Note from Seeking Alpha:
Please see our announcement here for more details:
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4396836-important-update-for-seeking-alpha-users
How would you rate the customer service you received?
Satisfaction mark by Liberty Investing 3 years ago
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The ad to subscribe to Premium pops up when I try to read any article, blocking it completely. This happens with all articles, whether free or Premium.
Exported my portfolio. Will restart with a competitor. I'm fed up with your pathetic site and censorship. David you are greedy and arrogant. Hope your SA will sink like the Titanic.
I have been following for years, but I refuse to be forced into anything. Count me in the thousands who you have succeed in driving away. I'm out.
How many free articles can be read monthly before a reader is blocked. ?
SA thanks alot for taking away our ability to keep up with the news,,,greed
I was a beta tester. Why am I no longer able to read even news articles? I can understand analyses but suddenly nothing is available without premuim.
Why are articles sent to me blocked by ad from pro?
How many free articles is a reader given a month?
what are the alternatives to sA?
In the Portfolio page, when I click on an article and scroll, it takes me to the top each time. Very frustrating!
Deleting my account. Not worth the subscription.
Are you joking me? May be 3 to 5 articles for free a day would be reasonable in order to keep majority of your users happy ! Yes.. SA is blind to see that you scare future paying users away like this.
Please indicate which articles are premium before I attempt to read after tapping on them only to be told then that the content is premium and cannot access
I enjoyed reading the articles until you forced subscription. Good byr
When will you unblock articles for non-Premium users?
What is going on. use to read several a day. I dont need the tools and all of that I get that with my platform. I guess you don't want your advertisers exposed too much. This was really handled poorly.
Subscription
Can’t read any news anymore. Y’all justxcrewdd everything up. Just take your site down
Is it a new policy to limit seeking alpha users to a certain amount of "free articles?" I did not see a warning issued. This will limit my time on the site if they insist on premium to view articles.
Seems really silly because the creators of Seeking Alhpa have to know that we can just go to a "free" website and read the same articles. This will drive readers away from the site not help get more premium subscribers. I was actually thinking about subscribing to some premium content but not anymore.
I visit your web site very little and interested in a very few categories (tabs). Have a lower fee for limited access.
Is this a money grab? I am not paying for articles that were once free. Go back to the old way, and make money like every other large internet site through ads, which are popup every minute
Why are there volumes of posts about not being satisfied?
I have a free account but I’m not able to view most articles without signing up for the premium subscription. Are you now charging to view articles?
Everything I click on says I need "premium service". Is this now how it is?
Stupidest new policy ever implemented (new undefined limit on free articles). I'm out.
Access to articles ceased
Congratulations on losing yet another viewer. Paying for virtually every article link (even company press releases!) means I'm switching to Yahoo Finance.. goodbye..
I was considering another Seeking Alpha service but can no longer read any articles to evaluate one as I aparently cannot get access unless I subscribe to your premium. What a bad marketing plan!!! No additional purchases coming from me.
paywall sucks good bye
Is this a money grab? I am not paying for articles that were once free. Go back to the old way, and make money like every other large internet site through ads
Did I miss the memo? All articles now behind paywall?
Did SA change access to earnings call transcript recently? I used to be able to view it and now it is asking me o be a paid premium customer.
I have a relatively new problem with SA - when I go to my messages on SA and try to read comments directed to me that originate from an article that is a week or 2 old, I'm not allowed access and am told that I need a premium subscription to access the message and reply to the message.
I'm unable to read the message or respond, if appropriate. Very frustrating.
I've worked with Lajoy earlier on other things, perhaps he could respond?
Most Sincerely,
@blackcrk
No articles (not I articles)!
Thank you
For last number of days, I cannot access your articles. I just get a blank screen. Can you fix this?
Why after 3 years of using seeking alfa as my morning routine am I now blocked to read any articles without a Premium subscription?
I agree. I will be leaving this site soon if they do not fix this banner or ad that I cannot get away from.
They just deleted my post of yesterday. What a dictator censorship is going on?
Shame on you SA!!!!!!!
Articles will open from the notification screen. I’m on all latest versions of phone and SA software.
I’m deleting your app as your site no longer works for me & I've tried to update the app but still can’t get any news articles just tries to get me to signup for your premium subscription
Why I’ve reached my article limit?
