So this isn’t meant to be a post bashing the devs/owner of OpenSubtitles. This is meant simply as awareness.

A few months ago I signed up for the VIP tier at OST ($5/mo for 1000 downloads a day) for a bit to populate my catalogue of videos with subtitles as my father uses my Jellyfin server and he’s lost a lot of his hearing. I also wanted to support the development a bit. At first the service seemed to be downloading a bit, but then it stopped. I waited a few days and it would download at most one or two a day (despite a few thousand videos not having any subtitles). I look around online and found that OST had changed their API and the Jellyfin plugin still needed to catch-up with a newer release. No big deal, so I just waited.

Then the update released which specifically stated that the changes to the API calls were made. I waited a few days, nothing. I uninstalled the OST plugin and reinstalled, still nothing.

So I figured something was wrong either on my end or the server-side, but I didn’t want to bother getting into it. I’ve been planning to rebuild my Jellyfin server with newer hardware with HW acceleration for decoding and encoding. I sent an email to OST support explaining what I’ve been seeing and asked if I could get a refund.

The person who responded asked for logs so that they could help troubleshoot. So I obliged.

Email response from OpenSubtitles support confirming there was an issue

They said it wasn’t much help and to get even more logs. Which I provided again.

Screenshot of user CeeBee providing logs via email to OpenSubtitles support

I even removed over 14 thousand “[query]” lines to make the logs more readable. They said there wasn’t anything there that was useful, and asked me to try again. I indicated that Jellyfin has a scheduled job that checks for missing subtitles and pulls as needed once a day. But I said that at this point I’m just looking for the refund.

A while passes by but then I get a notification that the subscription is going to be renewed again, so I cancelled before that happened and reached out again about the refund. At this point it was more about the principle of the matter as I originally just asked for a refund and that got side-stepped into a support request.

Then I got this as a response:

Email response from OpenSubtitles support being aggressive and accusatory

Which resulted in this:

Email response from OpenSubtitles support saying "I'm tired of you" and deleted my account

I waited over two weeks to write this post. I wanted to wait and see if somebody replied back to me with even just an apology or something. If they had originally told me that doing refunds is hassle for them I would have let it go. But telling me off and then deleting my account is just… special. I was astonished at the response and cannot fathom that being the response from any company taking payments for a service.

And I’m not holding a grudge of any kind and I get it, I used to do IT support and some days can be tough dealing with annoying emails. But in my defence all I asked for was a refund because something wasn’t working. In any case, I just wanted to bring this to the attention of the Self-hosting community so that others can make more informed decisions. To be clear, I’m not advocating anyone to pull support. In face I think they should have more support as it’s an invaluable service. Despite the treatment I still plan on getting the VIP subscription again at some point after I rebuild my Jellyfin server. But I also don’t think that customers should be treated like this.

  • schmidtster@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    This is partly on you, they asked for logs and you deleted the vast majority of it saying it wasn’t relevant. What if it was? Then when they asked for logs you just shot right to refund.

    They’re an ass, but so are you.

    • CeeBee@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      Then when they asked for logs you just shot right to refund.

      No, I provided logs, twice. Then they ghosted me for almost a month. I’m not complaining, all I did was reply again asking if they could do the refund.

      You seem to be missing a hugely important point here. I didn’t want tech support, just a refund. The core tech issue did not matter. They were pushing for logs, and I went along with it. Regardless if the logs I provided were complete or not, I got told off for asking (not demanding) a refund NOT tech support.

      Edit: why are you assuming that I deleted the “vast majority” of the log? Where did I mention the total size of the log?

      • schmidtster@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You’re not just entitled to a refund just because you want one, there’s a process to go through it and ignored it….

        They wanted to know if the fault lied on their end or your end, one of them they would be liable to refund you, the other is actually on you.

        So no, you require tech support BEFORE demanding a refund in almost all cases.

        You’re just an entitled prick apparently.

        • CeeBee@lemmy.worldOP
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          1 year ago

          there’s a process to go through it and ignored it….

          The process everywhere is:

          • request refund

          that’s it. Nothing else is required. Anything else is optional.

            • CeeBee@lemmy.worldOP
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              1 year ago

              Sure. But that’s the point of the discussion.

              They could have said no, but they didn’t. They responded rudely, gave me a refund, and then deleted my account.

              • schmidtster@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Picture 3 was exactly that, you then lied to them in the response about providing the logs and them not responding. Your first two images show them Responding and explaining why those logs don’t work.

                • CeeBee@lemmy.worldOP
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                  1 year ago

                  Just give it up already. You gotta be some kind of psycho to keep coming at me like this.

                  No, I did not lie. The timeline of the images prove that.

                  • schmidtster@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    Bottom of image 3, you said you provided logs with no response. Image 1 and 2 shows their responses to those logs.

                    So you lied to them…… not many company are going to continue to be civil to someone who is lying to them, since that’s almost always a defrauding situation. You created this entire situation now that I’ve looked at it closer actually….

          • schmidtster@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            And they are also completely free to deny your refund request as well.

            There’s a due process and you choose to ignore it, and are now flaming someone for wanting to figure out if it was a them or you issue.

            • CeeBee@lemmy.worldOP
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              1 year ago

              are now flaming someone for wanting to figure out if it was a them or you issue.

              No. I’m sharing my experience with someone who sold a service that didn’t work for me, and in response to asking for a refund told me “I’m tired of talking with you” and deleted my account.

              • schmidtster@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                They asked for logs, gave you a reason for why. You claimed you already did, even though they explicitly told you why and to not edit them. You were also the only one with this issue, that’s not likely something on their end, which wouldn’t be eligible for a refund.

                Again, they are an ass, but look in the mirror, your obstinance didn’t help.

                • CeeBee@lemmy.worldOP
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                  1 year ago

                  even though they explicitly told you why and to not edit them

                  LMAO. Literally nowhere in a single screenshot did anyone say “don’t edit the logs”.

                  I think you’re smoking up waaay too much, my dude. Either that or you definitely are the person in the other end of my email convo. I’m getting more and more convinced of it. No one else would be so driven to make me out to be the bad guy here. Each of your comments are getting downvoted because the stuff you’re saying is bonkers.

                  So again, either you’re growing and smoking way too much weed. Or you really are the kind worded support person that deleted my account so unceremoniously. It’s one of the two.

    • Obinice@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      If you’ve got nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

      Calling a stranger an ass because they’re not living their life exactly how you would, in such a minor unimportant way, is not nice.