@smyles#97128 I think you can only close your account by support. I don't even think it's possible to go from premium to travel. I think when you have premium at the moment you don't have any options, but I could be wrong though.

I do like that other companies that used bunq now also have something like "what did they do?" 😂

@smyles#97129 Before anyone pounces on me for potentially sounding negative - I really appreciate how quickly bunq reacts to community requests and is consistently delivering new features! 👍

It’s just that, based on the discussions that we see on Together after each new release, the clarity in communication is the missing killer feature 😉

@JohnDo#97130 😬 that’s even worse then 😕

@Jos-Golden-Unicorn#97131 you can downgrade from Premium to Travel yes. 🙂

@smyles#97132 actually, communication on this one has been really smooth. We, mods, we're up to date just before the release to help out. Then we had only very few questions / duplicate topics that we had to hide whereas this has been very very different for past features. There will always be something to improve but this time I'm confident that bunq communicated the featured pretty nicely. 🙂👍 nevertheless your remarks are always welcome. 🌈

@Sander#97137 How does that work than?
You do have to close all your ibans or not?

@Sander#97137 I’m afraid we have a different version of smooth communication then.

I would have expected that everyone should have been told that the Free Plan was going to disappear before it happened. As you have seen from the responses, there are a few who were in the middle of their trial Premium period and were planning to switch to Free.

Also, I don’t think you can assume that the majority of users actively participate in the forum. I expect many are going to get a “surprise” at the end of their trial period.

Clear up-front communication and giving people a choice is always better than cleaning up after the event with explanations of why people are now stuck.

@Jos-Golden-Unicorn#97138 I assume that you lose everything (IBANs, direct debits, payroll endpoints...)

Has that not been clear from the clear communication of the change? 😉

@smyles#97140 I am one of these people in the middle of the trial period, and as I explained on the other thread (https://together.bunq.com/d/13578-additional-questions-about-bunq-travel-card/126), bunq free would have been very useful for me, but the free travel card is useless.

If there had been a notice, I would have tried to switch to Free before the end of the Premium trial. I would love to stay a customer but obviously bunq does not want me to.

@Karl-Grey-Shark#97143 Exactly 😕

@smyles#97140 I would have expected that everyone should have been told that the Free Plan was going to disappear before it happened. As you have seen from the responses, there are a few who were in the middle of their trial Premium period and were planning to switch to Free.

I disagree with you here. Why would you announce to Premium members that Free disappears? Because they might potentially downgrade in the future? At the moment you want to change plans you always get a listing of the possible options. Those who were already on Free can keep using it. Together is the communication channel of bunq, all of their other channels point here as well. 🙂
Yes, they could have announced that Free disappeared. But to be honest, when you run a business, would you advertise "Look we have some changes that allow you to do (...)" or would you say "Look, we canceled one of our existing plans!"?
You seem to be focussing a lot on this particular thing now. So let me extend a bit on why I do think communication went well this time;

• Moderators were brieved upfront: we went through the documentation thoroughly and came up with a gazzilion extra questions that were addressed in the middle of the night by bunq, such that information was as complete as possible during launch.
• We made sure to split the FAQ and Questions sections such that we can update the FAQ topic with most important questions that we missed, this way the FAQ topic would not have many many comments but still would contain the most important info.
• The extensiveness of the info in the initial topics was way better than with previous launches.
• The amount of topics about unclarities is significantly lower than with previous launches, you can't see that, because previously we would be hiding topics like crazy. But we easily hid nearly 100 topics if I estimate, while yesterday I could still count them on one hand.

You can obviously still disagree with me, I won't continue repeating my opinion obviously, but I hope you do see that we mods/bunq changed (mostly based on community feedback btw!) in regards to the communication process for this new feature.

@Karl-Grey-Shark#97143 I would love to stay a customer but obviously bunq does not want me to.

bunq definitely wants you, but bunq's services come at a price, and it seems you do not think it's worth it. That's obviously a personal choice. bunq offers a few services for free, but not everything can be free. Apparently the former contents of Free weren't sustainable/working to convert customers so it seems like a logical decision to change it. It is not like bunq was earning anything on Free, it was literally a free option they chose to provide (bunq still needs to pay that part of the staff/infra/... at the end of the month tho).