I would be willing to pay a small monthly fee to access S>A> and NOT have access to articles, as my primary purpose for visiting is not the articles.
why has access to official news become paid? I cannot read the news of the companies in my portfolio! Article and news are different things, if you ask for a fee to read the official news, then you are a typical scam.
why has access to official news become paid? I cannot read the news of the companies in my portfolio! Article and news are two different things, if you are asking for a fee to read the official news, then you are a typical scammer ??Б
How do I decline the premium offer and just receive other news? It seems that every news article is now "premium" and App demands purchase.
I have no use for the subscriber side of Seeking Alpha and only log in on the free side of the platform. I have reached my article limit so if you are not going to post any good articles on the free side then why would I need to receive any more articles or emails. Good Bye!
It would seem that SA is now lying about the free article limit.Not only will they not say what it is but today (Feb 1st) I'm still getting the annoying pop-up on every article. Or is the monthly limit zero?
I've been a "Basic" subscriber. Any articles I access now I'm advised I've reached my "FREE LIMIT" on articles. Is ALL your content now subject to a subscription? Your prompt response is appreciated.
Seeking Alpha used to be a good site. Right now it's useless, as it locks up with a pop-up telling me to upgrade to Premium within a few seconds of clicking on any article. There seems to be no way to close the pop-up. I hope this is just a bug - if it is deliberate then bye bye SA. It was nice knowing you.
I will be deleting your app since you started metering your content and forcing subscriptions. I've been a long time follower ,but will be going to another investment content provider
The new paywall has me looking for someone else.
Why offer a free service?
Why are all my articles now are consider a premium article and I need to upgrade in order to read the article. I thought the mission of Seeking Alpha was to educate us on how to protect our portfolio's and not charging a service fee????
I’ve been a seeking alpha user for over 10 years, now your limiting the latest news? Just as seeking alpha took eyes from the big financial websites, so too will the next free forum take users away from seeking alpha. I guess it’s an inevitable cycle.
I cannot access to your free articles ..as many of my invesror club friends despite we appreciate your website ..we will go to yahoo or motley
Forcing people to take your expensive membership is not the way..
Regards
Djs in thailand
With the new paywall, I can't access the news feeds and corresponding comments. This is the most valuable tool for me within SA. I only read a few articles/month from contributors, so can do without that feature. I would be happy to pay $5/month to just get the news/transcripts/etc. I hope you consider this option. Thanks.
After years with free account, suddenly getting "free article limit" message when I click on messages emailed to me. What changed? What are the new rules? Not finding anything on this subject in help area.
Hello:
I subscribe to just a few authors, and was under the impression that I could still read a limited number of their articles after the new subscription policies were rolled out? Perhaps that is incorrect, and now I can't find any reference to why I believed I could still read a few articles. I'm sorry.
I thought perhaps it was a monthly limit, but here we are on Feb 1st, and I cannot read any articles. So now I'm writing to see if I can get a definitive answer.
Thank you for any response. It makes no difference to me that SA has changed policies. I wouldn't want anybody telling me how to run my business either. I'd just like to be able to find out what the new terms are for a basic/free subscription. With my limited interest in certain authors, it may or may not be worth paying for a different subscription. With a little more information, I can make that choice.
Many thanks.
In the past, I was able to read most author and analysis reports now all is blocked until I subscribe to premium what is up with that?
Unable to open SA articles with Safari now? Why???
It was great that your site would allow for reading of the most recent articles, but not the article limit will activate when my browser auto refreshes which means your site will now be useless as a way to see the days news. Oh well, you dont have to tailor yourself to free users, but guess I'll find a new site to use every day
How many free articles per month are available without a subscription ? S.A. is still keeping this number a secret. To me, that is unethical. ( I have a feeling the number has not been decided on ).
I want to voice my dissatisfaction with your most recent monetization attempt. I already subscribe to several of my favorite authors so am not opposed to paying for content. I viewed the free articles as advertisements for the authors pay service. Some are interesting reads but not really actionable. Those that I likes the most I subscribed and payed for their content. I wonted be paying for the new paywall so I probably will be reading fewer articles on your site and subscribing to fewer payed services.
Since when did I have a time limit on the Seeking Alpha platform? Why don't you just be honest and let us know you're going to a subscription based platform. It would be good customer service to write a letter explaining your process. Very disappointed in the difficulty in getting good vendor response.
I’m very disappointed with SA in the way they have gone to an subscription service only without any warning.
