Spotify:

There is a problem with your Spotify subscription
Unfortunately this happened because we were unable to receive payment 
from you

Asking them for more detail, I get this reply (9 December):

Paul@spotify:

This email will be sent through if your Spotify payment didn’t go 
through on the usual renewal date.
This can happen for a few reasons:
- Your payment card may have expired.
- There may not have been sufficient funds when the payment was 
attempted.
- A temporary connection error with your bank when the payment was 
due to be processed.
Don’t worry! You won’t lose your subscription immediately. 
We’ll keep trying to take the payment over the next few days.
If you’d like to change your payment details, just head over here: 
www.spotify.com/account/subscription/

My response:

- Card expired? my VISA card is valid until next september.
- Insufficient funds? the card is far from maxed out (even less than 10% 
of the max)
- Connection error? may be!

Tom@spotify:

The only other thing we can try is to delete all the payment 
information and you can try and reapply it after that?

However if we do that you will only be able to sign up for Premium, 
as we are no longer offering the Unlimited service to customers.

If you'd like to try that we can offer you two free months of Premium 
on us so you can try out all the new features? Or we can just wait 
and see if the payment finally takes after it has sorted everything 
out it is getting mad over haha

Let me know your thoughts!

But even before awaiting my answer, they cancel my subscription.

Me:

Why are you chasing away a paying customer?

1) Payments have in the past always gone through successfully on the 
same VISA card. I did not receive any notification from VISA that 
their policies or anything else have changed, that could cause this 
payment not going through. The current situation on my VISA card is 
that I've spent 192.97 EUR out of 2500 EUR, so way below the maximum. 
So I'm 90% sure that the payment issue is on Spotify's side (and I 
think I'm not the only one).

2) I'm a software developer that lives in linux land, no microsoft, 
no apple devices for me. I'm happy that spotify provides a linux 
client, but unfortunately it is 'not the best' software: the only 
times my desktop freezes up is when spotify goes haywire. I could 
live with it, but was eagerly awaiting better spotify client software 
for linux.

3) You asked me in 1 email if I'd be interested to try Premium or 
wait and see if the payment goes through. And in the next email from 
Spotify I get notified that my 'premium subscription' is cancelled. 
You should have at least waited for my answer!

Bottom line: because of a payment issue on your side, you decided on 
your own to double the price of my subscription, for an inferior 
spotify experience!

I'm sorry, but this is unacceptable.

Please reinstate my original subscription, or it's goodbye spotify, 
hello <competitor>.

Sean@spotify:

I have looked at your account and can see that when we attempted to 
take the payment again the transaction was refused and which then 
automatically stopped the subscription from occurring.

Sadly as we do no longer off Unlimited as a subscription type we will 
be unable to start you backup onto the Unlimited subscription.

If you would like we can place three months of premium onto your 
account for the issue that has occurred. You won't even need to sign 
up to our service for me to place this on your account. If you would 
like this please get back to me.

Please let me know if you have any further questions or issues,
All the best.

Me (11 December):

"The computer says 'no'" is not an acceptable answer from a company 
like spotify. 

If you don't have the authority to revert to the original setting, 
then look for somebody of higher rank. If he/she can't do it, then 
look for your system administrator to do the reset. If he/she can't 
do it, then look for a software developer who can run "update 
plan='Unlimited' where userid='willemify'" on the database.

Be creative.

Support@spotify :

As we have stated in previous emails we are removing Unlimited as a 
subscription type due to the number of users that use this 
subscription type. This means that we cannot get your account back 
onto the Unlimited subscription.

We apologise for this inconvenience but we are happy to provide you 
with the 3 months of premium as previously offered.

Me:

I can imagine that next month you are going to split the premium 
subscription into :
- Super Duper Premium at 25 EUR/month.
- Classic Premium (aka Joe Average Premium) at 10 EUR/month.

And half a year later you'll try and force all the Joe Average's to 
Super Duper.

I refuse to take part in that game.

#byebyespotify