Why the scumbag policies?

[ba18070]

So, I started using Brave because I was pleased with their mission statement. I have advertised freely for them because I believe in what they said they do. We should have privacy, not be attacked by ads and have a choice about our data. But now I am not so sure I trust they actually believe this.
First of all, making people have to make an account to give you feedback is just trying to discourage people from doing it. Its been proven that having to make an account instantly makes something less attractive. Double that up with it having to be given to a forum, meaning there is no guarantee that quite literally a single person that works at or for the company will read it at all, is an even more questionable prospect. So I went to the effort of searching how to give you feedback, going to your site, finding the forums, making the account, confirming the account, finding the section and writing the message so then I can post it so it can be ignored by the intended recipient, someone else in the public can read it, disagree, probably insult me while doing it and I get an even worse experience than just send them an email that goes straight into the garbage. There’s not even the illusion that they care what their end user thinks. Really great start.
Now I get advertisements from my browser about how much im under siege from the internet trying to hurt me and to “start my free trial.” Except its not a free trial at all, its a baited hook. Why would a free trial require my credit card number? There’s no way to reconcile those two things. “Its free, so give me your financial information.” Makes sense. But really we all know what this is, its so you can charge me the second it expires if I dont cancel it ahead of time. That is such a fucking scumbag practice and it hurts your “we’re the good guys trying to protect you from predatory business practices” image so incredibly badly. Is this really doomed to follow that slippery slope that they all do? Will this become a constant carousel of all tech companies having a life cycle of “company with good ideas and morals starts, gets popular, virtues are stripped away, take ‘dont be evil’ out of their stated goals, chase money, help authoritarian government with dystopian social control programs?”

Have you considered making a better product to make more money, instead of trying to find ways to trick people out of it? Wild idea, I know.

[Mattches]

Thanks for the feedback.

For the record, this is actually the best way to get in direct contact with a member of the team (such as myself). Support staff as well as devs browse the form frequently and while we do get hundreds ( often thousands) of threads opened every week, we do our best to respond as frequently as possible. Just remember that our team is relatively small and we all wear many hats, so response quantity/frequency can vary based on those facts.

Further, we (support staff) always make an effort to forward any thoughtful, constructive feedback to our developers, as we all believe in making the best product we can. Note that this does not mean that everything requested by users/our Community members will be implemented in the browser/product, but hopefully it helps to know that at minimum, the user’s voice does make its way up the chain.

Lastly, it seems like you’re upset about the way the free trial for Premium products works. To be honest, I agree personally and this is not a new complaint, and is most certainly not the first time the product/premium team has been made aware of this. It is worth noting that most software/services offering free trials work this way — it’s not as if we are implementing this out of nowhere. For example, if you were to sign up for Netflix or Hulu or another service, you are also required to enter your CC information before you can start the free trial and you are charged once the free trial ends. I’m not saying that this excuses us/anyone from doing this, nor does it make it “right” but it is very common and I do not think it’s fair to demonize us for staying competitive. Additionally, we have a very lenient and understanding refund policy for all of our services so that even if you do forget to cancel before the trial is over and are charged, simply submitting a support ticket to us and requesting a refund is often all that is required.

Thanks again for your feedback. Hope this helps.