Hi there,
My account expired and I do not wish to upgrade to the premium account at the moment. I prefer to use a free accouont temporarily, but apparently something went wrong, because when I click on a blue word to check its meaning in a dictionary, it says:
Oops!
To continue creating unlimited LingQs, you will need to upgrade.
The problem is that I don’t want more lingqs at all, I only want to see a dictionary.
Thanks,
Dave
@langadmirer - As part of our recent update free accounts can no longer see the user hints, track their vocabulary and access the integrated dictionaries once they have reached their LingQs limit. These functions are part of the Premium feature set.
So, my account is useless, because without the possibility of using the most basic tools such as dictionary I can’t do much. There is nothing more to do I suppose?
Oh, I thought the user hints would be still shown but you were not able to create LingQs for them. That makes free accounts much worthless than I thought before.
@langadmirer - You can still access all of the lessons on the site, listen to and download the audio for free and take part in the language community on LingQ. You will be unable to create more LingQs or look words up until you upgrade your account. Of course, when you upgrade your account again you will be able to pick up right where you left off, thus making it easy for learners to take a temporary break and resume their learning when they are ready.
All users of LingQ have access to the LingQ platform and the vast libraries of audio and text content, conveniently collected in one place and available for free download. This is perhaps the largest collection of audio and text language learning material, graded for difficulty, to be found anywhere on the Internet. Free access to LingQ is certainly not worthless, nor is the account useless.
Free users have twenty free LingQs and then can add to that by getting their friends to sign up. 20 LingQs per sign-up up to a total of 500. This is enough to evaluate the site. I might add that since the recent change we have seen a dramatic increase in upgrades. I do not think that a system where certain people pay for the basic services at LingQ and others use them for free is fair or sustainable. It would not enable us to continue to develop and improve LingQ.
The main purpose of the free membership is to give people a chance to see how LingQ works in order to decide if they think the functionality is worth paying for or not. I believe the present system does that quite effectively. Some people feel that new users need longer in order to see the benefits of the LingQ method. No doubt this is true for some people. However we suspect that most people need to be nudged in order to take the plunge. We believe that this nudging is best done earlier rather than later. So far this assumption has proven correct. It is still early and we are watching carefully.
Thanks for your responses. Reading texts and looking for every word in a separate dictionary is not quite what one would be looking for. For me it was fair before, but now it doesn’t make a sense. I can find a lot of texts anywhere else and if I can’t use your dictionary there is no point in using lingq.com. Okay, your website and your decision. It’s just my opinion.
@alex, If people take a temporary leave, do they also need to delete all materials they have imported earlier like before? If yes, I can understand the effort and resources applied to maintain the service, but does it exist any way to backup and download them all as an archive for the future comeback?
On the other hand it’s not fair, someone who never paid you a penny can use the dictionary functionality and I, who was paying, cannot use it because I had too many lingqs. Or maybe it’s just some kind of logical error in planning the new plans 
@langadmirer
Those who pay have access to the full range of functions that come with paid membership. Once you stop paying you no longer have access to all those functions. Presumably while you paid you derived some benefit. Now you feel that the benefit is no longer worth it. That is your decision. People who don’t pay have limited access to the dictionary functionality, as well as other benefits, and then have to make up their minds if our service is worth paying for or not, just as you do.
@kigoik - If a member has more than 5 privately imported lessons in their account, they must get below this limit in order to downgrade. If this user is planning on downgrading just for a month or two, for example, they can contact us directly as we are able to bypass this limit temporarily in special cases.
@steve: I just would like the same limited access to the dictionary as the people who never paid, is that too much to ask? In the future, when I start with Italian, I would want to pay again. In this point of time I think that the benefit is no longer worth it for me, but it doesn’t mean that I stopped using it totally. It would be the case if I couldn’t use the dictionary.
@langadmirer
Before you signed up for a paid account you had the opportunity to use the free account under the conditions that prevailed at the time. You have been treated fairly. All of your LingQs are saved and we look forward to when you start up again.
@steve: No, it’s not fair that I have less rights than a new, free user 
Besides I imported and shared my own lessons and never profited from that.
But okay, it’s your business and you do whatever you want. Good luck.