It is very frustrating to receive emails with articles I can’t access. I understand the right to charge for access to articles but I won’t be forced (bullied) into an subscription to read articles that are coming to my email. The only way I know to stop this is to delete my SA account, which I hope will stop the emails. SA perhaps you should stop advertising FREE accounts. NOT COOL SA!
I couldn't use the Seekingalpha website because its asking me to subscribe. i don't want to subscribe. Need help please.
Not happy with new policy limiting free acticles. Good bye seeking alpha. Other venues can make money with advertising, ever thought of that?
Folks I used to use this site to learn. Something changed. I'm no longer allowed to. Why the change?
Well it looks like Seeking Alpha is going down the "Dark Path" (like Motley Fool), making it harder and harder to tell what content is free and what is paid. I'm sick of my time being wasted by clicking on articles that "look" free only to get the annoying pop-up begging for money.
Why can't I read almost any article without signing up for the premium service. In the past about one in 5 articles were restricted. Today it seems like almost all of them are. This will not fly....there are plenty of places I can get information.....I've been investing for 40 years....35 of them without Seeking Alpha. I can go back pretty easily.
Value of Seeking Alpha has declined to to Zero
Why am I getting the inability to read articles. It says I reached my maximum number of articles. I always assumed if I did not want this description that the regular articles could be read and they also include advertisements. Is there something I don’t realize
Authors are never fact checked and in fact regularly mislead. If issuers are unable to check your content freely and you do not check or offer access unless you blackmail people into paying, you risk liable. Get ready for lawsuits when you disseminate bad information you can liable fund operators.
Everytime I click on a news item in my portfolio I get the seeking alpha premium screen and I cannot get rid of it or read the news item. 8t locks on that screen. There is no x to cancel. This started last night. I am not a premium customer but it looks like in the menu bar the app is defaulting to premium and then freezes the news items.
Not an active trader but enjoyed the SA Dividend Investing newsletter. For years any article I clicked was available. Now most of the time I have to have premium. No point in subscribing. Bad move SA
This site is now useless as far as I am concerned. Not one article of interest can be viewed without paying the fee. It used to be good for the average investor. Bye-Bye,
What happened to FREEDOM of Speech?
If you have a way to reach out once you change your mind on the ridiculous paywall, I'd come back. Plenty of platforms that have found a way to make revenue without it. For me, it's off to Yahoo Finance app. Have enjoyed SA up until this month.
I understand you can do what you prefer, because site, contributors, etc. are yours, and you have all rights to choose.
Anyway, a little improvement, could be to give the reader the choice NOT to see any article with subscription (or, at least, to show an evident sign before tapping for reading it).
You wrote somewhere advertising it's not a good choice for you. I disagree but, as I told initially, it's not my right to choose. A simple proposition: consider selling this option to google for one year... and appreciate (or not) the retour after one year...:)
Marco CATELLANI
You are ruining the best site for diversified stock investment information ever assembled. You had ad revenue, you have authors selling their articles with shared ad revenue based on readership. You had authors selling their own newsletters. Now you're pushing a subscription model that is higher priced than competitors like Motley Fool's list of newsletters. Why are you screwing up a good thing? I won't ever pay for unsubstantiated opinion research and you will lose me as a follower, reader, and supporter if you continue to force the subscription requirement. Don't ruin a good thing with GREED. I am so disappointed with these decisions which I totally missed if you emailed notices of the changes, really a deceptive trade practice.
Hi, I like some of your news alerts, but it is a big time waste for me to click on email alerts that are then blocked as premium content. I would be okay receiving these emails if you let me know it was premium only in the email body. Please help or I'll need to unsubscribe from SeekingingAlpha altogether.
Best,
Mike
You are now limiting the number of "free" articles I can read to ONE!! Goodbye Seeking Alpha, I will NEVER subscribe. Your service is simply not worth the price!!!
I do find value in this app, but why is the price so high per month?
should be less than $10/month and you would probably get 5x the subscribers.
Dear SA executives
Come on now, we all know that this is a lose-lose situation right now. You lose customers, contributors lose customers and income, and the customers/readers can't access even basic news articles any longer.
Read some Management 101 education book and get a grip now.
Do something, just anything. Make everybody happy again and make the first step towards us and create a win-win situation again.
I know it's hard to admit that some decision was wrong. But it's even harder and worse to see your platform sink into oblivion because you're stubborn. This is your big opportunity now, but don't wait too long. Do it now and make us happy again.
