Editing due to the founders response: I am excited to hold on to my purchase with these updates. I've also invested in the Pro tier of Repurpose as I now trust in and believe the founders intentions are good.

Transcript.lol was easily my best purchase on AppSumo this year—I even triple-stacked it. The tool delivered on its promises with generous transcription limits, excellent speaker detection for multi-speaker clips, and fast transcriptions from YouTube. But as of last week, this experience has changed drastically.

Transcript.lol users received a notice that YouTube has begun aggressively blocking their servers. While I understand YouTube’s strictness around automated tools, it’s hard to ignore the simultaneous, aggressive promotion of Repurpose.lol, another product by the same developers. Not only does this feel like a potential cash grab, but Transcript.lol itself even mentions that Repurpose.lol servers are unaffected by the same rate limits—suspicious, to say the least.

The developers have hinted at a 2.0 update coming later this year that may address the YouTube transcription issue, but nothing is guaranteed. With my refund window closing in 5 days, I’m left feeling this could be a “bait and switch” tactic to encourage people to hold on to their purchase until it’s too late to refund.

I’m still hopeful that the developers will take action. I’d like to see:

1) A clear and immediate action plan to address current issues, with transparent communication to users.

2) A one-click solution that allows users to download and upload YouTube videos for transcription using a local solution, perhaps through FFMPEG, while the server issues are sorted.

Without a response by November 11, I’ll have no choice but to refund, though I genuinely want to keep using this product if these issues can be resolved.

Overall, Transcript.lol is powerful for the price, with excellent speaker detection and transcription quality, but the slow upload method and current YouTube blocking concerns are major drawbacks.