<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>shittyadmin</author><text>&amp;gt; That&amp;#x27;s ridiculous that Dropbox has never thought that someone might need an upgrade to their account before their next &amp;quot;open-enrollment&amp;quot; style system. Just off the cuff thinking would suggest applying whatever money has already been paid for the existing account, prorating it for what has been already used, and then subtract that from the fee to be collected for the upgrade. Then flip the switch in the database. Sure, it might be out-of-bounds for normal workflow.&lt;p&gt;Seriously, I implemented this in a few minutes on my crappy little side project.&lt;p&gt;If you want to downgrade, it&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;contact support&amp;quot; so we discuss any issues and sort out a refund or credit as appropriate - but if you want to upgrade and pay more, that should be the fattest, shiniest, most automatic button available and give a fair, prorated deal with no hassle, those are customers who have experience with your service, like it and want more of it. The kind you want to keep the most. It seems like the most basic business sense.</text><parent_chain><item><author>dylan604</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s ridiculous that Dropbox has never thought that someone might need an upgrade to their account before their next &amp;quot;open-enrollment&amp;quot; style system. Just off the cuff thinking would suggest applying whatever money has already been paid for the existing account, prorating it for what has been already used, and then subtract that from the fee to be collected for the upgrade. Then flip the switch in the database. Sure, it might be out-of-bounds for normal workflow.&lt;p&gt;To the credit of which ever Dropbox person responded, it sounds like they might have realized how dumb it would be not to take a longer look at the situation. Shows that most corps&amp;#x27; pay less attention to the actual support requests coming in than how worried that negative PR would be for having bad support in the first place. Seems like the cart is leading the horse</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Sorry, upgrading your Dropbox Business plan will take 11 months</title><url>https://twitter.com/pendersj/status/1067822027350786048</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>TazeTSchnitzel</author><text>&amp;gt; Just off the cuff thinking would suggest applying whatever money has already been paid for the existing account, prorating it for what has been already used, and then subtract that from the fee to be collected for the upgrade. Then flip the switch in the database. Sure, it might be out-of-bounds for normal workflow.&lt;p&gt;My previous employer did something like this. If you currently had the $8&amp;#x2F;month plan for 12 months and chose to switch to the $20&amp;#x2F;month plan, you&amp;#x27;d get it instantly but with (8&amp;#x2F;20) * your remaining time, e.g. 4.8 months if you had 12 months left. (This also worked the other way round for plan downgrades.) Then when it came time to renew you&amp;#x27;d pay a new 12-month subscription fee for a full 12 months.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a very elegant and convenient system. Choose the wrong plan by mistake at time of payment? Want to try the premium plan? You can switch instantly without entering any payment details, and without the provider having an extra payment card fee to stomach.</text><parent_chain><item><author>dylan604</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s ridiculous that Dropbox has never thought that someone might need an upgrade to their account before their next &amp;quot;open-enrollment&amp;quot; style system. Just off the cuff thinking would suggest applying whatever money has already been paid for the existing account, prorating it for what has been already used, and then subtract that from the fee to be collected for the upgrade. Then flip the switch in the database. Sure, it might be out-of-bounds for normal workflow.&lt;p&gt;To the credit of which ever Dropbox person responded, it sounds like they might have realized how dumb it would be not to take a longer look at the situation. Shows that most corps&amp;#x27; pay less attention to the actual support requests coming in than how worried that negative PR would be for having bad support in the first place. Seems like the cart is leading the horse</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Sorry, upgrading your Dropbox Business plan will take 11 months</title><url>https://twitter.com/pendersj/status/1067822027350786048</url></story>