> There might be a misunderstanding: Anyone who has ever paid for Pocket Casts, even before Automattic acquired it, should not see ads. If you did, that's a bug and we'll fix it.

This is not true for people, like me, who only bought the Android version. We were not tagged with "Champion", but this was stated: "you’ll still have access to the mobile app features you paid for".

This was in the description of the app at the time:

"There are many more powerful, straight forward features help you make Pocket Casts yours and in case you were wondering, here’s what Pocket Casts DOESN’T have: ads, episode limits, pushy trials, feature bloat or plugins.

It. Just. Works."

Now I have ads, and when I try to dismiss them I am greeted with a pushy sales pitch for a subscription.

Life is too short for this, and I've moved on to another app. But perhaps this is insightful as to why some users are frustrated and upset.