Rapidshare has been pressured from several angles in the past years. Law enforcement agencies that called for the shutdown of the service, or better controlling and filtering of uploaded files, rival file hosting sites that gained lots of ground due to attractive and more powerful disk space and traffic limits, and users who were fed up with all the waiting on the site.
A few days ago, Rapidshare changed the design of the site, and announced several changes to the file hosting service with it. Probably the most notable, and ridiculous change is the new slogan. Rapidshare is calling themselves now the anti-waiting company. Does that mean that free Rapidshare users do not have to wait anymore before their downloads start? Nope, not at all. Rapidshare, in their own words “wants to do something about this and has imagined something special for all its users: in the Anti-Waiting Lounge, users from now on can sweeten their waiting time and test themselves on various online games”. The waiting times remain the same, bt users now have options to play games while waiting. Does that sound like an anti-waiting company to you?
rapidshare
Rapidshare has also made changes to their pricing structure, and those may appeal to many users of the service on first glance. The file hoster introduced RapidPro back in July, a new service that allowed Rapidshare users to pay Rapids, that they could exchange for traffic and disk space. According to the news posting these values have been increased by five. Users should not get to excited yet, as the prices have increased by the same. Previously, Rapidshare users were able to convert 99 Rapids into 10 Gigabytes of storage, and 30 Gigabytes of traffic. The smallest amount of Rapids to buy was 400 Rapids for €4,99.
Now, users get 50 Gigabytes of secured storage and 150 Gigabytes of traffic for 495 Rapids. The price per Rapid appears to have remained the same (0,01€ per Rapid). This means, users get five times the space and bandwidth for five times the money. Does that sound like an improvement at all? No, did not think so, either.
Rapidshare account differences:
- Maximum file size: 500 Megabytes for users with no account and free users, 2 Gigabytes for Rapidpro users. Uploads are only saved for free and Rapidpro users.
- Downloads: Maximum file size is 500 Megabytes for no account and free users, and 2 Gigabytes for Rapidpro users. RapidPro users are the only without waiting time, the others have to wait 15 minutes between downloads. Rapidpro users can download as many files at the same time as they like, resume downloads and get the fastest download speeds.
Social features, called RapidContact, have been added to the site as well, as a final and last feature in the overhaul. This feature basically allows Rapidshare users to contact each other to communicate on the site.
What’s your take on the changes over at Rapidshare? Lots of hot air or good features that will help them turn around the decline over the last year?
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Many users have already have stoped using RS, because of no free slots message
The slogan is definitely misleading.
Rapidshare is already dead. They killed themselves in June. Many people have stopped uploading stuff to it and moved to better sites like hotfile, fileserve, megauploads, etc.
I am most happy with its death.It was a frustrating company which almost always blocked a 2-3 Mb download in 90% range without any download accelerator.I asked all known rapidshare uploaders to switch to Hotfile and Depositfiles and they accepted my advice and I am finding Rapidshare nowhere thankfully and instead new unknown and strange named file hosters.
OHC filesharer communities like ddl-warez. and serienjunkies already moved on to other sites. And the crowd follows always their leaders.
Rapidshare is in a free fall.
Always liked them until they started changing what we have already payed for without consultation. Change the service to whatever you want for people just signing up or renewing, but if I bought something I expect you to deliver exactly what I payed for.
Been a paying member for years but my account expires once again this coming Monday, Oct. 4th and I am NOT going to renew!
Rapidshare sucks now!! :(
anounced is repeated twice………
Rapidshare has so much waiting time! I’d rather support Megaupload!
& now filefactory has taken over the mantle of the most frustrating file hoster !!
reconnections— file failed errors through Jdownloader —-wait time cycles though 9 mins then back to 9 mins ,today I have not had 1 success in 3 hours
The new pricing scheme sucks for those who don’t download a huge amount each month.
Under the old system (99 rapids = 1 month extension), I could have extended my account for close to another year. Under the new pricing scheme (495 rapids = 1 month extension), I will be keeping my account open for only another two months until my rapids run out. Then, after being a member since the early rapidshare.de days (5+ years ago), I will be abandoning rapidshare once and for all.
Been with them since 2006 and now I see that coming to an end as I have found no way to renew, I keep getting errors from their site when I try. I emailed them and they replied back saying “please do not write us further e-mails until our response has arrived to you.” My account expires tomorrow. I guess they really don’t need my money with all their success. They never should have changed anything, half the buttons on their site don’t even work.
I also have a Hotfile account and I love it.
Lots of luck RS.
Rapidshare is dead. Rapidshare changed too many times without concern for its members. The new rapid scheme compared to June/July has really did it for me. I was fine with the 99 rapids = 1 month extension. But most forums and uploaders are moving on and leaving Rapidshare for good. And I don’t blame them.
