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FogBugz new owners attempting to auto-upgrade all free plans to paid
- vyrotek 4y agoI just got the email for an old account too. Most of the links in the email don't even work anymore.
- W-Stool 4y agoGot one of these emails too. I haven't used the account in almost 10 years, they must have many thousands of these accounts that have been dormant forever and are now getting hit with "invoices" for services rendered. Looks like a real dick move, no thanks.
- lioeters 4y agoGreat way to ruin the FogBugz brand and reputation: move everyone from free to paid tier without consent, and send out emails with a short notice telling them they will be charged $30/month - when most of these users haven't heard from/of them in over a decade. The flood of complaints is hilarious. https://twitter.com/search?q=fogbugz&src=typed_query https://twitter.com/search?q=fogbugz&src=typed_query
- raverbashing 4y agoYeah, the search results are golden "Good luck with the chargebacks FogBugz."
- jabbany 4y agoYeah this kind of move seems like an easy way to speed run getting kicked off your payment processor...
- that_guy_iain 4y agoHonestly, I doubt the people who bought it care. It looks like some random company with some random stock photos that is just trying to extract as much money as possible. Not the first time we've seen an acquirer completely screw up a brand in order to make more money.
- danjac 4y agoIt's a scam. If just a fraction pay up they will have made money.
- bombcar 4y agoImagine the number of people who get this email on a user who left the company five years ago - and how many would just start paying assuming it’s some important part of something somewhere?
- linsomniac 4y agoI feel like the FogBugz reputation has been being ruined for at least 5 years now, probably closer to 10. They were just letting it languish, not making any improvements. We saw the writing on the wall ~3 years ago, and I spent a month migrating all of our FogBugz tickets and wiki content over to Jira+Confluence
- krallja 4y agoIt was acquired by private equity in 2018.
- kevin_b_er 4y agoFogBugz got bought out by a vulture capital style firm that fired everyone and outsourced everything. They're going to extract as much value as they can. The reputation doesn't matter if they can sucker enough people into paying for it.
- tablespoon 4y ago> FogBugz got bought out by a vulture capital style firm that fired everyone and outsourced everything. They're going to extract as much value as they can. The reputation doesn't matter if they can sucker enough people into paying for it. As I understanding, that's a the strategy of a lot of private equity: burn goodwill and turn it into cash.
- TulliusCicero 4y agoThis should be illegal. I can understand raising the rates on existing paid plans automatically, if nothing else it's eventually reasonable for inflation purposes, but auto-converting from free to paid? No.
- gubby 4y agoI suspect (IANAL) that in a sense, it already is, in that anybody testing this in court would deny the existence of any form of contract acceptance, and that would be the end of it.
- jbverschoor 4y agoEven if it’s illegal. You can do anything you want and can in life. And that’s exactly what they’re doing
- ldng 4y agoNot without consequences most of the time.
- dtgriscom 4y agoIt's probably legal to send messages like this, just like it's legal for ski slopes to have "We aren't at fault for anything" statements on every ticket. It's when they tried to enforce it that they'd find the law wasn't on their side.
- tyrfing 4y agoAbsolutely absurd. I haven't touched it for 13 years, and just received an email that they will be billing me $31.25 with 6 hours warning. This, of course, is a few hours after an email saying that my "free subscription" will be expiring in a month, not within hours. The kicker is that the billing FAQ 404s, the "account URL" 500s, and there is no apparent way to log in to the account that they are billing me for. At this point the best I can do is hope they don't have any real PII to try to collect their bullshit bill.
- classified 4y agoThat sonds like a case of cyber-villainy.
- fuzzythinker 4y agoSame here. It's was probably around 13 years as well, probably to try it out and never touched it since. My "account URL" shows 500 error as well. Here's the almost empty auto-reply if you reply to the email: Hi, Please reach out to the Fogbugz support team by visiting the following portal; https://support.fogbugz.com/hc/en-us/ Thank you, Fogbugz team.
- sbarre 4y ago"Just email everyone in the system, anyone who has ever given us an email address" "Are you sure? Those really old accounts aren't even compatible with our current platform, they won't be able to even log in" "Everyone!" "Sigh..."
- heartbreak 4y agoTheir tagline of "Where software goes to live" is a little too on-the-nose.
