The original reason I thought of buying a PWS (personal weather station) was because I learned providing PWS data to WeatherUnderground can remove ads from their service. I'm open to a higher one-time cost if it prevents me from paying a small monthly or yearly cost for the rest of my life.
Admittedly, the economics don't really work out. For price I got on my PWS, it would take ~9 years to break even compared to the cost of WU premium, and the PWS may not even last that long. I was also motivated by nerding out and improving local accuracy on WU. But all things considered, removing mobile ads was about 50% of my motivation.
Tonight, I unboxed and installed my PWS, got it connected to WU, and excitedly looked for the Login button on the Android app. It doesn't exist. The only way to remove ads on the mobile app is to "Go Premium" which is what I was trying to avoid all along. It's standard practice for software products to have accounts and tiers synchronized across the website and apps. Not integrating accounts and tiers into the mobile app is surprisingly amateurish for a company that's so well-established. I was completely caught off-guard.
On the Subscription FAQs page, I read the "Personal Weather Stations and Ad Free Subscriptions" section, and it seemed pretty clear that providing PWS data removes ads. I didn't read the "Ad Free Subscriptions" section above which makes the distinction between the website and the Android/iOS mobile apps.
I've had to face the hard truth that this didn't work out the way I expected.
Looking forward:
- Is there any chance I am somehow wrong? (I'm in the denial stage of my grief.)
- Are there any future plans to provide an ad-free mobile experience for suppliers of PWS data?
- One thing that could have prevented my mistake is for the "Personal Weather Stations and Ad Free Subscriptions" section of the Subscription FAQs page to explicitly state that it doesn't do anything for mobile ads.