i know this is preaching to the choir but this is insane to me, still. i will quite literally never buy any google hardware again because of this (i had a pixel 4a before that sucked, so that's another reason, but it was on the table at least).
surely the PR disaster of this is worse than just coughing up the upgrade at least one time?? like how could you ever trust them saying anything at this point? "our latest pixel will have 7 years of updates" sure, pal
but at the same time, i feel like this was barely a blip on the radar, even though this is the most insane shit ever. people literally paid a monthly subscription for nothing, it's absolutely criminal
I looked up the Google announcement post for Pixel Pass, as well as some articles about it from the launch time. Also found a Reddit thread from 2 years ago asking how the upgrade works.
Pixel Pass got you discounted rates for Google subscription services + Google Fi (in return for forcing you to subscribe to all of them, so honestly not a great deal for most), and otherwise functioned as a no-discount 2 year payment plan for a Pixel phone. After the 2 years, you fully owned the phone. I didn't see any mentions of the upgrade in the marketing that I could see.
The wording quoted from the Reddit thread was "You can upgrade to a new Pixel phone every two years. After 24 monthly payments, you fully own your phone. At that time, you decide if you want to stay subscribed to Pixel Pass and receive the next device available as an upgrade." Google appears to have meant this to mean "You can move off Pixel Pass and pay full price for the services, or you can upgrade to the next Pixel with another payment plan and keep the discounted service prices."
Some people appear to have thought the upgrade was free, which doesn't really make much sense to me because it's unclear what would happen with the discounted subscriptions and payment plan. Was the thought that you'd just stop paying the phone payment plan part and only pay the discounted services cost? Google would be giving away $600 phones as a thank-you for staying subscribed to all their paid services at a lower cost than people not on the plan.
I would not be surprised if Google ended up killing this plan because they realized people were so confused that trying to walk existing customers through it would be harder than just sunsetting the program and giving out $100 credits, which ultimately was even more savings than they would've gotten if the program stayed.
Like, fuck Google all day for many reasons, but this two-sentence summary is bullshit.