- abeyer 4y agoIf you poke around in the support articles they mention the cause of this: they also deleted all idle accounts without notice and depending on when you got hit by that, might not even be able to recover it. So they're trying to bill you for a service that they can't even provide.
- protoster 4y agoCalling it now: they will backpedal the next day and will say that it was a mistake or accident.
- pixard 4y agoThis has got to be a bug no? Otherwise this is the most insane monetization attempt I've ever seen... there's no way any of these old accounts even have a valid payment method. Why even attempt this? So many questions...
- ezconnect 4y agoThey can sell it to a debt collector. I don't know if that is sound strategy or if it's worth it.
- cheesedoodle 4y agoI registered and have not logged in since 2012. This is what I got 12 hrs ago. To me, It does not seem like they are charging me, seemingly because I never entered any billing data? ``` Dear cheesedudles, Your current free subscription for FogBugz is expiring on October 16, 2022. To continue using FogBugz, please add payment details to your account today. Because you're already a valued FogBugz user, we've automatically upgraded your account to include up to five individual users with your new paid subscription. Plus if you renew now, you qualify for 50% off any subscription tier, including the five-user license tier. Follow this link to upgrade your subscription plan now. Trouble upgrading? Please create a ticket on our support portal support.fogbugz.com. Enjoy your upgrade, Team FogBugz ````
- SyneRyder 4y agoI got that too, but there's an email that gets sent 3 - 4 hours after that one. Look for "Your Manuscript Account" from "FogBugz Customer Success". Of course, any billing attempt won't succeed without updated payment info (unless their next step is to try to send it to collections....) "Hi! This email is to notify you that we will be charging $31.25 to your prepaid account (Account URL: [redacted]) on Sep 17, 2022 for the following services: - Monthly discounted (50.00%) fee for FogBugz for up to 5 users for the period September 17, 2022 to October 17, 2022. - ($12.50) - Monthly discounted (50.00%) fee for FogBugz-TimeTracking for up to 5 users for the period September 17, 2022 to October 17, 2022. - ($6.25) - Monthly discounted (50.00%) fee for FogBugz-Wiki for up to 5 users for the period September 17, 2022 to October 17, 2022. - ($6.25) - Monthly discounted (50.00%) fee for FogBugz-Agile for up to 5 users for the period September 17, 2022 to October 17, 2022. - ($6.25) Once these charges have been processed, they will appear on your online statement, available here: [unique URL redacted] For more information on billing, see our FAQ here: http://help.fogcreek.com/9912/fogbugz-billing-faq http://help.fogcreek.com/9912/fogbugz-billing-faq All the best, FogBugz Customer Success EDIT: Oh wow. Try clicking on that FAQ link. Or if you want to save a click, the ZenDesk reply says "Oops, this help center no longer exists. The company you're looking for is no longer using our help center."
- Loic 4y ago
- matterhorn2000 4y agoTried the same thing with Jumpcloud. Used it for a while. Disabled all users and moved on. 3 years (!!) later some debt collection lawyer contacts me about my $8000 bill. Wtf. Good luck collecting that.
- londons_explore 4y agoIf jumpcloud sold your account to a debt collector, they have already made their money. It's the debt collector who will lose out.
- mattigames 4y agoHopefully, just so they learn to not go around buying debts made by auto-upgrade bs
- m4tthumphrey 4y agoTo play devils advocate, is this not just an exercise to remove stale accounts? It looks like everyone who received the email does not have a payment method on their account so it seems more like "If you don't add a payment method to your account we'll be closing it?" No?
- CogitoCogito 4y ago> No? No. If that were the case, why wouldn't they just have said so in the emails they sent out? Only "legitimate" explanation is it's a bug.
- mrweasel 4y agoThat could be handled much better in that case. "Dear valued customer"... You know that I haven't logged in over 10 year, don't use the service and never paid anything. I'm not a valued customer. Why not just write: Hey, we notice that your account isn't actively use, click here to close it.
- stjohnswarts 4y agoIf you want to remove stale accounts, then send a 60-day warning and then delete the accounts. Don't try to act like fly-by-night scam artist and demand money for something you're not owed.
- PeterStuer 4y agoWouldn't the inevital tidalwave of cc chargebacks just kill their future ability to run the bizness?
