“Should have been” means we had a bargain ? Compare to what ?
Sorry but that has nothing to do with it. They advertised as 14.99 USD. But due to an error they haven’t charged that price. Now they are.
So zwift have not increased subscription charges. They are just now charging people what it was always been advertised as.The price that you always should have been paying.
Affordability is a completely different argument and one you have control over by cancelling your subscription if you think it’s too expensive.
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This is not how I would approach the question of whether or how much to raise the price. If I were the emperor of Zwift pricing, I would be asking what is the value of having subscribers in countries with economic conditions like Turkey in the game? How much subscriber churn is acceptable (ie, what price will that market bear)? Can the company afford to retain more of those users? Will that portion of the market be shocked by the size of the price increase?
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From a cost perspective, aren’t smart trainers, bikes and the computers to run zwift on, more of a hurdle than the monthly fee?
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regardless of whether you think things should/shouldn’t be affordable or are/aren’t affordable to increase the price by 800% without communicating it to people and all in one go when it seems like it was an error on zwift’s part seems pretty bad to me.
they could have stepped it up, given lots of warning or something. but it seems like (from people posting here who have been affected) the first they hear about it is when the price goes up
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They haven’t increased the price 
the price should have been 14.99 USD they are now collecting what they have always advertised for.
Increasing the price would be putting it up to 17.99 USD. They haven’t done this.
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People from major developed countries will never understand what the issue is because they have never lived in a country where the local currency has lost value as rapidly as Turkish Lira has and what that means for someone’s budget and purchasing power.
Absolutely no one is arguing that Zwift changed prices in US dollars. Literally none of the posts mentioned it. Once again, people are arguing that, the sudden “adjustment” of prices in the local currency (Turkish Lira) has made it very unaffordable to maintain their subscription to Zwift.
Zwift has the right to price their subscription at $14.99 globally, as they have been doing. However, it is common business sense to use “local pricing” like many other subscription based global businesses do (e.g. Netflix) if the service your provide is highly price elastic (meaning that price increases will undoubtedly lead to revenue drop).
Once again, no one is asking for Zwift’s charity here. We are simply pointing out to the stylized facts about the situation. Zwift WILL BE LOSING REVENUE in Turkey. They may or may not care about it.
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I am not saying they’re right to do it by any means but they are gambling that for every 8 customers they’ll keep at least one of them and they’ll at least break even.
You’ve been paying much less than you should have been.
and
The price that you always should have been paying.
Framing this as “you are now paying what should have always paid” can make it sound like Turkish users were doing something dodgy. The price that subscribers in Turkey paid is what Zwift asked them to pay.
It’d be more accurate to say “The price is now the USD converted price that Zwift always stated it was going to charge, and forgot to do so for quite a while”.
To get 50 TRY to be equal to 15 USD, you’d need an exchange rate of about 3.5 TRY → 1 USD and that would’ve been around about the time prices went up to 15 USD (Nov 2017). Assuming that’s the case, that’s like… 5 years?
(Companies are pretty obtuse around pricing as well, I’ve had 6 months of the same 19.99 CAD price and now for sept and oct, and I presume forwards, I’m paying… 21.83 CAD? That certainly feels like a price increase right now given how the USD ↔ CAD exchange rates have trended, and its really strange to see a non-round number ending in .83)
Did your email notification of price increase explain why it was changing and if so what exchange rate was being used?
That’s what I did say. Zwift are only charging the price they advertised. I said that exactly.
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I don’t recall getting an email, I just noticed it when reviewing bank data - not saying I didn’t, but I don’t think this is a price increase per se - my guess it’s that they weren’t pricing in local sales tax correctly.
Doing some back tracking of numbers, I’m in sunny Quebec, so total sales tax rate should be 14.975% (5% federal, and 9.975% Quebec Sales Tax). If the base price of my subscription is 19.00 CAD, then with that rate total amount is 21.84. If you only applied federal sales tax (5%) it’d be 19.95, so that’s close to the old 19.99.
I do have some vague memory around this for something else software related, maybe a note from Google on one of my services about having to now add QST in 
but this explanation would be in ballpark.
The post is actually called “800% increase in subscription price” there are numerous posts saying zwift increased their price. They haven’t increased their price.
Luckily, zwift had not been billing the price it advertised. Now they are.
Zwift has been subsidising Turkish subscribers through their own error. They have now corrected this. But they haven’t increased the price… Only the amount they collect. Which is the amount they always wanted to collect. If they had been collecting the correct amount historically this post would not exist.
I’m fully sympathetic to anyone who is struggling financially. But the argument needs to be framed as an afordability argument rather then making out that zwift had suddenly hiked prices.
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I didn’t mean to respond to you Chris, I was responding to Neil’s comment.
Thanks.
Yes sounds like you had the Zwift is now collecting correct sales tax email which hit around early July I think.
Neil, in a global economy there is no single price of a good. Buyer’s will evaluate their willingness to pay in the currency they earn their income (local currency). So, from a buyer’s perspective, there was 800% increase in price. So from the demand perspective, the title is completely accurate. You mention price as if it’s a contractual agreement. It is not. It’s simply what Zwift wants to charge and buyer’s are willing to pay. For some Turkish subscribers, those who things do not meet in the middle. This is economics man. Zwift is not doing anything illegal by “fixing their error”, they are doing something that makes no economic or business sense.
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Off topic but to reply, I’m $21.46 CAD which is $18.99 + 13%HST. I’m guessing you’re in QC with a 14.975% tax rate? Which at $18.99 is what you’re paying. Last spring I was a straight $18.99/month but I’m guessing they weren’t charging sales tax correctly and have since started to add that.
With today’s exchange rate $14.99USD is $20.40CAD.
I just took a look at the invoices on my Zwift account page and they’re a disaster, it’s a miracle they’re billing anyone correctly.
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They are a business. They select a price based on what they feel is fair and reasonable and covers the cost of production and hopefully a margin.If the customer doesn’t feel it provides value (or is affordable) they don’t need to buy.
I can’t afford many things that I’d like…so I don’t buy them. I don’t complain about it. I just understand the economics.
What if the price they were charging previously was significantly loss making to them? It would make no economic sense to continue. You and I don’t know what makes economic or business sense to zwift. Unless you are employed in their finance division.
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I think the poinst is the minumum they should of done is inform users of the price increase. Which so far in this trail sounds like they didn’t do that.
Then yes there is a whole other dicussion to be had on local pricing. persinally i think zwift have this one wrong but they have the numbers on subscriptions etc so willing to accept it’s up to them.
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Neil, I don’t need to work in their finance department to know these two simple things:
- The service their provide is highly price elastic, because it’s not a necessity consumption.
- If a good is price elastic, the percentage drop in quantity bought will always be higher than percentage increase in price. In this case, as a response to an eight-fold increase in local price, economic theory dictates that the subscription in Turkey will drop by more than eight-fold.
At least in theory, Zwift should lose revenue from this in Turkey. Considering their cost of offering the service is not affected by any of this, I expect them to lose money from this. They might not if the Turkish consumers don’t behave rationally and drop their subscriptions.
Personally, if the Zwift price were to go up 800% in US dollars and my dollar income did not go up by that much, I would immediately cancel my Zwift subscription.
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