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.

    • 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.

            • CeeBee@lemmy.worldOP
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              1 year ago

              Oh hell no. I’m not lying about anything.

              Re-read my original post if you’re so confused about the timeline.

              You’re 100% trying to gaslight here. I said they ghosted me after I replied to them when they asked if I tried running the task again. Which was after I replied with the second log.

              Just get outta here. You’re constantly trying to either shift the goal posts or convince me they’re just sticks.

              At this point I know 100% you’re a troll. No one can be this dense or stupid in real life (well, that’s not true, now is it).

              • schmidtster@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                I am reading your posts, image 3 you say you provided logs with no response. Your provided images show those same responses you claim to have not received.

                I’m not gaslighting you, im trying to point out the flaw in your tirade here. You lied to them, why do you think they suddenly changed their attitude and deleted your account?

                Yeah they are assholes, but you also lied to them and demanded a refund without following their service agreement. Look in the mirror a little bit before throwing shit.

          • 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….

            • CeeBee@lemmy.worldOP
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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’re trying to nit pick what I said from the screenshots I provided which are only bits and pieces of the conversation?

              Do you even hear yourself? This isn’t some trial here. This isn’t discovery before a lawsuit. You are literally trying to force the situation to make me out as a liar, or the very least as the bad person or instigator.

              Like I said in my other comment, it really seems like you’re the person on the other side of that email trying to shift the blame. That’s the only thing that makes sense to me about your replies.

              And to be completely pedantic, we could have had another 100 back and forth emails before they didn’t reply anymore, and my statement “they didn’t respond after I provided the logs” would still be accurate. In fact, what happened was I provided the logs (second time), they replied I should try again, I replied stating I already did, and then no reply.

              But you already knew that, didn’t you?