Stop that stupid paywall or change it to such an extent so everybody can live with! Don't destroy your own hard work!
Best wishes
Such a shame to see greed ruin something I used daily (Basic member) and told friends about all the time.
I'm uninstalling until something changes. Will try to find other sources.
Hello,
I get your email every day and occasionally read an article. I find that they are informative. I am not an active investor but I occasionally ask my advisor to read one of the article and comment.
I have presumed that the fact that you send the email means that you intend for the articles to be read,
Today I tried to read an article and discovered that it was being held hostage and would not be released until I paid the ransom of $240/yr.
Since I don't actively trade , you can see that there is no way to justify $240/yr just to satisfy my curiosity.
If your intent is to prevent non-subscribers from reading then, perhaps, you should just stop offering and sending email to non-subscribers.
If these ransomeware messages are going to be the norm from now on, then I might as well unsubscribe from the email as there would be no pint in clogging my inbox with something useless.
Hi,
Thanks for your valuable feedback. Please see our announcement here for more details:
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4396836-important-update-for-seeking-alpha-users
Thanks,
Daniel Hochman
VP Product, Seeking Alpha
Hi,
Please give the following a read, it may give some context to the recent developments at SA
https://seekingalpha.com/article-new/4396836-important-update-for-seeking-alpha-users
Regards,
Kushal Mehrotra
Data QA Analyst, Seeking Alpha
sad, even some contributors are upset, no warning, just change things on us, been coming here for over 10yrs since Yahoo Finance went down hill.. oh well.. there are a lot of other resources that are free.
Thanks for your comments. I know it's frustrating when something which was previously free is no longer free. However, we believe that the growth of Seeking Alpha, and our ability to reward our contributors for their work, requires subscriptions as well as advertising.
I'm sure you've seen this from other publishers as well. There's a growing consensus in the publishing industry (other than Facebook and Google) that quality publishing is not sustainable with advertising alone. And we believe that Seeking Alpha articles are far more valuable than articles which many news sites charge for -- because Seeking Alpha articles help investors make profitable investment decisions.
We understand that many of our users won't want to pay. Receiving something free for a long period of time naturally creates a sense of entitlement. And $75 a month is considerably more money than news sites charge (for their articles which don't help you make profitable investment decisions).
So we've tried to design our paywall to maintain what we hope will still be a great free experience. All our news is still free. Analysis articles about broad themes or groups of stocks are still entirely free. And analysis articles that focus on a specific stock are still free in the first 10 days. Only analysis articles about specific stocks which are at least 10 days after publication now require a subscription to read. And for those, everyone can still see the article summary, and if you commented on one those articles and receive a comment notification, you'll still be able to see the comments without a subscription (but not the article itself).
The net effect of this is that if you have a portfolio on Seeking Alpha, or follow your favorite authors, or find articles in sections of Seeking Alpha like Dividend Investing, you're probably reading articles within 10 days of publication, so your experience will be unchanged.
However, if you want to research a stock, the most valuable articles -- those about the specific stock in question -- now require a subscription. But even then, many articles which discuss the stock are still free. Here's how to find those articles. if you're on a quote page (like Altria -- MO), click on "Analysis" and select "Related Analysis" from the dropdown.
I hope this explains some of our thinking about this issue.
thank you for appreciating how entitled we "free" viewers are for supporting you and your sponsors who paid a lot of money to advertise on the site, in my case for 10+ yrs.. bringing new viewers to the site via links to articles in yahoo, stockhouse, etc.. linking articles within SA to help good contributors build their followings etc. and providing what you and others who have reached out to me with quality comments that also contribute..
I just think it could have been handled differently rather than a surprise to your core supporters (commenters) which really seem like a small universe overall. oh well.. thanks for explaining. Bea
Bea, you're right -- instead of writing "Receiving something free for a long period of time naturally creates a sense of entitlement", I should have written "It's hard to contemplate paying for something when you've been getting it for free for a long time, irrespective of how valuable it is." I apologize for that.
I also think your suggestion that we communicate more directly with our comment community is important.
And finally, a genuine "thank you" for your support and comments -- which I'm now reading! (https://seekingalpha.com/user/237658/comments).
thank you, Ill get over it.. I try to contribute w not just the "great article" comment .. you have to do what you have to do..time will tell. Bests.. Bea
And your failure to properly disclose or announce this, speaks to your ethics. We're just the tip of a huge wave of disappointment and disgust.
