Customers bitch about every little change you'll ever make so sometimes you just have to take it with a grain of salt. Hell, even free services get this when any change is made because people already using the product don't want any change. At all. Humans hate Amy and all change. So if you think enough current users will eventually get on board and new users will surely get more value from a change then it's worth it.
He frames this in terms of grandfathered pricing but really it's about users reacting to change. Higher pricing is the worst kind of change a user can experience but in the end it's almost no different than when Facebook changes privacy settings (or changes your email address without asking). The success or failure will be based on new users valuing the change thus getting them to sign up and current users eventually getting used to it versus the exact opposite of that. Users will bitch about all changes always. Upping the price, unfortunately, is the worst thing you could probably do. But they'll get over it.