Cantiara do they? Or they did not read the Rules at all since that's what I'm seeing in the novels I'm reading.
Level of English comprehension needed for that bit was not high. And while the new clarification is better, it wasn't ambiguous.
The old Rules said "After purchasing Privileges, readers can unlock stockpiled chapters". Which part of "can unlock" is unclear?
junnakurokawa Ist not a VIP Service here in Germany and the EU it falls under Onlineshop because you buy something and the other Person gives you something in return.
So to explain when you buy something the law says:
"The Dealer/Shop must! say the incurred Costs (In $) that can occur after the purchase you have done. So simply put, you buy the Privilege and at this Moment they must tell you before you click on yes (Popup Notice) that you could have a cost of X$ after you purchased the Priviledge.
Yes, it was ambiguous. That sentence in your example was part of rule #4. But before you get to rule #4, you have to read rule #1 first, which then stated:
"Readers can become loyal readers of our authors and receive advance chapters by purchasing Privileges"
"Receive advance chapters" insinuates that they would be getting the chapters as they are, without having to do any other efforts to read them.
Moreover, even before they could get to the Privilege Rules page, these people bought the Privilege from the Privilege page. That's where the amount of SS is shown per tier and they can actually click to buy. And what was shown there before? The header said "Read X advance chapters". Yeah, and do you think the word "READ" is not misleading?
Of course you may be right, in most cases these people probably didn't bother to go to read the Privilege Rules again (hey, it's an extra click, but that's another discussion), but the info on the Privilege page itself was already misleading enough to make people feel like they've been duped.
Again, stop the victim blaming.
Scam!
Cynical_Taste Because I'm not staff, I don't have the time to always be here to explain stuff.
OverseerRose The purchase is for Privilege, and the price is clearly listed.
The second purchase for the chapter is also clearly listed.
It's unfortunate that the old rules weren't clear enough, but it was written there that "readers can unlock stockpiled chapters" in #4.
For that oversight, Webnovel has changed it to make it as obvious as it can be.
@CKtalon, do you know if WN will implement the functionality to hide the Privilege chapter count in readers' library if they are not Privilege members? This has been requested by a lot of people. Besides the argument that it's annoying, if you check the chapter comments of the Privilege novels, it seems that a lot of people misinterpret the Privilege chapter count as mass release and get confused and/or disappointed afterwards when they realize that they can't see the chapters and unlock them.
CKtalon
Pricing and payments
When you buy goods or services in the EU, you have to be clearly informed about the total price, including all taxes and additional charges.
For online purchases, you should explicitly acknowledge – for example by pressing a button – that you are aware that placing your order implies an obligation to pay.
https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/shopping-consumer-rights/index_en.htm#bought-outside-eu
EU consumer rules cover goods and services that have been bought in the EU. However, if you buy from a non-EU online trader who has specifically targeted EU consumers you should also be covered by EU rules, but you may find it difficult to assert your rights with a trader who is based outside the EU.
I Don't see any clear Information how much it can cost after you buy the Privilege.
WEBNOVEL_OFFICIAL But it’s still a massive rip-off with no actual value becuase your basically charging ~50-80SS a chapter to just see it. From what I see is that you are trying to rope idiots into a thing with no value. 
who even comes up with this stuff.
Enlightened_Being wooow woow I think am getting bored with webnoel now
CKtalon I want to know why you are caping so hard for Webnovel. It's apparent that this is just the latest in their history of unethical money-grubbing business practices, but still so deep into this very long thread you keep pulling out rationalization after weak rationalization. Why are you so invested in trying to wipe QI clean after they crap in their readers' mouths? Genuinely curious.
Seems like Privilege is just not implemented as well as it could be (web app developer here).
As I see it, the idea is that you pay extra to read chapters in advance. Issue is that the pricing scheme makes no sense and deters most readers from even considering it.
My recommendation: Have a scale of some sort where if you want to read a chapter that is X chapters ahead, you pay Y SS. The exact formula for this is up to you.
The simplest strategy? Y = X. So if you read a chapter that is 50 chapters ahead you pay 50 SS on top of the cost of the chapter itself. This works out the same. 2500 / 50 = 50 SS / Chapter, but it's more accessible if you only read a few chapters a head. This let's the reader determine how far they are willing to read ahead. The cheapest price is 500 SS / 15 chapters = ~ 33 SS / chap. This system would allow you to get 33 chapters for that price. If you want closer to your system, it becomes more like Y = 2X, where you pay 2x as many chapters you are ahead by.