Almost everyone is leaving Rapidshare now . I will do the same as soon as my premium account disappears . They allowed their competition to beat them by offering more affordable prices and better service
Here’s a short history of how Rapidshare’s service got worse over the years during which I’ve been their premium customer:
1) there were no download or storage limits for premium users at first, meaning that you could download as much as you wanted and store as much as you wanted as long as you were their premium member;
2) last year they introduced daily download limits and purging system that limited file storage duration on their servers;
3) in June-July this year they’ve replaced the system with one hell of a mess that no one but them understood – with multiple prepay options, etc. Eventually they were forced to simplify it, but still their premium members got screwed once again: essentially we were forced to pay for traffic based on download volume and had to pay extra to extend our accounts to make use of the already prepaid (!) traffic we had not used. Also, they’ve started charging for uploads (indirectly, thru the use of “rapids” required to store files), which is sick, imho, considering that this is their primary source of living.
4) now, in September, they’ve outdone themselves: apparently, their new charging scheme allowed for too much customer leniency, hence they decided to boost their revenues by charging five times what they used to. And – guess what? – once again, if you aren’t in the mood for leeching by 100′s of gigabytes per month (which is becoming harder as we speak considering how many people ditched uploads to Rapidshare recently) you WILL be screwed big time, since sooner than later your account will accumulate a sh!tload of traffic that you won’t be able to use unless you extend your account simply to get access to your saved and paid for traffic resource.
As you can see from above, their service has gradually but surely gotten worse over the last years and me and my brother we’ll be yet another couple of loyal customers (4 years of premium membership) on the go and ready to move to competing file hoster services. What’s more, with RS’s blatant ignorance and disregard for their clients they’ve pissed off a lot of people who won’t be coming back, even if things do change for the better. All in all, if customers churn is not their primary concern for the moment, it WILL become in the next quarter or two.
PS: I sure hope that within a couple of years I’ll be able to read their bankruptcy notice in the papers.
After more than a week, I finally got a reply from rapidshare in response to my email which complained about the changes to the pricing scheme.
In a nutshell, they told me that I was stuck with their latest changes. They have created the conditions for their own downfall, turning off hundreds (if not thousands) of long-time (and formerly loyal) customers. I’m so annoyed right now that I’m considering speeding up the demise of rapidshare by making it my mission to report all rapidshare links I find as hosting illegal content so that they soon have nothing to offer for potential customers.
Maybe then they will appreciate the loss of so many of us who remained loyal to them for so long.
I hate the new Rapidshare system. I have been a loyal customer for years but they can go to hell now. Their system is slow and extremely unfriendly. I tried their download manager (they don’t support third party download managers anymore) but it’s only a manager – it’s not a download accelerator! So it’s just as slow as my browser and then the download was suddenly broken because my connection is a little bit unstable and then I found out their download manager does NOT allow you to resume broken downloads – you have to start all over again. I then downloaded the same file in Firefox – Firefox does not mind my unstable connection so the download was not broken and it’s no slower than their download manager.
The downloads are extremely slow though I am using Rapidshare Pro. This is worse than a free service. I will NEVER subscribe to Rapidshare again.
They do allow you to use 3rd party download managers but some older ones won’t work. I used Flashget 1.73 but it wouldn’t resume so I switched to Flashget 1.96 which does resume (after one retry for some reason) but only resumes with one thread. Not a big deal as I rarely have to resume. Free Download Manager works fine too.
I was a constant subscriber to Rapidshare for the past 2-3 years. I had a 90-day premium membership when they switched over to their “RapidPro” and my account expired after 36 days with no explanation and no refund. I will NEVER join Rapidshare again.
DIE rapidshare, DIE…
It was good years ago. Now they have gone too far.
So I say DIE and don’t let the shovel hit on the back of the head on your way down to the grave.
Just realized the new changes too. Wrote them an email that considering the new cost per month, this is now a really bad deal. I have Megaupload too, much better thank you!
I still have 1000 rapids left, I am not going to use it until they back the old system again.
I don’t need to download 150GB a month.
RS sucks
I used Rapidshare but just let my account die and did not renew it. Now I don’t know wich service subscribe. Rapidshare totally commited suicide when they decided to change rules. They thought they were the kings of the world and that they could do whatever they wanted to do. I really would love the see the face of the smartass that decided to change the rules when he saw that he fucked up for life. Rapidshare WILL NEVER BE the same and it’s a shame I really thought it was awesome. But that thing about rapids?? I even send them e-mails asking “Do you really think people have time to think about how this works? To make calculations?”. The guy with the idea is totally retarded and Rapidshare should be an example for all management students. WHAT YOU SHOULD NOT DO WHEN YOU HAVE A COMPANY WITH SUCESS. Stupid guy… he wanted MORE, MORE, MORE.. he lost it all. And I smile, because he deserves what he’s getting, whoever the bastard is.
they will lower their pricing if we all stop using the service. also we can report links like the other user said, that way users will be discouraged to use this service also and rapidshare will have to do something about the inconvenience they have caused us all. lets all do it and things will change. i already stopped paying them because of their changes. Good luck to all.
I started to avoid Rapidshare lately, and when I recently was forced to use them to get some archaic files on their server, I discovered “The Anti-Waiting Company” is now up to 5 minutes and 20 seconds before downloading, and an average of 2-3 HOURS before allowed to download a second file. To my knowledge, this puts them at the top of the heap in waiting times of all the free hosting outfits I know of. Shame on you, Rapidshare.