@JeroenE#97158 Sander Zo heel duidelijk is de communicatie van bunq echt niet. Jij schreef zelf gisteren nog dat mensen met een bestaand Premium abonnement wel terug naar Free konden gaan (zie hier Sander). Dat heb je ondertussen wel verbeterd, maar ik vind dat soort zaken echt niet vallen onder het kopje "duidelijke communicatie".

You are completely right. There were still some small things that we missed, which we fixed within hours. I'm very sorry for that, we humans missed something as well. 🙈🙂 But, most things were communicated. When you start searching you will always find things that can be improved/went wrong.

@JeroenE#97158 En waarom kan bunq dat soort grote wijzigingen niet gewoon zelf duidelijk plaatsen

That's what they do on Together here right? 😅 The announcement topics were pretty much trending yesterday/today. 🙂 Also, you can still revert to a Free plan, though it does not contain a bank account anymore but a (very much requested) card instead. The information was correct, and now has been updated to reflect the new situation. 😁 (and in case you find something where they forgot to update, definitely let us/bunq/report@bunq.com know)

Okay, long post, have a nice evening. ✌️

@Sander#97168 Wellicht kijk ik er over heen maar ik heb helemaal geen topic van bunq gezien waar het afschaffen van Free wordt medegedeeld. Heb je een linkje?

En ik vind dat je dat soort zaken wel moet aankondigen. Vooral omdat bunq altijd heeft beweerd dat je gewoon tussen abonnementsvormen kan wisselen. Dan is het natuurlijk vreemd dat je dan ineens de gratis variant verwijderd en mensen niet eens de kans geeft om die te kiezen.

@JeroenE#97158
Ik vind dat mensen die net pas begonnen zijn met Premium gratis te proberen, gewaarschuwd hadden moeten worden dat ze dan niet naar Free konden gaan. Ik vind het niet erg dat Free verdwenen is, maar ik vind wel dat mensen moeten weten waar ze voor kiezen.

@Valerie-Olive-Kiwi#97211 Precies. Ik zeg ook niet dat bunq tot in de eeuwigheid Free had moeten aanbieden. Maar ze hadden op zijn minst mensen de kans moeten geven om te wisselen.

En ook bedrijven die bunq zakelijk gebruiken en medewerkers toegang willen geven tot bankrekeningen de kans geven om alternatieven te onderzoeken in plaats van ze gelijk confronteren met hogere kosten voor nieuwe medewerkers.

@Sander#97168 Hoi Sander, ook ik ben het eens met Jeroen. Het gaat niet om de beslissing om bunq Free te verwijderen, het gaat erom dat het na een dag bij vraag 732 van de faq staat. Het hoort in de announcement! Niet met hoofdletters, niet in de eerste alinea, niet wijd uitgeweid, niet met focus, gewoon onderaan het artikel, desnoods in kleine letters, als mededeling. “Naast deze introductie gaan wij het free lidmaatschap afschaffen en vervangen door bunq Travel”. Dit is iedere keer zo (al ben ik het met je eens dat ze beter hun best doen dan vorige keer). Na alle bunq updates komen in de comments de shocking dingen die mensen ontdekken, van functies die verdwenen zijn waar niemand iets over heeft geroepen. Snap overigens wel dat Ali dat niet op het podium verkondigt haha, maar het hoort in de introductie artikelen! Ze/jullie hebben het nu in de faq, dat is al beter dan een aankondiging door een gebruiker die erachter komt, maar nog niet op de plek waar het hoort.

Overigens wel jammer dat bunq free verdwijnt. Heb zon vaag vermoeden dat het is om nep-accounts tegen te gaan, daarvoor is het wel een goede zet denk ik.

@Eric-Green-Badger#97217 Hm Jeroen had gelijk. Het staat ook niet in de faq. Waar is het medegedeeld dan Sander?

I find it a pity bunq free disappeared. I surely can understand the choice, but as premium member I liked the idea that if I wanted to pause premium for a few months I’d still keep my main IBAN.

What happens now if I cancel bunq premium? Will my IBANs just get removed?

@R#97219 As far as I understood YES.

@Jos-Golden-Unicorn#97220 That’s really bad, as well as poorly communicated... once again. Sorry to say bunq, but the communication really has been horrible the past months. It’s so unclear what all new memberships mean, what the happens if you cancel premium, what the card membership enhances, etc.