Renew Family Plan with new price

[decoder_oh]

I'm a family plan user and I just received the email that my family plan was cancelled due to not agreeing to the newer price. That previous *one* email was burried in dozens of other mails and did not even include an "action required" or anything in the subject.

Now I would like to agree to the new price but there is neither an option to accept, nor an option to renew with the new price. I don't want the subscription to run out because all of my family members would be dropped and would have to be re-added. That can't be the usability you have been aiming for, right?

[decoder_oh]

Hey everyone,

Sorry to hear you're having trouble accepting the new price.

If you're not seeing the option to accept it on your account page, simply cancel your subscription using these steps and then renew it from the Manage Your Plan page (make sure you're seeing the new price when accepting the renewal).

Note that your account won't revert to free immediately so you don't need to worry about losing your offline playlists or having to re-invite your Premium Family/Duo members.

We hope this helps. Let us know if you need any help with the process.

[Alex80000]

Although i cancelled and resubscribed (account page now shows active family premium plan with the new price on renewal date) my family members and me constantly get e-mails telling that the family admin has cancelled subscription. What? The spotify apps even regularly show pop ups to resubscribe. Something is wrong with the subscription system. Everybody in the family is irritated. Very bad UX Spotify.

[TonyAngelino]

This was handled really badly. In all other software, platforms and subscriptions, when the price is increased, those who accept the increase have to do nothing - they simply continue to use it at increased price. And those who do not accept, they have to cancel their subscription. The default action is always adjusted in such a manner so that the majority of users don't have to do anything and only minority has to undertake some action. Only here at Spotify someone had to reinvent the wheel, like this is their first job. And then distribute this information like a simple notice, when action is required. And then when you go to your account, there is no obvious way to accept or upgrade to new price with a simple click. Multiple bad steps, one after the other. Please pass this to the responsible team. Thank you.

[Maria]

Hey @Alex80000,

Thanks for posting in the thread.

If you've resubscribed to Family, and it says that you will be charged the new price at the new cycle over at the account page - all should be well with the subscription.

It's possible that you and your family members received these notifications as a heads up, since the previous Premium plan got canceled. We apologize for the inconvenience!

Should anything else appear, we're just a post away.

Take care!

[kischde79]

I received a message telling me that I didn't add family members. And when I'm looking into it there's indeed nobody apart from me.....

Seems as if you guys have serious problems with handling all the issues. What do you do when we lose all our lists? And please don't just tell us 'this won't happen'. I also heard that it wouldn't happen that family members disappear when canceling and addinga new subscription.....

[Maria]

Hey there @kischde79,

Thanks for reaching out!

If you, for example, change the payment details and keep the same type of Premium plan, the current members should remain in the plan. Just to be on the safe side, could you check if your family members accounts still show as Premium, or if they're on the free service? They can check this by logging into their own account page here.

Should their subscription status show as Premium and that they're still part of a Family plan, it's possible that they're part of another plan, that's been created on a different Spotify account. In this case, we recommend checking the steps here for what to do next.

If the members have been removed and their accounts shows as free, you should be able to invite them to the plan right away. Just follow the steps over at this page to send new invites. Your family members can also use their current Spotify account to accept the new invite. This way, they keep all their playlists and saved music.

Hope this helps!

[Lucyteamgreen]

This. 
While yesterday evening everything was working fine & all my family members were able to use their family plan functions, I woke up this morning to go for a walk with the dog - and everything is gone.

After unnecessary time spend looking into it, I am now on Spotify free, my family members are gone from the plan, downloads/playlists gone.

In my account I only find a strange info under „payments“ (Zahlungen) which says 

„17,99 € Zahlung erstattet“ with an orange dot next to it with no explanation what that even means. 

Ich kann mich nicht erinnern, in den letzten Tagen „vorgewarnt“ worden zu sein.
I can’t remember being warned about anything the past few days. Ususally the notification in the app are reliable/often if any changes are made. There was a notification that the price will be increased and if you don’t agree, Spotify could cancel your subscription. Could, not will.

From a customer point of view I would have preferred a „the subscription will be cancelled if you don’t agree“ because I have found multiple posts of users that have the same problem, so it‘s probably not a fluke. 

However - what can I do now? Will my family members (after I invited them another time) and me have to add all the playlists, downloads etc again if I resubscribe? I guess so - that’s a lot of work and unnecessary . I don’t understand why Spotify is doing something so annoying to their subscribers, especially seeing that they’re in the red anyways.

Customers could use the time for all this at another streaming service if they found one that has a better price, or similar offer.

To me it already have been really annoying that gift cards can’t be used to pay for the family plan, as older people (in-laws etc) like to buy these gifts cards for the kids and struggle to read the tiny print on these. Then you have money in your account which you can’t use if the family plan includes everything you need. 

sorry for the rant, but while searching for an solution I read an article about Spotify making looses and I wonder why a corporation wouldn’t stop doing annoying things to their customers over and over again in a situation like this. 

Edit: Was on the phone while typing this and switched from English to German and back without noticing. When I read it again, I recognised so I edited it to be in English all the way trough. 

[TonyAngelino]

This is definitely NOT solved.

I have followed the proposed solution here - I cancelled the family subscription with old price and added again the family subscription. And everything seemed OK - family members were still there, all the playlists were still there, the family subscription showed the new, updated price, I got all of the account confirmations per E-Mail that the new price will be booked monthly - it seemed that this workaround (accepted solution) solved the problem, don't have to think about it anymore.

And today, about a week later, all family members were kicked out and switched to "free subscription" anyway. Seriously?

It's like I had to wait for the old subscription to run its course anyway. Had to subscribe again, had to set the payment method, add all family members again etc.

On top of it all, I had to accept the privacy conditions for notifications and private messaging here in community 6 or 7 times today, like a got stuck in a loop. As a fellow developer, I gotta say that as a world leader in this technology, all of this looks pretty weak.

[decoder_oh]

My family members are receiving emails now as well that their subscription is running out, even though I renewed it.

@Maria can you please look into this?

[Maria]

Hey there,

Thanks for the questions!

When changing the subscription or updating the payment details, all family members get to keep their current Spotify accounts. All music and playlists are saved within each separate account, and won't be affect by any subscription changes. Keep in mind, however, if you make any changes to the plan, current members will sometimes need to confirm that you're still staying at the same address. In the case that you're living together still, the members will just need to reconfirm the address to stay in the plan.

@decoder_oh It's possible that your family members received these notifications since you've accepted the new price for the plan. When you accepted the new price, your old plan got canceled and the new one got activated. If everything looks alright at your account page and the new price is displayed there, together with your family members, you're all set!

Hope this clear things up!

Cheers.

[decoder_oh]

@Maria I can now confirm that what you said is NOT correct. Today I got the message that my subscription expired, all my family members were dropped and I had to sign up *again* for a new subscription. Previously the subscriptions page would clearly show me "renews on January 23" and that I have a working family subscription.

Now I have to setup everything again. Your whole handling of this situation is terrible to say the least.

[decoder_oh]

@Maria can you please provide a statement here? the previously provided steps are not working, all my family members were removed from my account!