Craftsy Auto-Renewal
 

Like many others, I signed up for the Craftsy special last year for ~$3/year unlimited access. This was set to automatically renew after the one year special unless you called them to shut it off. Thankfully, I received an email yesterday informing me I had until Oct 23rd to make that call, because I truly thought I had done it last year soon after re-joining.

The customer service agent was polite, and did ask what my reason was for non-renewal. I explained that though I enjoy the few classes I have time for, what I really miss is the retail side of Craftsy, and the pattern downloads from independent designers. Their bundles of Aurifil thread were wonderful, with great prices. I also was left with a bad taste in my mouth at the way they shut down the fabric/supplies and literally sold truckloads of fabric for pennies on the dollar to re-sellers, rather than offering these products to their members. To me, that's making a choice to lose both money and customers. These fabrics later began showing up on Facebook de-stash groups at extreme discounts, e.g., charm packs for $2.00-3.00, jelly rolls for $8.00, fat quarter bundles (of 20 FQ) for $12.00, etc. The woman selling them at these prices was still making a profit, even at these bargain basement rates, so it shows how cheaply Craftsy sold everything off. It just made me sad that they chose to treat their customers so poorly while practically giving their stock away to someone else.

When I canceled the renewal, they did offer a "special $29/year" membership, which I declined. I just don't see them being around much longer, and I'm moving on. If you signed up for the same deal I did and don't intend to renew, the time to make that call is now.

I'm not interested in renewing either. I got some fantastic deals on supplies back when it was the original Craftsy. I hardly even watch my classes, and what they're offering now holds no interest. Too bad they messed it up. I used to love it.

Ditto. I told the lady I missed the retail as well. I'm sure they are hearing that alot.

I didn't want to have that conversation (why did you leave, is there anything we can do to get you to stay, wah wah wah) so I used a virtual credit card. I programmed it to not allow any further charges. Problem painlessly solved.

I got offers to renew membership after Craftsy sold. I had never bought anything from them and just deleted the emails, eventually they stopped.

NBC Universal owned and is the entity that sold off Craftsy/Bluprint's assets, so they shut down retail operations in advance of the closure/sale and likely advertised the entire stock of physical goods for surplus auction bid. Same way places like Marden's in Maine and other surplus/salvage retailers get their goods - purchasing large, multi-thousand-dollar lots, at auction. Given NBC was shutting it down (and isn't inherently a retail operation, which takes a lot more in human and logistics resources), they would have had no interest in the retail transactions of selling inventory piecemeal (plus it would likely have made more financial sense to write the surplus off on the balance sheet) and didn't consider members to be their core customer base.

The company that bought the assets of Craftsy/Bluprint, TN Marketing, only bought the course content assets, not the physical or retail ones, since they are an on-demand video company, not a retailer. The press releases related to the purchase stated they had no intention of starting up retail since that's not their line of business.

lol, That would have made it painless. I'll certainly remember that for the future! https://cdn.quiltingboard.com/images/smilies/smile.png

I miss the retail side of craftsy too. But it's better for me that it's gone - less temptation!

I cancelled my auto renew as soon as I paid the $3 membership so I didn't have to worry about it in a year.

I've seen the offer recently, and if you want it again for $3, just use a different email address.

Tammy

Thank you for setting the record straight. For those of us who owned multiple classes, I’m thankful someone stepped in to make them still accessible, otherwise we could have lost everything.