LastPass Premium does NOT want your money
January 6, 2016
Dear LastPass Premium: Some business are weird, but some are just plain stupid. You are among the latter. If you are unfamiliar with LastPass they created a software that essentially “securely” stores all of your websites / apps login credentials so you don’t need to remember them by heart (or save you from typing them every time). This is a nifty little tool that I’ve learn to make part of my life… AND I LOVE IT! I really do, this is why it saddens me to write this.
You see, LastPass is in fact “free” with some usage restriction. They do offer a premium service marketed as LastPass Premium which I signed up for since launch. Not really because I need the extra features but mainly because I want to support the project further and that is my easiest way to contribute towards that. Also at 12 bucks per year it is a steal for the benefits of using it.
Unfortunately, if you are like me and manage most (or all) of your micro transactions through paypal (yes 1 dollar per month counts as micro transaction in my book), then you are SOL, that is because LastPass Premium REFUSES to accept paypal payments, they depreciated it, no longer support it and will not for the love of God take your money in any way, shape of form that has anything to deal with paypal. At least that is the way it was explained to me via a Support Ticket over and over again (despite my best efforts) and even after escalating it through several levels of support queue. Eventually I was so frustrated by the fact that a company would not take money from an otherwise perfectly happy customer that I called out their CFO trying to get an audience to make my case on why this was stupid, but it was never granted.
And so, since they wont hear me out, I though it would be ideal to make a case for it here and explain LastPass why this decision NOT to accept paypal payments is wrong.
LastPass Premium, hear me out:
- While you are likely to disagree, for most of us, your business model falls into the micro transaction category. I don’t want to bother with registering my credit card to make such a small payment.
- Because your product / service is of low impact (not vital) I don’t want to remember that I paid you 12 bucks, nor keep track of it, nor be reminded of renewals. I rather rely on tools like paypal which excel at this model by setting up a subscription and forgetting about it.
- I care about security, as such, giving you my credit card information so you can process it on your end (even with all the security bells and whistles you want to point out) is a security risk to me. I need to manually enter my details, I need to remember that I provided you access to my info and I need to keep track of this payment and registration shall anything go wrong with my card in the future.
- I live and work OUTSIDE of the USA. The country I live in is considered high risk for credit card fraud. It is not uncommon for transactions to go on hold and credit cards getting blocked for perfectly legal transactions. The fear of having to deal with that over 12 bucks per year is just not worth it.
I could go on and on and give you a gazillion other reasons why your decision NOT to accept paypal payments is stupid but I think you get the picture so I will leave it at that but most importantly what you need to take away from this is that you are rejecting money from a customer who is willing to pay you, not for the features but to support your project… to me that is simply dumb.
If you dislike Paypal so much to the point that you don’t want it to be your main payment method, then that is perfectly valid, and very well, as a lot of us who deal with transactions online end up doing, you offer customers alternative payment methods, but enforcing your ways on us is only going to lose you business in the long run.
Before I leave, I do want to point out that your support staff was very polite and patient with me (even when I wasn’t) and I was even granted a 3 month premium period completely free which I am grateful for. This tells me great things about your company and your customer service culture… now if I could just convince you to take my money I will be a happy customer forever.
Go tell LastPass I sent you!
Cheers,
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UPDATE 19/01/2016: It looks like the purpose of this post met its end. Shortly after publishing this I went after lastpass to make sure they see this and they shortly after contacted me with a “depreciated paypal payment option” that is no longer available to the public but that I could use (for now). Fortunately I was able to submit my payment and did so several years in advance so that I don’t need to go through the hassle again. That said, they still said they will eventually phase out Paypal completely at some point so I’m leaving this article up since it is still relevant. I do appreciate the help of lastpass for enabling that as a last resource to me at least.
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Jose R. Lopez
Web Developer
