(NEW) Nixplay Digital Touch Screen Picture Frame with WiFi - 15.6” Photo Frame (Open Box)

I bought this item because it advertised FREE Dropbox connectivity. When I bought it, that worked fine. Now, they have changed it so that you have to pay a subscription to get Dropbox connectivity, even though it used to be free. I already paid for this when i bought the dang photo frame! Feels like a bait and switch. Update: I reached out to customer service and they gave me a sincere and we'll reasoned response. I understand that they seem to be in a financial dilemma, but I still do not think it is acceptable to retroactively start charging customers additional money for functionality they already purchased. I'll let you read it and form your own conclusions. However, understand that if you buy this company's product, you are accepting the risk that they may reduce the functionality of your device or charge you additional money. Their response: "Dear Evan, Thank you for reaching out. We do understand your frustrations and concerns. As you have gone to the trouble of reaching out and taking the time to write to us, We would like to take the time to respond and explain why we have had to make this decision - it’s not a decision we’ve taken lightly. For over 12 years, we have done our best to provide as much as possible for our customers in storage, data bandwidth and feature services. The fact that we have been providing such levels of service with no ongoing fees to customers for over 12 years is, we think, proof that there was never a plan to 'bait and switch'. Our assumption was that cloud costs would continue to reduce as we scaled. Unfortunately, over recent years the cost of maintaining and improving an HD content-based ecosystem has genuinely become more and more expensive on a per customer basis, not less expensive. Data storage costs are but a small fraction of the costs involved (whereas it used to be the biggest cost). We now need a complex infrastructure and ecosystem to support millions of customers using so many touch points and feature services. This requires a multitude of solution/software providers to perform many complex functions. The cost of engineers required to design, build and maintain such an ecosystem rises significantly every year. Bandwidth costs in moving HD photo and video between mobile apps, frames, websites, TVs (Nix-Cast) and third party content platforms has become very expensive, plus the volumes being moved have grown substantially on a per-user basis. In particular, dynamic content from third party social/photo platforms such as Google Photos has become very expensive as their feeds are constantly being updated and we incur costs each time for the processing required. Nearly every other major company in this space has been forced to make similar changes. Facebook now deletes videos after one month (plus they monetize your data and advertise, two things we do not do). Google and Apple charge for photo/video storage (Google also monetize your data and advertise). Amazon Photos cancelled free 'unlimited photo storage' a few years back. A very important thing to note is that Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple all own their Content Delivery Networks (CDN) as well as their own Data Centers. With their own CDN’s, on a per-unit basis for bandwidth and caching, their costs are a fraction of ours, and CDNs are only available to the megacorps. Even whilst owning their own CDNs and Data Centers, they have still been forced to charge more over recent years. For a very long time, we managed to provide the vast majority of our services for free. We have tried really hard, for longer than most, to maintain this for as long as we could, but the sharp increase in platform costs over the past years has exceeded our ability to provide these services at no cost, forever. The time has come for us to make a hard choice. In order to continue to run the service, we need to start charging our customers a small fee, equivalent to 4 or 5 takeaway coffees per year. If we don't charge, we can no longer run the service for anyone. We're a small, passionate team that has sweated blood and tears for over a decade to build and develop what we believe is the best photo frame ecosystem, with the most features anywhere (including NixCast, Nix Events and more). We did this for our customers, and very importantly for grandparents. We're very proud of what we've accomplished, and we wish to keep delivering for Nixplay families everywhere, including for you and your family. Our mission is to help grandparents, parents and children enjoy and share their moments and memories, and we are positioning ourselves to be able to continue doing that, long into the future. Sincerely, Nixplay Team"