- avereveard 4y agogot hit with this as well has anyone their DPO contact? legal page goes into nowhere, but I'm going to leverage the full extent of my gdpr given rights against them because of this dick move e found: privacy@ignitetech.com
- tcmb 4y ago'Ignite tech'? That's a weirdly appropriate name for what they appear to be doing.
- ewalk153 4y agoFrom the Ignite Tech website: > Our current customers are our only focus, and each should expect excellence from every aspect of IgniteTech. If at any time you believe we are falling short, the buck stops on my desk. > Eric Vaughan // CEO Whose going email him?
- Nathanba 4y ago>https://ignitetech.com/about/leadership https://ignitetech.com/about/leadership kind of funny how they have all these C-level executives but there is no CTO listed. And this for a supposedly technical company..
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- zxspectrum1982 4y agoIs there anyone left still using FogBugz? I thought modern tools (GitHub, GitLab, Taiga, etc) had made it obsolete a long time ago.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y agoIt's more like Jira than GitHub. Jira is still widely used, even though FogBugz is much better quality.
- andrewl 4y agoI use both because of different companies we work with. FogBugz is much friendlier, but Jira does more. And Jira also has a massive number of free and commercial integrations available. When DevFactory purchased FogBugz from Fog Creek they went into rent collecting mode. They keep the lights on, but they are not going to renovate or introduce new features.
- coldacid 4y agoWell, it'd be pretty difficult to be lower quality than Jira.
- PretzelFisch 4y agoIt works for us its fine. After this stunt however I'll be pushing to migrate to jira like the rest of the company
- codeflo 4y agoI got that e-mail too, on a decade-old test account: first an e-mail that reads like my account simply "expires" if I don't update. Then an invoice. Here's what I don't get: After a stunt like this, any reputation/brand value that you might have had is gone. So, the obvious conclusion is they bought the company purely to pull this trick. Any other value the company might have had is deleted. Can that have been worth it? Very few people will pay voluntarily, I can't imagine them successfully collecting the money, and the acquisition price probably wasn't 0 either. I can't imagine that the math checks out, or does it?
- mattigames 4y agoThey are as eager to find out as you, meaning they have never done this before and it's just a gamble.
- dccoolgai 4y agoSomeone once told me that as recently as the late 2010s AOL was making millions of revenue off of old dialup accounts from the 90s that people just never cancelled and the cards just kept running. That's what they're probably shooting for here.
- Meekro 4y agoVery few of these 13 year old accounts are going to have valid card data on file, though. Any cards that were valid back then have long since expired. Seems to me that they're just spamming a bunch of people for no reason?
- iancarroll 4y agoMy parents actively paid AOL for quite some time because they thought it was for their email service, not for dialup.
- GnarfGnarf 4y agoThe expiry date of the credit card needs to be updated every couple of years. How can AOL keep charging a credit card if they don't have current information for it?
- adrianmsmith 4y agoI used to enjoy reading the "Joel on Software" blog in e.g. 2004, and that was around the time he/they were working on this product. I guess it's been sold on, perhaps many times, since, and I guess if the new owners are trying this then they don't have many/any actual real paying customers. It seems such a shame. The blog (and presumably the product, although I never used it) was brimming with such optimism and confidence, "this is how you run a good business!" etc. I bet Joel didn't envisage that product ending like this when he wrote all those articles. :(
- nicolas_t 4y agoI would say though, they did run a good business. Trello and stackoverflow were both great successes. I liked fogbugz back then but they clearly pivoted out of it and stopped really marketing it or even developing new features for it a long time ago.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Sujan 4y ago“I wonder what happens when I call this URL in the backend. Or this one.” Unnamed person from new owner company
- monkey_monkey 4y agoMy first reaction on receiving this email was that is was a scam / phishing thing, then after checking that the URLs were genuine, I thought perhaps they'd been hacked somehow. Good luck to them trying to charge me for a free account that I used for 1 week more than 10 years ago, I'm fascinated to see how this 'revenue hacking' strategy works for them.
- marcinzm 4y agoThis feels like a "contact your state attorney general and government representatives" type of situation.
