its the only way i consume news/blogs. there is no way im checking 40+ websites every day for new content and that way i won't miss anything
if a site has no RSS or its RSS feed doesn't work right chances are i just won't use that site
I rewrote it as well, but for an other reason: when the app on my server fetches an item, it will issue a http request to get the content of the actual article and put it as attachment of the email - because on many feeds, the rss item content is just an excerpt, sometimes useless.
Although, it works well for me because I use mutt and it displays the attachment with `lynx -dump`, other mail clients may phone home to fetch images/css/js/whatever when you display the mail.
The incident you are thinking about, would be when they said they were going to close the service entirely, because of the volume of signups they had in the aftermath of Google Reader closing. https://blog.theoldreader.com/post/56798895350/desperate-tim...
In the end they did not do that, but realising any service I sign up for might close just as readily as Google Reader put me off RSS for years. (I am a paid The Old Reader user now.)
I went the same route as you did, and have the same attitude towards sites that do not provide a RSS feed: they drop of my radar.
There are some limitations for the free accounts but to be honest I have never run into them.