From what I've seen, it doesn't look like it.

Hrm, the previous promotions were centered towards giving gifts to others. This one doesn't work so well for that, since it's hard to give somebody a gift that they have to spend money on to use.

When your holiday gifts arrive C.O.D.

Whoups!

Oh nice holiday promotion. Looks like my husband and I won't be renewing this year like we have the past two.

I'm sure your $50 will be sorely missed.

Can I get the money and buy my friends something they could use?

Seriously, though: what happened to the "Pay for a year and get extra userpics for free" stuff. That was way more fun - at least, that way my "friends" didn't have to pay for the "gift".

This. I would imagine that were I to give these as a "gift" to my friends, they wouldn't consider me their friend anymore. =P Yes, they can decline, etc., but the saying "It's the thought that counts" holds true.

what happens if a person with a basic account recieves two invitations?
what happens if someone with a basic account takes the invitation, but cancels the automatic payment plan 'in time' before it goes into the second year?
does it work for journals from any country?

My friend recently got two coupons, and they could not use more than one to help pay for a paid account with extra userpics and since they don't have money and would only want it for the extra userpics, they couldn't purchase an account at all.

Does this only apply to non-Paid users? Or can I send it to someone who has a paid account so they can top up their account?

"Please note that these coupons are not transferable and cannot be used to renew existing paid accounts."

You can only send invitations up to the 15th, but is there a time limit on when they can be redeemed? Like, for example, I have a friend who wants to switch to a journal but she's still on paid time on her current account so she's waiting for it to expire - if I send that journal an invite, will it still be redeemable in February/March when she wants to switch to using the new account?

If not, she'd still come out ahead paying $10-$15 instead of $20-25 and losing a couple months of it. Still, I hope it is, as that would be even better.

...I like the idea

Yep. I know some of my LJ friends will be thrilled about it. Thanks, LJ.

I don't think that my friends would appreciate gifts for which they will have to pay.

Totally agreed.

Can they enrol for the payment programme, get the year for free and then cancel the auto payment thing?

It's kinda stingy to gift my friends something and then see they have to give you their bank details for you to help yourselves to next year.

They don't get a year for free; with the coupon, they can pay $9.95 if they sign up for auto payment (which, yes, could be canceled), or they can pay $15 if not signing up through auto payments. The coupon takes $10 off the price, it doesn't make it free.

So, there's nothing out of it for the people who buy Paid accounts? It's unfair. :/
Why there's no promotion like the year ago (and two years ago), when someone could receive the Paid account and get extra userpics for free? That was great. This one? Not so much. :/

Edited at 2009-12-16 11:34 pm (UTC)

Pity this isn't happening over on Dreamwidth. I wouldn't recommend LJ for anyone any more, not with all the stupid Soviet-era crap the company keeps piling onto its users.

You guys have a serious image problem, you know that? You should take a look at that... or else just accept that LJ is a purely Russian phenomenon now and sell the rest-of-the-world users to some other company. Because anyone who fails this badly doing a simple Christmas give-away just doesn't have what it takes to provide a service.

Oh please. Nothing about this post is "Soviet-era crap". Just because LJ is more popular in Russia than the states and is owned by a Russian company doesn't mean OMG SOVIET RUSSIA is the source of business decisions we don't like. It's a knee-jerk, discriminatory, and short sighted reaction.

LJ is lucky it was popular enough in Russia to be bought by a Russian company. Its previous owner, Six Apart, has cannibalized and killed every single other web property it has bought--SplashBlog, Rojo, Pownce, etc. If LJ hadn't have been popular enough in Russia to make it valuable for a Russian company to buy, then it might have died.

Edited at 2009-12-16 11:42 pm (UTC)

God, this is dumb.

Extra userpics are $10 for 12 months. If you buy the paid accoun with a coupon, plus extra userpics, you end up paying the same amount as with the previous holiday promotions.

However, you can't use the coupon to renew accounts that are still paid but will be expiring within the next few months (a number of my accounts and my friends' accounts fall into that category), and you can't actually buy accounts for friends, they have to pay for it themselves. Yeah, that's totally in the holiday spirit.

And here's the thing - if someone ends up paying the same amount of money, in the end, as they did with the traditional promotion, why the hell would you change it?

Furthermore, why would you change it without giving people advance warning? Almost everyone I know with paid accounts counts on the traditional holiday promotion - that's why so many accounts expire in December. If you weren't going to do it, and you knew you weren't going to do it, it seems misleading and idiotic to keep saying "we will have a holiday promotion in the next few weeks" and not mention that it is not the same thing LJ has been doing for years.

God, this. Better than I could have said it.

...Might work better if you could gift people who currently have paid accounts. Since there are plenty of people who buy paid time in small increments and are excluded from this because they won't run out before January 15th.

Well, this is stupid. I prefer the "give more" as in years past. I could actually buy paid time + extra userpics for friends that already had existing accounts. Or vice-versa.

I hate that I have to have as a paid account holder (FOR YEARS)... I get... squat out of this. Most of the friends that I would buy paid time for already -have- paid accounts that will be expiring soon and could use the extra paid time.

The extra userpics were at least a nice bonus... FOR EVERYONE.