- lizardactivist 4y agoHail GDPR. I have a lot of trust and faith in the European corporate and business culture as far as these things go, but I'm happy I can make companies here delete my payment details, so tricks like these can't be pulled.
- zugi 4y agoYet GDPR is also what ruins the web browsing experience with all those idiotic cookies notices. Legislating technical details like that is never a good idea.
- Macha 4y agoThe popups are there because companies would rather not comply with the GDPR and it gives them a thin veneer of justification which means they're not the lowest hanging fruit for the under resourced DPAs when it comes to enforcement. They've started slapping Google for the methods of gaining consent being BS and hopefully they start working their way down to list until enough others get the message.
- Macha 4y agoSo I checked my email and I had two trial accounts in the past. Once in 2010, and once again in 2014 with a different email where I'd apparently forgotten I'd tried it out in 2010. Both said they were for on-demand trial accounts and would expire. I got a confirmation of the expiriation for the 2014 account and that email did not get this auto-upgrade email, but the 2010 one I got no confirmation of expiry and did get this auto-upgrade email. To be generous, maybe older trials weren't properly marked ended but this is still a pretty shit way to handle it. (of course, the 2010 account gives a 500 error trying to open the management page and they asked me to provide billing details so it's probably not much more than a stub at this point).
- troydavis 4y agoHere’s more on IgniteTech/ESW Capital: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2021/04/27/inside-a-remote-work-billionaires-new-plan-to-turn-his-white-collar-workers-into-algorithms/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2021/04/27/inside-a... ESW Capital was discussed in “Software Sweatshop – Inside Billionaire Joe Liemandt's Empire” (2021): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28852956 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28852956
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- cobertos 4y ago> IgniteTech - Where software goes to live[0] Thats from the new owners website. What a dystopian tagline for your company. Then there's just a whole catalog of their dead software in a list too. [0]: https://ignitetech.com/ https://ignitetech.com/
- philipov 4y ago"IgniteTech: We buy software companies, and light them on fire!"
- zepearl 4y agoLogo reminds me of PHP's Codeigniter https://codeigniter.com https://codeigniter.com
- Macha 4y agoAnd my local formerly government owned gas company has had a very similar logo for longer than the web exists. Flame logos are pretty generic, so I wouldn't call it copying.
- jrpelkonen 4y agoBy removing just three letters you get “initech”. Coincidence? I think not.
- krallja 4y agoWasn't Initech acquired by Intertrode, or was it the other way around?
- j16sdiz 4y agoLet them charge you and file a chargeback on the credit card . With enough chargeback, they will have their account suspended.
- josho 4y agoI think they are smart enough to avoid that. They’ll probably send invoices and some small percent may voluntarily pay to just make it stop quickly. Others will ignore, but their amount due will accumulate to a point that this company will be able to sell those accounts to debt collectors.
- voakbasda 4y agoI would love nothing more to learn that a debt collector got screwed buying up these accounts, but how is that not fraud on the part of the company, since the resulting debts are clearly not valid?
- coldacid 4y agoOh, it's totally fraud! Unfortunately it's a fraud that is easy to get away with.
- shneusk 4y agoIf they’re still running the billing code I worked on back in the day, it’ll just charge all the cards
- criddell 4y agoI got the "invoice" as well. They don't have any payment method for me, so I assume they will let the invoice sit for 90 days, then send it to collections.
- andrew_ 4y agoI had no idea that was still around. Last time I used that must have been 2006. Incredible to hear about longevity in the industry like that.
- fortran77 4y agoI'm certain I had a FogBugz account at one time, but it must have been on an email address I no longer use; I searched mail, spam, and trash to see if I got one of these invoices. We need to get even a few dozen people who got the invoice to report to the state's AG for sending fake invoices. This is the type of issue that state AGs love. (For example here's Kansas AG on it: https://ag.ks.gov/media-center/news-releases-test/2015/01/30/consumer-alert-be-wary-of-fake-invoice-scams https://ag.ks.gov/media-center/news-releases-test/2015/01/30... ). If all of a sudden they started getting multiple complaints, they will have to answer for it.
- mike_heffner 4y agoA campaign you only launch late on a Friday
- ngcc_hk 4y agoI only heard this software because a guy doing software well. Sad which firm the software gone to and all these comments are so sad.
