Limewire's Discounted Upgrade Program
 

Please comment if you can offer assistance or your own experiences at battling LW's automatic billing horrorshow. Thanks.

I bought LimeWire PRO last December. I know that I have to pay to get the latest version.

But by LimeWire's own description (http://www.limewire.com/english/content/faq.shtml#i2a) existing customers like me are allowed "to purchase an additional 6 months of technical support and free updates for a reduced price" (see highlighted attachment).

There is absolutely NO indication anywhere of how this discount can actually be claimed. Other customers in my position aren't given the price to which they're entitled. They're just hit with the standard $18.88 purchase machinery.

I've already read in other postings that LW's online support queries don't recognize a purchaser's email address after six months.

BUT, the *******s are also not answering email inquiries that I've sent them (they've been much more polite than this one).

So maybe LW folks read this forum...

** Moderator: no personal information follows **

Here's the pertinent part of my emailed order confirmation. It should be enough for them to go on:

Merchant: LimeWire PRO
Order ID: VWNA20765192
Order Placed: 16-Dec-04 06:55 AM
Amount of Transaction: $18.88
Payment Type: VISA

Not true my subscription gust ran out a month ago and when I went to upgrade. LimeWire informed me on the upgrade page that I needed to purchase LimeWire pro again. When I clicked buy it gave me the discount price.

Still looks like a scam; I just put myself through it
 

Just to publicly experiment on myself, I went through the procedure, and there was NO recognition of my past purchases.

Thanks for responding Grandpa, but it didn't work for me.

For everyone else's benefit. can you please elaborate about links that you clicked on or pieces of information that you supplied that allowed the upgrade proces to recognize you?

BE WARNED EVERYONE WHO HAS A 6-MONTH+ PRO - YOU HAVE A *VERY* GOOD CHANCE OF BEING SCREWED

...unless Grandpa supplies foolproof details of how to re-order.

*** Hey LimeWire Bozos: check these out...

My old order number was VWNA20765192;
My new order number is VZNC0C0CCA64, and I had to pay $18.88 for it.

* You are ripping off your customers *

take a look at these please:

I've upgraded twice now. Both times when I went to my link it informed me that my subscription had run out and gave me a short time to upgrade at reduced cost. The pictures above are a good indication of my experience.

Personally I do not have experience of the how the discounted offer works, I renewed recently , but HAD to use a diffwrent E-mail address, so i didn't bother to pursue the matter

My point is that 18.88$ is a fairly paltry amount of money, and the ammount of the discount ... I forget ....is that $4.50? is a tiny amount .... It's really no big deal!

Looking at your post, I see you purchased pro on 16 Dec 04, so that expired 16 June 05, and it is now over 2 1/2 months later.

I am sure that the discounted offer does not last indefinitely, probably no more than a month ... but I have no actual idea.

I think you may have gone to renew a little late, so don't worry about it ...that's the cost of a cup of coffee in NY I gather! Limewire has not ripped you off or done anything illegal .... there is no billing horrorshow.

My guess is that the e-mail address for pro customers stays on the data base for possibly 7 months, , but that it is removed after lets say 8 months. When Limewire has no record of an E-mail address, it will not respond.

I am guessing a bit here, but I think this how the thing works and I resent some of the stuff you have seen fit to say about Limewire IMHO you should just get out and enjoy using it :) :)

And LeonMcS's post seems to bear out what I said pretty well.

OK! Thanks for the info.

The fact that they emailed out notices makes sense. A number of months after my initial purchase I changed email addresses as well, and would have missed just this kind of alert.

This explains a lot! but it still ****** me off how customer support questions aren't answered even when they're solicited.

I retract the insults, mostly.

LimeWire guys: in your FAQ, would you please at least be a bit more clear and mention the conditions under which the discounted price can be taken advantage of?

Thanks a lot, fine people.

LimeWire's Discounted Upgrade Plan - actually not illegal
 

It's just not clearly described until your first purchase expires.

(I wanted to get the subject line changed if I could)

Again I may be wrong but I think this discount idea is a fairly new one brought on somewhat by the fact there has recently been a 6 month period with almost nothing in the way of new releases. Certainly the discount has not been mentioned on the website until VERY recently.

I put it down to teething problems, certainly there is a little bit of amiguity in the conditions of the discount, and I expect they will clarify this soon...

While they are doing this a little bit of an update on the user guide might be in order, unless that has been changed in the last few days.

Anyway Norman thanks for the reply..LW is a pretty good set up most of the time :D The only thing I can add is this. AFAIK LW keeps a data base of pro customers. As soon as the 6 months ( or however long it is over that) is up the e-mail addresses of those customers are removed from the database.

If an ex-pro customer e-mails, their e-mail address will not be recognised and in 99% of cases the mail will be trashed, unread.

All the Best