116 pointsby ksec4 hours ago13 comments
  • meerita10 minutes ago
    Grammarly was a great idea in the pre-AI era. Now I bet they're losing a lot with so many AI solutions that are better integrated across every ecosystem.

    Some people will argue that Grammarly still has a better suggestion system, but models have become increasingly good at writing. I think this product and its revenue model will become obsolete pretty soon.

  • pjmlpan hour ago
    For those in Europe, this kind of behaviour usually is taken care by consumer protection agencies, fill in a complaint /report them, in you jurisdiction.
    • edwcrossan hour ago
      Unless you're in country A and ordered from country B (both in Europe), in which case the consumer protection agency from country A may just tell you "well they're not in our country so we can't do much, try contacting the European consumer agency, which after spending 30 minutes finding their form, and checking that you do qualify (which you won't, for some stupid reason like "did you try calling them nicely and sending a letter and waiting for 30 days?"), they will just say "ok cool we sent them an e-mail, we'll tell you how all of this will work out".

      Or maybe I'm just in a bad European country who pulls this kind of demotivating stints every time I have this kind of problem.

      • pjmlp28 minutes ago
        Sure, I don't say it is easy, it is also a matter of perseverance, in most cases.
        • snottynose6 minutes ago
          Sometimes you really hit a dead end. Some orgs just don't respond, or say they don't have the resources to process your complaint, or lie. The codified consumer protection laws are nice, in principle. Multinationals know they can get away with pretty much anything.
    • alexaholican hour ago
      Consumer protection applies to individual consumers, not businesses. OP looks like a business.
      • alibarber21 minutes ago
        Yes - unfortunately this looks to be completely irrelevant to consumer protection.

        "A contractor of my employer asked me to contact another member of my organisation to persuade them to do something commercially advantageous for them" - at no point is anyone here a consumer.

        Business emails are subject to fairly different rules by the looks of it: https://tietosuoja.fi/en/faq-direct-marketing ("Can a person working in a company be sent direct electronic marketing") - it appears there's a fair bit of an exception that doesn't require consent.

        • mjmas2 minutes ago
          Here in Australia unless that particular user that received the emails gave consent to receive marketing emails (and the emails have identification + unsubscribe) it would be violating our Spam act (up to $2m per breach).
    • dataengineer5625 minutes ago
      Good luck actually getting them to do something. Also "Europe" is an entire continent with many different countries and laws, you might want to be more specific.
  • Aeolun2 hours ago
    Displaying a full page warning in an app where grammarly is just an integration is... not a good look.
    • rawlingan hour ago
      Doesn't appear to be what's happening though.

      > We let them know we weren't going to renew and they sent these unsolicited emails and popups in their app to all of the users who had licenses

      Not "our app".

  • ShinyLeftPadan hour ago
    You know it's bad when you make your user switch to Microsoft faster.
  • ras1k4 hours ago
    I never liked grammarly. It feels like spam.
    • Walfan hour ago
      It's a keylogger.
  • lapinovskian hour ago
    They must be desperate
  • thih92 hours ago
    This is extreme short sightedness.

    We have no proof but it feels like someone asked Claude how to reduce churn and picked an option.

    I guess consumers are going to have to “push back” often in the near future.

  • epihelix34 minutes ago
    Just wait until the emails threaten to reveal all the compromising messages that users unwittingly sent to Grammarly's servers ...
  • krautburglaran hour ago
    Their whole operation seems like some sort of five-eyes information proboscis. If AI is putting them out of business, good.
    • idle_zealot19 minutes ago
      They are an AI business, just a more focused one. The creepy information gathering, the way it blandifies output and encourages reliance over building communication and language skills, it's all the same problems frontier companies have writ small. Their lunch is being eaten by bigger fish and they're shamelessly trying to remain relevant. This will not result in any less spying or bad behavior.
  • dmitrygran hour ago
    That is ... bold.
  • sublinear2 hours ago
    I'm more surprised that anyone was still using grammarly in the first place.
  • alexkkoo932 hours ago
    ngl respect the hustle ig. Maybe there's some dude in the company that uses grammarly everyday that leadership could otherwise care less about..

    But why are we giving sys admins grammarly lmao

    • technion2 hours ago
      It's in the sysadmin sub because we are routinely the people told buy and manage Grammarly deployments, and we're the people generally cancelling those services now given everyone is being pushed to use their flavor of AI instead. And those emails from users upset that we're doing what management told us to do (following this Grammarly advice)? They go from end users to sysadmins.
  • londons_explore2 hours ago
    Doesn't look that unhinged to me.

    An in-app notification saying 'your access ends on X date and here is who you should contact if that isn't what you want' is exactly what I'd expect.

    • progval2 hours ago
      They also send an email with a template to send to the IT department
      • alexkkoo932 hours ago
        Lmao sucks that it had to be the IT dept