I mean, Beeper is the same company that was selling the main product (a matrix server to combine all your chat services into one using bridges) when it was still completely half-baked and they had a 45-minute onboarding process to get people to set up their services, because it was so complicated. They’ve clearly made it a lot less complicated now, so why did they feel it was necessary to charge money up-front when it was still half-baked and needed someone to guide you through complicated setup processes? It just feels like they’re happy to have their asses hanging out and charge for it without really feeling the need to prove things work as intended. I was never on the service during this early time (or at all), but I remember seeing lots of complaints of failures and service interruptions, and it never made sense to me to be paying for an unfinished product.

So, in my opinion, this is entirely on brand for Beeper.