Joyent Drops Lifetime Account Holders 443
New submitter samnorsk writes "I've long been a lifetime account holder of an old textdrive (now Joyent) cloud hosting account. I remember purchasing the account back in college for a few hundred bucks when I really didn't have the money to spend. At the time, I thought that the opportunity to have a persistent lifetime shell / web hosting account would be valuable. This would be a resource I could fall back on no matter what my current situation was. Now, I just received an email stating that Joyent intends to shut down my lifetime account. Quoting: 'We appreciate and value you as one of Joyent's lifetime Shared Hosting customers. As this service is one of our earliest offerings, and has now run its course, your lifetime service will end on October 31, 2012.' They do offer a 512MB cloud machine for one year, but presumably if we don't take that, we're done. In any case, our lifetime commitment would still be dropped in one year if we take that offer. How is it fair or legal for a 'lifetime account' to end when it is no longer convenient for the company? For reference, this was the original offer. In it, they state: 'How long is it good for? As long as we exist.'"
Ask for a refund (Score:5, Insightful)
They're voluntarily discontinuing the service, they should be willing to pay the $499 back to those who ask for it.
Hrm... No disclaimers... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I read the archived FAQ and TOS and I didn't see any disclaimers. Technically, a company that lists something like a lifetime guarantee or lifetime warranty can get away with only warrantying or guaranteeing the product or service for its market life. Meaning my frying pan with a lifetime warranty is good for what the company deems the lifetime of the frying pan, modified by federal and local laws on what constitutes an acceptable minimum lifetime period. On the other hand, the ad you linked via the Wayback Machine didn't say lifetime, but rather the life of the company. If they've been bought and changed hands they could be considered a new company. Either way, I'd say there certainly seems to be the possibility that they could be legally liable for breach of contract. Just make sure if you decide to take them to small claims court that there's no activity in your own history with their service that violates their TOS and Acceptable Use provisions, because they can use that against you.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: (Score:5, Insightful)
Charlie Bucket: But it didn't close forever, it's open right now.
Mrs. Bucket: Ah, yes, well sometimes, when grown ups say "forever," they mean, "a very long time."
When businessmen and politicians say "forever" they mean... remember your children's stories.
That settles that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I guess I know to stay away from this company in the future... Total fail.
Why should any company be loyal today? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have learned this also the hard way. I once bought a Peugeot bicycle with a lifetime warranty for the frame, which duly broke a few years after. I first wrote Peugeot, and they pointed me at their French headquarters. I wrote them, even in French, and was referred to the bike dealer, where the circle continued. Long story short: I never got anything for my warranty besides the inflated price for the bike and the lesson what a lifetime warranty is *really* worth these days.
I will never again buy something again from Peugeot, but they sure couldn't care less. The government covers their losses anyway.
Are you sure you even want to keep them? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Recourse (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed, nothing in the TOS talks about cancellation, and given the boilerplate nature of such things, me thinks they can cancel it if they want. Besides, how much money are you going to spend to fight them in court? Me thinks, not much.
And more importantly, how many other people are in your situation? Me thinks not many.
'Not Much' + 'Not Many' = you get to find another solution. And of course rightfully bitch about them publicly
Re:They are a company (Score:3, Insightful)
Wrong. If a company does not provide the goods or services that they sold you, in this case, a lifetime account, that's illegal in the US. There aren't even any shady "subject to change" clauses in the original ToS.
If I, as a company, were to sell you a lifetime of free car repair for $5,000 today, and then tomorrow say I was not going to do it anymore, even though I wasn't shutting down, simply because I felt that the service had 'run its course', then that would be illegal. This is no different.
Start at the beginning. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Recourse (Score:2, Insightful)
Wait'll Steam shuts down. Whether it's in 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, if it's hosted in the cloud, it'll eventually go away. If it's hosted on your own drive, and copied to your backup drive that's in a geographically-remote location, it's yours forever.
Re:Ask for a refund (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have to deal with a lawyer or go to court, you've already lost. Going down that path suggests your time is totally worthless, as is your money.
I don't see why more people don't think of something as simple as responding with a polite request for a refund. Is it really worth their time to deal with bad PR and the deluge of hate emails/calls to their support people from a bunch of annoyed /.ers? Hint: it's really easy to waste many thousands of dollars on dealing with annoyed customers. There's got to be a limited number of people who have the lifetime product, so there's a finite amount that refunds would cost the company to get out of the deal with the least hassle.
Re:Ask for a refund (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Recourse (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd file in small claims court for the original amount paid. If they don't send a representative you win a default judgement and send them a letter including the court document link. If they don't pay you turn them over to a collection agency (trust me NO company wants a collection agency showing up in a credit report).