Bea, you're right -- instead of writing "Receiving something free for a long period of time naturally creates a sense of entitlement", I should have written "It's hard to contemplate paying for something when you've been getting it for free for a long time, irrespective of how valuable it is." I apologize for that.
I also think your suggestion that we communicate more directly with our comment community is important.
And finally, a genuine "thank you" for your support and comments -- which I'm now reading! (https://seekingalpha.com/user/237658/comments).
I have an idea. How about charging extra for reading comments? You can then make more money.
SeekingAlpha is simply applying the principles of capitalism to publishing. If you are an informed investor, you will recognize that it is maximizing revenue from a product that is in demand.
If you know about marketing, you will assume SeekingAlpha has done audience analyses with income segmentation, possibly surveying specific segments, and produced projections of what people will pay for the product.
Management then looked at the cost-demand curve and set the cost ($900 per year) at a point where revenues would be maximized despite some loss of readership. It's not a charity, it's a business.
Reading complaints is a low-cost consequence of making this change, sudden or otherwise.
If the projections are not accurate and revenues do not meet expectation, SeekingAlpha may occasionally have reduced-rate specials to boost sales.
SeekingAlpha is a business first. The nurturing of so-called community with free content and social media aspects built site participation and popularity. That phase is over.
If, as an investor, you are knowledgeable about how businesses work, you already know this.
The lack of notice for the change, however, was inelegantly handled. But maybe SeekingAlpha management saw no reason for it, giving notice would only prolong the complaint period, which will unwind in time. I hope whoever among the staff is assigned to read the complaints and comment sympathetically gets a bonus for it.
SeekingAlpha is simply applying the principles of capitalism to publishing. If you are an informed investor, you will recognize that it is maximizing revenue from a product that is in demand.
If you know about marketing, you will assume SeekingAlpha has done audience analyses with income segmentation, possibly surveying specific segments, and produced projections of what people will pay for the product.
Management then looked at the cost-demand curve and set the cost ($900 per year) at a point where revenues would be maximized despite some loss of readership. It's not a charity, it's a business.
Reading complaints is a low-cost consequence of making this change, sudden or otherwise.
If the projections are not accurate and revenues do not meet expectation, SeekingAlpha may occasionally have reduced-rate specials to boost sales.
SeekingAlpha is a business first. The nurturing of so-called community with free content and social media aspects built site participation and popularity. That phase is over.
If, as an investor, you are knowledgeable about how businesses work, you already know this.
The lack of notice for the change, however, was inelegantly handled. But maybe SeekingAlpha management saw no reason for it, giving notice would only prolong the complaint period, which will unwind in time. I hope whoever among the staff is assigned to read the complaints and comment sympathetically gets a bonus for it.
Time will tell if you're right, but I think this will be a net negative for the business overall. Here's what I think will happen. It will take time, but people will eventually leave when it becomes clear that they're not getting anywhere near $900 per year of value out of the site. As many people have said before, the value in SA comes from the community, and as the community shrinks, so will the intrinsic value of the business. The snowball will begin to roll.
You can talk about analysis you want, but the analysis was done before the paywall. Post-paywall Seeking Alpha will prove to be a completely different thing than it is right now.
On Monday, 1/4, I read an article by Ken Reel. A message told me this was article 1 of 5 free articles for the month. Later that day I read one by Brett Jensen. This time the the message said I was on article 3 of 5. Screen shot below shows the articles I've read this week. I belong to F&G's and Nick Ackerman's services, so those two should not count toward the monthly total. And when I read those articles I didn't get any message about the article count, which is as it should be. So something's not counting these articles correctly.
Which brings us to a second issue. How is one supposed to know how many free articles he has, or has left? I poked around my settings and profile and didn't see any way to get this info except through the articles I've read section.
Which brings us to a third issue. This whole article limitation change has been poorly communicated and poorly implemented. I've looked at a couple of the recent related issues here and the only "answer" I see is a link to the news article you published New Year's eve. So nobody knows how many articles they have or how they're being counted. Did that news item about the changes count as a read free article? In the services I belong to the service owners seem to be as much in the dark as I am.
I've been on SA for over 5 years now. I belong to three services. I'm not going to rant and rave here and threaten to quit. I'm getting good service from Savvy Investor, Income Lab, and Income Factory. I'll likely stay as long as those folks are in business. However, I feel I deserve better than to be limited to 5 articles a month, and to have that thrust upon me in the way SA has done.