their introduction stated that if you slipped, you would have to pay to get back on schedule, and not on your terms either.
you would have to pony up a credit card number on the grounds that they could charge you if you slipped again. Basically if anything happened, $5, $10, $30
Oh no, my father was killed in south Africa, gotta go! $5, $10, $30, $90, $270, $810, $2430, Oh you were busy? Oh sorry.
If the video was wrong. Well OK. That seems like a horrific thing to lie about.
We do have safeguards for that sort of thing. Like there's a deadman's switch for if you disappear completely. Similar to our auto-canceling subscriptions for our premium plans: http://blog.beeminder.com/autocancel
When people derail at higher amounts we always ask them if they feel like they got that much value out of Beeminder up until the point they derailed and pretty much invariably the answer is an emphatic yes.
We totally understand that this kind of crazy lifehackery is not for everyone though. For one thing, not everyone even has the problem that we're solving, known as akrasia, or acting against one's own better judgment. We also agree that there are many better ways to hack one's habits -- if they work. Beeminder is kind of like the nuclear option if other lifehacks (like the Seinfeld calendar) don't work and you really need to just force yourself to toe the line.