There are various other formulas that could be used, for example, Y = ceil(X / 10) * 10, so if you are 1-10 chapters ahead, you pay 10 SS, if you are 11-20 chapters ahead, you pay 20 SS and so on.
I personally spend a few 1000 stones a month, but the cost/benefit just isn't there with how privilege is currently setup), so it's not that I can't afford it, it's just that it's not reasonable. I'd like to be able to read ahead, but I'd want more control over exactly what I'd pay.
This kind of sliding scale approach would let me and others determine exactly how far we are willing to read ahead without being grouped into "5/15/25/50" chapter allotments, where the SS/chap makes little sense (40/33/40/50). I'd rather make that determination on a per chapter basis. If I'm 40 chapters ahead, and it get's boring, I might wait a while until the SS price drops until I feel it's worth resuming, but with this system, losing privilege while way ahead makes for a high risk of dropping the novel and thus no SS for WN. Likewise, if I'm only 10 chapters ahead and I get to a good part, I'll be more inclined to read ahead if I know it's only going to cost me a few SS more per chapter (on average) to read say 10 more chapters, rather than dropping a few 100 SS to read only a bit ahead.
Most chapters are around 5-15 SS, so 33-50 SS means paying for about 2-10 chapters worth of SS, just to read a single chapter ahead, let alone the 5-50 chapters you are actually paying for, in advance, and who knows how many of those are actually worth being ahead on.
Are people going to pay it anyway? Sure, but as a fraction of those who buy SS, it seems like it would be rather low indeed. If it was more a ramp up, I imagine the number of people who would buy them is quite high and even 1 SS extra on a chapter is around 10-20% extra SS per chapter. It's really easy to say "Well I've paid X SS extra to be X chapters a head, meh, I'll just pay (X + 1) SS extra to be X + 1 chapters ahead". And you can bet those that are willing to pay 50 SS per chapter to be 50 chapters ahead are probably going to be 50 chapters ahead or perhaps 100 chapters ahead if the stock pile is that big (in which case 100 chapters is 100 SS extra).
As long as the regular releases draw directly from the stockpile, so authors don't simply only add to the stock pile without releasing anything outside of it, it seems like a solid way to go.
It's a bit shady, but I could see an translator releasing say a 1000 chapter series, with everything initially in stock pile (official releases start the next day/week/month, say 3 chaps a day), and if you binged, you could read the entire 1000 chapters before they are officially released. Would cost just under half a million SS (WN gonna need some higher tiers to buy SS in bulk), but it's possible. If even a single user did that, it would bring in more SS than 100s of others.
This means it would be practical for any sized stockpile, as long as there was a minimum release rate when a novel has a stockpile (1 chapter a day seems like a good absolute min, even when the author isn't expanding the stockpile), then the author is encouraged to keep increasing the stockpile size as the higher it is, the more SS they are likely to get. It also provides a good way to gauge current interest in a novel. A novel where there the top say 10% of readers are 30 chapters ahead is perhaps more interesting to readers than one where the top 10% are only 10 chapters ahead.
This is app is getting to much the cost of SS per chapter was already a little much. This Privilage crap is to much every nee chapter is locked behind a double pay Wall. It costs 50$ for 50 chapters im sorry F right off. You can go buy a book at a store for cheaper i get translation takes time but you know it takes mkre time to create a book. Im sorry i refuse to pay any of this. I can't read any lf my novels with out spending money to open the chapter snd then more money for a chapter. Im about done with Webnovel you are to greedy and are going to ruin this community wuxiaworld is 100% better it is so sad to see so much greed i love all the novels not enough to spend 50-80$ CAD per one to only get 50 Chapters thanks but big hard PASS.
LaoTze
Cktalons is a paid employ of Webnovel, so its probably in his contract that he has to always take Webnovels side or else face the risk of getting fired.
honestly only see the privilege thing actually being of use if it was a original author with a stockpile of chapters but double paying SS just for translated and not even up to date material that is just sad
CKtalon Not too fussed about the Privilege system, but i do take issue to people that keep saying that this isn't impacting regular releases, white robed chief and a few other novels didn't get updates for 2 weeks before this system became active, the translators blamed a bug, but don't release the chapters that were supposed to be released, well they do, but they make those chapters privileged, so we've missed 2 weeks of regular releases while they clearly stockpiled for this system.