Re:Recourse (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't say anything of the sort under their Terms of Service at the time, available through the wayback link.
It says"
How long is it good for? As long as we exist.
The original company no longer exists, and only half of the principals there of, are participants in the new owners.
Still, one wonders why he can't move all of that into a virtual machine and put the storage in his cloud. That is after all their current line of business is it not?
Unless a bankruptcy ruling released them from those lifetime commitments there is no way out, when you purchase a company you don't just purchase its assets you get everything including any commitments they made and any liabilities they have.
ask for more than that (Score:5, Insightful)
Ask for the original amount paid, plus money for your time and hassle setting up a new account and moving everything over to it.
new owner may need to honour preexisting contracts (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know how the contract law works in the USA, but I would expect that when one company buys another company any pre-existing contract agreements would still need to be upheld.
Re:Recourse (Score:4, Insightful)
If enough individuals file separate small claims suits, then THEY will be the ones wanting to consolidate into a class action.
Re:Ask for a refund (Score:5, Insightful)
Usually when a company buys another company, they are obligated by law to assume company one's contractual obligations. For example Saturn Car Company may no longer exist but its parent GM must still provide warranty service & 20 years of stock parts under the law. (Ditto with Plymouth which does not exist but Chrysler... and later Daimler-Chrysler... must still continue warranty service & parts.)
BTW I wouldn't make a big deal about the refund. If the company refuses to refund $499, then negotiate a refund of half that, plus a free account on their current service. It's not worth the effort to goto small-claims court over a tiny $249. (Of course if they refuse to refund Any money then I'd file the claim.)
Re:Recourse (Score:2, Insightful)
Sure, but the commitment that they had was, by its express terms, not for the users lifetime, but for the original company's lifetime.
So the question isn't jsut whether the obligation was acquired, but what the scope of the obligation was to start with.
Re:Recourse? probably not (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>The judge ruled in favour of the fitness centre.
If you would like to speak to the judge, you can find him at the fitness center every Friday night, using his free gold pass.
This seems like a scam to me. The reason you pay the outrageously high "life" prices of ~$1000 is because over the longterm (say: 15 years) it's cheaper than the annual rate (~$100). It's a bargain plus your loyalty is being rewarded.
For companies to discontinue the membership means they actually charged MORE per year than the annual rate. If I did that I'd be called a scam artist like Mr. Charles Ponzi, but if corporations do it then it's somehow okay.
Re:ask for more than that (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Recourse (Score:5, Insightful)
Aside from just totally going out of business, Joyent has a commitment to honor. If we don't start holding companies to their word, they will walk all over us worse than they already do.
It may sound anti-business, but it's more "don't write checks your wallet can't cash". AT&T, Verizon and Sprint have all pulled that bullshit, as well as countless other companies and then weaseled out of it in the name of marketing, once they got their customers. Consumers may not be able to hold their feet to the fire, but we can damn well make sure we minimize the number of companies that try to pull marketing scams like that to get customers.
Besides, $500 is $500 and thats no small amount of money in these economic times.
Re:Recourse? probably not (Score:4, Insightful)
Never buy lifetime memberships. They are scams -- where do they get the money to keep business ging several years down the road? They haven't invested the money, I assure you. They have spent it.
The business model is to take your money, party rock hard, then go out of business. This was the fraudulent business model of many fitness clubs when they exploded in popularity in the late 70s thru early 80s.
When I see new MMORPGs with monthly pay-to-play offering "lifetime pass" options, I run for the hills, even as suckers sign up, fancying themselves getting a deal.
That just says to me they realize they have a lemon on the way.
Re:Recourse (Score:4, Insightful)
You haven't looked at any of the documents. You don't know FACT ONE about how this all transpired.
Did Joynet purchase textdrive?
The answer is YES [blogherald.com]
Did the lifetime customers receive service from Joynet after the purchase?
Again the answer is Yes for the last 7 years they have
Now we have established that Joynet purchased Textdrive, and that the customers were acquired by Joynet so please explain to me how it would be possible for joynet to claim that Textdrive sold the Lifetime customers when provided services? Or that Textdrive did not become a part of Joynet even though they were purchased by Joynet and the services remained.
Re:Recourse (Score:4, Insightful)
We know nothing of the terms of the sale until we see the terms of the sale. Bulk sales are like bankruptcies. The laws vary. IANAL, but I've seen bulk assets shed contract liabilities to an empty corporate shell, where a suit against that shell is meaningless.
Duty? We're talking corporations here. That's how liabilities are shed. I don't like the idea either. I'm a 99%er, but I understand the 1% very thoroughly.