- linsomniac 4y agoI wonder if through some miscommunication (intentional or not) in the sale that these free accounts were thought to be active users. Reading the twitter and HN replies it's sounds like most of the free account users are people who tried it a decade ago and haven't touched it since. May be a big wake up call when 80% of their invoices bounce and 99.99% of the free accounts "dry up".
- chadlavi 4y agoI have a friend who worked at FogBugz and left when they were sold. The new owner sounds like they suck.
- shneusk 4y agohey there friend
- Rexxar 4y agoIf I had created such a company and I couldn't work on it any more, I would prefer to close it completely than to sell it to crooks like that.
- heartbreak 4y agoAnd in that way, it does reflect poorly on Joel and the Fog Creek folks.
- alex_sf 4y agoThe short version is: Joel didn't care. Fog Creek employees were opposed. Trash new CEO pushed it forward.
- jobman 4y agoI'm a former FC employee who was around when the acquisition went down. It was definitely a drama at the time. One could possibly even say a debacle. But to be fair to Joel, he had long moved on from the company and was focused on Stack Overflow. The new (at the time) CEO of the company is a merciless, self-absorbed jerk who couldn't care less about the product, its customers, or the employees who got sold along with the product.
- sastraxi 4y agoAt this point I'm just worried about debt collectors / credit score type stuff. What an absurd and unethical move by the new owners.
- jdubz79 4y agoWho keeps using archaic shitty software?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jdubz79 4y agowho would pay for such shitty software in 2022? It was shit 10+ years ago and it has not improved one bit since then. Oh look a UI from 2005, let me get my credit card…
- w10-1 4y agoThis is overt fraud, but borderline with subscriptions. FIRST they requested users update payment information as if to continue their FREE accounts. THEN they billed users for a month's service. It's called a "negative option" when the user has to do something to prevent additional charges. Normally that is illegal per US FTC (but legal in some countries). However, negative option contract terms ARE legal. That's when you agree initially e.g., with NYTimes that when your subscription is up, it automatically rolls over to paid tier X, putting the burden on you to cancel. If, or since, most of these account agreements are 10+ years old, it's possible they ginned up some evidence of a negative option contract. It's almost certain no user has any information on the original terms of service. So then it's a question of who has the burden of proof, which leads me to wonder if there have been changes to that of late. I hate to say it, but another option is that this company has been getting pushback or eviction from credit card issuers. This might be their way of imposing costs on them, to have to go through thousands of chargeback cycles, to spite the issuers pending their exit from the platform. It also might be a good way to get some cash from the issuers before declaring bankruptcy. Or, someone inside did this, on a Friday/Saturday, and they'll be gone before Monday with everyone's credit card information. Who knows? To reiterate what others have reported: 9/17 title "Your Manuscript Account" - $31.25 for: - $12.50 9/17-10/17 5 users 50% off fogbugz - $6.25 9/17-10/17 5 users 50% off time tracking - $6.25 9/17-10/17 5 users 50% off wiki - $6.25 9/17-10/17 5 users 50% off agile 9/16 title "Your fogbugz free subscription is expiring" (from a different sender) "To continue using FogBugz, please add payment details to your account today" (and if you didn't notice) "Because you're already a valued FogBugz user, we've automatically upgraded your account to include up to five individual users with your new paid subscription"
- digitaLandscape 4y ago
- shneusk 4y agoUSE FogShop DELETE FROM tblCreditCard WHERE ixCreditCard IN ( SELECT ixCreditCard FROM tblSubscriber WHERE fStudentAndStartup = 1 ) ok you won’t be charged now
- joshka 4y agoAn email to the CEO (eric.vaughan@ignitetech.com) Subject: FogBugz debacle. You fucked up! … and it’s on you to fix it. No idea what I’m talking about? Search Twitter for FogBugz - you’ll get it quick enough. At some point in the past I had a trial for some product made by Fogcreek - we are talking 10 years back or so. The trial is long expired and forgotten about. Until today, that is, when I received an email purporting to charge $31 to my “prepaid account”. I’ll remind you of a quote on your website: > Our current customers are our only focus, and each should expect excellence from every aspect of IgniteTech. If at any time you believe we are falling short, the buck stops on my desk. It’s on you to fix this, for everyone that got this, there are thousands of developers and business owners who got similar emails today. Perhaps your business model is intentionally to go invoice trolling, in which case my next email will be to the state AG. But I’m going to assume incompetence or inadvertence before malice and suggest that you address this quickly - perhaps on Twitter or a blog post.
