Cannot convert from Student to Premium

[Ronnocerman]

Summary: If you are both no longer a student AND your credit card is no longer valid, you are unable to cleanly switch over to full Premium membership from a Student membership without cancelling your subscription entirely and then restarting it. This isn't very good UX.

Suggested Fix: There should be a "Actually, I'm no longer a student" button in the Spotify Student payment details change workflow so that you can still change your payment details (and subscription type) once you graduate without having to cancel your subscription.

Unrelated Bug: As I was typing this out, it says "Autosaved at 9:32PM". I'm in Kirkland, Washington, and it's only 1:32PM here.

Full explanation of original bug:
Hi there.

I was a student at UC San Diego. I'm no longer a student there and am attempting to change my subscription from 'Student' to a full subscription for $10. The problem is that my card has changed details and the workflow to update my payment details requires re-verifying that I am a student before it will save the new payment details. There appears to be no option to elect to convert to Premium from Student.

I can most likely cancel my membership and then immediately restart it, but I just thought I should let you guys know that there's no 'clean' way to switch to full Premium if you are no longer a student and have expired credit card details.

[oscitare]

Welcome to the community, Ronnocerman!

It turns out that the 'Student' version of subscription is actually just a 12-month 50% discount for students. Your student ID has to be valid only once you redeem your discount and if you're no longer a student while you still have the discount, you can just leave it until it runs out. For more questions on this topic, please check out the Student discount FAQ.

If you have any more questions, feel free to post them in the community! 🙂

[Ronnocerman]

I think you might have missed the part where I said my card expired. I get that it becomes a regular membership after some time if I'm no longer a student. The issue is that my card expired and I have no way of changing it to a valid one unless I can put in info verifying that I am a student, which I'm not.

[oscitare]

Oops, sorry about that! And about the 'time bug' you found, the system (like most other computer systems) automatically sets your time zone to UTC and you must visit your preferences to change that. Feel free to submit this as an idea to stir up some action. Do you still have any problems?

[Ronnocerman]

You mean submit the idea of making it possible to change billing information after graduating but before the student subscription expires? Because as of right now it isn't possible except by cancelling my account and restarting it.

[meahtenoha]

Hey @Ronnocerman you should be able to update your payment details while on the Student Discount. Could you please try with a different internet browser?

If you're still having trouble please post a screenshot of the error message you're receiving, thanks!

[JD4540]

I'm also having this issue and baiscally what happens is you go to update your payments and everything is fine, but then it forces you to verify that you are still a student.  There is no option to continue along and confirm that you are not a student and update your account to premium, so you are stuck at this screen where your payment info is not saved, but you cannot continue to because you won't be able to verify your student status.

[kenna_bryan]

I'm also having this issue. I cannot update my payment details (my card expired) because it wants to verify that I am still a student, which I'm not. Has anyone fixed this bug ? 

[tgrimes92]

They still have not fixed this bug, I am trying to do the same thing. Does anything bad happen when you cancel your account and restart it?

[marlonsphere · Accepted solution]

Hey @tgrimes92, @Ronnocerman, @kenna_bryan, @JD4540. 

If you are no longer a student and when updating your payment details it asks you to re-verify your student details, you can resolve this issue by canceling your current subscription. Once canceled, you can now update or change your payment details.

Hope this helps!

Thanks,

marlonespi

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[amandacassata]

But does it lose all of the music you've downloaded over the last year when you cancel your student account and restart as premium?  I cannot imagine trying to re-create the library I have already.  Please advise!  

[Ronnocerman]

I'm not sure what you mean by 'downloaded', but if you mean that you clicked the plus next to them to create a library and then set it up to download that library, that is not deleted. No playlists are lost either.

[spacepenguine]

This was reported more than a year ago and is still a bug. My account has already been auto-converted to Premium correctly, but I can't update my credit card info without cancelling the correct subscription. I guess I'll just let the payment bounce since you won't take the correct information.

[jaredb]

When you cancel your student account and re-sign up does it reload all of your old playlists and saved songs or does it make you start over? There should be some sort of button that says "I'm not a student anymore". Spotify has already known that I am not a student anymore because they have been charging me $9.99 per month instead of the $4.99 so I don't know why I am having this problem. Is there a way I could call support or something and have it migrated?

Thanks,

[MMastoth]

I just encountered this problem and it's pretty ridiculous that Spotify hasn't fixed such an simple problem. But in case anybody else encounters this problem, yes it saves your playlists. HOWEVER, you have to redownload all of the songs you had downloaded. Dumb. Seriously, how have you not fixed this yet? I was close to forgetting about Spotify Premium altogether, and I'm sure plenty of customers did just that. That's probably a lot of money. Some employee should tackle this and put it in your performance review to show the higher-ups how you are retaining a lot of customers and saving them lots of revenue. Or hire me. I'll do it. A "switch plans" button shouldn't be that difficult to add to the UI considering it already exists elsewhere in other contexts.