipts were posted on freelancing websites where freelancers used to take out extracts of information from receipts and send it to Expensify team." [0] https://mantra.ai/blogs/pseudo-ai-when-humans-do-bots-work/ https://mantra.ai/blogs/pseudo-ai-when-humans-do-bots-work/
- temp1634592138 5y ago
  I worked at Expensify a few years ago. Except for some email and PDFs, the process is entirely manual. The justification is that humans just do it better with a reasonable and predictable cost.
- anitil 5y ago
  Ah so _that's_ why it was so good. So often I find these 'AI' systems are just smoke and mirrors. You have a great system, nobody is interested. Sprinkle on some 'ai' magic beans, and people are now throwing money at you.
  - loosescrews 5y ago
    It was just boring old Natural Intelligence.
- IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago
  There were some horror stories in YC about staff running certain receipts thru expensify, leading to bank or bitcoin accounts being penetrated and stolen. I have to concur - i've had the ability to steer companies away from their product. Expensify was OK before all the OCR stuff and shady billing. Now with the S1 filing, whatever good designers and engineering talent they had will bail, and the company will be a hollow carcass of its former self. Avoid. NOTE: the shady billing practices are traditionally the precursor to an S1 filing. Usually, a company going public has earnout/incentives, so they will do whatever it takes to increase revenue preIPO, even if that directly impairs the company's long term future.
tcas 5y ago
I got hit by the same year long gradual bill increase. I didn't notice at first, as the number seemed right, but then at 6 months or so I looked into why the price seemed so much higher than what I remember and got really upset. When I looked into it, it seemed as though they restructured their plans multiple times during the ~4 years I was paying them, and I got placed into the most expensive option which was originally the same price as what I started with. I was also locked into a year long commitment at some point, and they wouldn't budge on letting me downgrade to the lower plan mid year (I didn't have a use for any of the advanced features). The support chat told me the same thing about the changes being announced via marketing emails, and said they could not credit, cancel or downgrade my plan. The support agent also couldn't care less when I said it would cause me to cancel my plan at renewal. The whole experience left me with a really bad impression, I went from a huge advocate to telling everyone to avoid them.
throwawaysea 5y ago
Claiming that such a notice is marketing email sounds illegal. Changing pricing silently without notice or consent sounds a lot like fraud.
ww520 5y ago
Class action lawsuit coming?

by tomlor 5y ago

kyleee 5y ago

Hah - the idea of changes to your contractual billing rate being classified as marketing emails... one really does see something new everyday in tech...

lugged 5y ago

We're also still reeling from the smartscan debacle. The thing that pissed me off the most is when they emailed some unsolicited BLM propoganda out to every one of our employees.

55555 5y ago
HelpScout does this too.

eps 5y ago

It'd be nice to hear their version of this before I bother to get my butt off the couch and pick my pitchfork. The fact that fee increases weren't communicated because the OP was't subed to promo emails just doesn't smell right. As is the fact that it wasn't obvious from the actual billing statements. Ps. I remember their CEO (David Barrett) back from the p2p-hackers mailing list days. He ain't one of them Zuckerbergs. The exact opposite in fact.

curiousgal 5y ago
> He ain't one of them Zuckerbergs. The exact opposite in fact. I am not saying otherwise, just objectively speaking: money changes people.
- teen 5y ago
  No, he was always a jerk.
othertemp1234 5y ago
David's a hardcore coder and a talented technologist, for sure, but... well, he believes whatever he believes at the moment very strongly. He has a very solid reality-distortion field. As an example, he really believed it was fine to have mechanical turk freelancers see people's receipts. He would say something to the effect of "people throw their receipts in the garbage where any sanitation worker can see them - this no different." I wasn't around when the mechanical turk stuff made the news, but it seems like it caught him totally off guard that people would be upset. I suspect that the conversation around the price increases went something like: David: There, I just sent a 3-page-long plaintext email explaining our price updates to everyone. Other Expensifier: Shouldn't we notify people who have opted out of those emails? David: If they opted out of announcement emails, they don't want announcment emails. Seems straightforward to me. Other Expensifier: Yeah, but, like, we don't have multiple opt-out channels. They can either get every multi-page plaintext missive you send, or they can opt out and miss significant price increases. David: Nope. They made their choice, we should respect it. Multiple opt-out channels are an antipattern. Anyway, the number of users who will be upset about this are vanishingly small - let's worry about the rest.
- teen 5y ago
  Not sure about that, I interviewed with Expensify 10 years ago when they had about 2-3 employees. At the time, David clearly had no idea what he was talking about when it came to code. Remember when he posted that inflammatory blog post about not hiring .NET developers? David was super rude to me.

rexreed 5y ago

Not to mention their shady and undisclosed practices of using humans to read receipts when they pretend it's AI / OCR / NLP doing that. "Expensify has admitted that its declared AI product SmartScan, which is assumed to scan the expense receipts and categorize the details into corresponding expense pool through a machine process, was actually assisted by humans. Breaching privacy of users, the receipts were posted on freelancing websites where freelancers used to take out extracts of information from receipts and send it to Expensify team." [0] https://mantra.ai/blogs/pseudo-ai-when-humans-do-bots-work/ https://mantra.ai/blogs/pseudo-ai-when-humans-do-bots-work/

temp1634592138 5y ago
I worked at Expensify a few years ago. Except for some email and PDFs, the process is entirely manual. The justification is that humans just do it better with a reasonable and predictable cost.
anitil 5y ago
Ah so _that's_ why it was so good. So often I find these 'AI' systems are just smoke and mirrors. You have a great system, nobody is interested. Sprinkle on some 'ai' magic beans, and people are now throwing money at you.
- loosescrews 5y ago
  It was just boring old Natural Intelligence.
IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago
There were some horror stories in YC about staff running certain receipts thru expensify, leading to bank or bitcoin accounts being penetrated and stolen. I have to concur - i've had the ability to steer companies away from their product. Expensify was OK before all the OCR stuff and shady billing. Now with the S1 filing, whatever good designers and engineering talent they had will bail, and the company will be a hollow carcass of its former self. Avoid. NOTE: the shady billing practices are traditionally the precursor to an S1 filing. Usually, a company going public has earnout/incentives, so they will do whatever it takes to increase revenue preIPO, even if that directly impairs the company's long term future.

tcas 5y ago

I got hit by the same year long gradual bill increase. I didn't notice at first, as the number seemed right, but then at 6 months or so I looked into why the price seemed so much higher than what I remember and got really upset. When I looked into it, it seemed as though they restructured their plans multiple times during the ~4 years I was paying them, and I got placed into the most expensive option which was originally the same price as what I started with. I was also locked into a year long commitment at some point, and they wouldn't budge on letting me downgrade to the lower plan mid year (I didn't have a use for any of the advanced features). The support chat told me the same thing about the changes being announced via marketing emails, and said they could not credit, cancel or downgrade my plan. The support agent also couldn't care less when I said it would cause me to cancel my plan at renewal. The whole experience left me with a really bad impression, I went from a huge advocate to telling everyone to avoid them.

throwawaysea 5y ago

Claiming that such a notice is marketing email sounds illegal. Changing pricing silently without notice or consent sounds a lot like fraud.

ww520 5y ago

Class action lawsuit coming?