- kyleee 4y agothe CEO is laughing while reading this on the porch of his Dwell prefab vacation house in Malibu while watching the sunset
- HillRat 4y agoSeems like they (A) are killing the free tier and forcing active users to upgrade to paid plans; and (B) screwed up and also sent out emails to users who have been inactive and had their accounts deactivated (thus accounting for the flood of angry people who have gotten demand letters for a site that's throwing 500 errors for them). So, total fuckup on their part. While it's not out of bounds for them to phase out the free tier, doing so with basically no notice to those active users, and then also accidentally spamming the (at a guess) 95+% of users who once signed up for FogBugz and then never touched it again ... not great, Bob. Not great. Hope their acquisition price didn't assume the ability to convert those free tier users to paid, because I doubt many are willing to stick around given the way this was handled.
- FpUser 4y agoBugs, source control, project management, diagramming, documentation etc. etc. I never sign for such services in a first place. It is either perpetual license or take a hike.
- tehnicaorg 4y agoTheir answer: Dear <user>, Thank you for contacting FogBugz Support. I understand that you have received a billing notice and do not want to be charged. You may be wondering why you have received this communication and wish to have your account deleted. In the first place, please be rest assured that you will not be charged unless you have added a valid payment method to your account. The notification you have received is due to the recent changes to the FogBugz Base Subscription Model. Please accept our apologies for any misunderstanding this may have caused. Additionally, be aware that your subscription will be automatically canceled and scheduled for deletion 30 days after the current billing period unless you add a valid payment method. Finally, please be aware that trial accounts that were not active for a period of 9 months are automatically disabled, and will result in an Error 500 if you try to access the URL. These customers may have still received a notification despite not having an active account or a configured payment method. Since there is no further action required from our end at this time, we will be marking this ticket as solved. That said, if still you have any other questions or concerns with which we may assist, please let us know, and we will be happy to help as required. Thank you. Best regards, <NAME> FogBugz Support Team I had a hard time logging in to get in contact with them. My fogbugz link (for which I should pay) returned 500 Internal Server Error, logging in Firefox didn't work, in Chrome it said that the password in invalid, and I didn't get a reset e-mail (tried twice), I've logged with Google credentials but I got a "This page doesn't exist" on a central-supportdesk.zendesk.com page.
- Ferret7446 4y agoSo it sounds like grand incompetence rather than malice. Probably their automated mailer does not check whether the account is disabled or not. A junior dev is going to have a bad day.
- ubermonkey 4y agoI mean, the real takeaway here is to burn down any and all connection you have with ANY service that is acquired by private equity the minute you can.
- ericlavigne 4y agoFogBugz just sent out a retraction. Their intention was to retire the free service and offer the opportunity to upgrade to paid accounts at a 50% discount. If anyone was charged and didn't already receive a refund, the email to request a refund is fogbugzbilling@ignitetech.com. Here's the beginning of their retraction email, in which they explain how this happened. === Dear FogBugz User, Mea culpa — sincerely. We’ve become well aware of the maelstrom of concern and comments caused by a series of emails that some of you received, but to explain, we were just as surprised as you when multiple emails were sent. Our original and only intended email, which was controlled by humans, was to inform you that the “free,” non-expiring version of FogBugz is being phased out on October 17, 2022. Additionally, we wanted to offer you the option to continue using FogBugz by updating your account to a paid subscription. This was the entire, planned effort. However, once we updated the accounts that had been identified as free and non-expiring in the internal FogBugz accounting system, the software automatically generated a form email, notifying you that we had summarily converted you to a paid account, and worse, actually triggering collection/dunning notices to some. This was unintended and is not accurate. Yes, we’ve owned the software for some time and should know all of the nooks and crannies by now. We don’t know if this was a nook or a cranny, but it decided to act on its own. Truth. It’s embarrassing, and we’d react the same way as many of you have. So this email is to set the record straight. We do not automatically charge any customer for usage of the software unless a subscription has been expressly elected, despite what the erroneous auto-email stated.