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When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”

blog.zulip.com

91–100 of 267 posts

Re: When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”

#91
post #89
post #73

If a company gets rid of my free forever plan with them, there is a 0% chance that they're getting any money or positive word of mouth from me in the future. It's incredibly scummy behavior. If you're not willing to actually offer it forever, just call it a free plan instead of lying about it.

you’ve never made a mistake in your future predictions? youve never committed to something you couldnt deliver? i understand the outrage but remember the people on the other side of that screen are just humans too. many things dont turn out the way the initial intention was (im not excusing this specific instance, im just hoping for less vitriol when i someday make some over promising mistake in future). let he who i…

> you’ve never made a mistake in your future predictions? youve never committed to something you couldnt deliver?

I have. But then I worked my butt off to make it right. If I still failed, then I apologised and owned it. I didn't pretend it never happened.

Re: When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”

#92
post #89
post #73

If a company gets rid of my free forever plan with them, there is a 0% chance that they're getting any money or positive word of mouth from me in the future. It's incredibly scummy behavior. If you're not willing to actually offer it forever, just call it a free plan instead of lying about it.

you’ve never made a mistake in your future predictions? youve never committed to something you couldnt deliver? i understand the outrage but remember the people on the other side of that screen are just humans too. many things dont turn out the way the initial intention was (im not excusing this specific instance, im just hoping for less vitriol when i someday make some over promising mistake in future). let he who i…

Never sail in ship guided by an idiot Captain!, well it may not sink, but if it was to, than your proababilty of drowning increases many fold!

Companies who make such outrages plans/claims to attract more user (and hence cash flow), can't simply be just forgiven, people invest there time and money on such things. A single mistake (or eliberate plans) by such company waste thousands of hours of valid time/money of users who placed their faith in the claims/plans. There is no excuse to lies,which waste time/money of people.

Re: When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”

#93
post #89
post #73

If a company gets rid of my free forever plan with them, there is a 0% chance that they're getting any money or positive word of mouth from me in the future. It's incredibly scummy behavior. If you're not willing to actually offer it forever, just call it a free plan instead of lying about it.

you’ve never made a mistake in your future predictions? youve never committed to something you couldnt deliver? i understand the outrage but remember the people on the other side of that screen are just humans too. many things dont turn out the way the initial intention was (im not excusing this specific instance, im just hoping for less vitriol when i someday make some over promising mistake in future). let he who i…

"Forever" is such a word which you should nit utter lightly, especially in the context of a service commitment.

I see that mistakes are made, and they need to be fixed when they become obvious (usually other people have to fix them than the people who made them). But there's no expectation that making and fixing such a mistake should be free, without impact on reputation and customers' goodwill.

Re: When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”

#95
post #89
post #73

If a company gets rid of my free forever plan with them, there is a 0% chance that they're getting any money or positive word of mouth from me in the future. It's incredibly scummy behavior. If you're not willing to actually offer it forever, just call it a free plan instead of lying about it.

you’ve never made a mistake in your future predictions? youve never committed to something you couldnt deliver? i understand the outrage but remember the people on the other side of that screen are just humans too. many things dont turn out the way the initial intention was (im not excusing this specific instance, im just hoping for less vitriol when i someday make some over promising mistake in future). let he who i…

Mistakes are human, sure.

But companies love to put labels on things like this with seemingly little thought.

Offering something for free with the 'forever' label on it is I believe deliberate - trying to distance themselves from others who have offered a free plan, but either pulled the rug once they got popular, or snuck in conditions or time limits.

If they had withdrawn the free plan from new customers, but grandfathered in existing users they would have kept their promise and earned at least some good-will.

Re: When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”

#96
post #89
post #73

If a company gets rid of my free forever plan with them, there is a 0% chance that they're getting any money or positive word of mouth from me in the future. It's incredibly scummy behavior. If you're not willing to actually offer it forever, just call it a free plan instead of lying about it.

you’ve never made a mistake in your future predictions? youve never committed to something you couldnt deliver? i understand the outrage but remember the people on the other side of that screen are just humans too. many things dont turn out the way the initial intention was (im not excusing this specific instance, im just hoping for less vitriol when i someday make some over promising mistake in future). let he who i…

No.

You would deserve ALL the vitriol. That's the risk you take. I mean, vitriol is just words and you will live. If anything, as a lawyer, I might go looking for "did they create a contract" as well.

But tech companies promising free things and going back on them, or delivering poorly, is probably literally the worst thing about tech these days.

Re: When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”

#97

If I were a legislator, I would introduce a bill to ban footnotes in advertising. Everything that the company feels it needs to print, must be included in the main ad copy. Enough with this coy duplicity.

"terms and conditions apply"

Re: When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”

#98
I feel like there's two sides to this. On one hand, I agree with Zulip: don't make promises you're not sure can keep. On the other, you also shouldn't believe promises if the person making them is obviously not in a position to guarantee.

Example: suppose I offer you free email hosting "forever". Should you believe me? What if I go out of business? Well, in that case, I can at least ensure that your email address gets transferred to a different provider, so I'll still have kept my promise. So maybe this particular promise is believable.

But that only works because email is more or less a standard so there are many providers. Suppose I offer something that no one else does. Can you trust my promise that it will be "free forever"? Clearly, if I go out of business, then no.

Can I at least make a conditional promise that it will be free "as long as I'm in business"? But suppose I'm a month from bankruptcy, and my accountant tells me that getting rid of my free tier would save me. Surely, it's better for my free users to lose service rather than ALL my users losing service. So, unless you're sure I'd never be in that situation, you shouldn't believe me when I say "as long as I'm business this will be free".

Okay, how about a vague promise like "this service will keep its free tier around unless the business is in a desperate situation of some kind"? That's a promise that I could indeed keep, if I decide it's important enough... unless... how sure are you that I'll remain in full control of what is currently "my" business? What if I take my company public? I might then be kicked out by the board. (It happened to Steve Jobs, right?) So either my "free forever" promise means I'm not allowed to go public, or at least I need to do some very careful legal acrobatics to ensure that the board can't go back on my promise, even if they kick me out.

Still, if you find yourself needing to break a promise you made about "forever" a mere month after you made it, you should probably at least apologize instead of just hoping that no one remembers that you ever made such a promise. Chances are, they will indeed remember. If "it's the right thing to do" is not enough motivation, then do it for the brownie points, you'll get more of them this way. ("Who cares about brownie points?" you ask? Well, clearly, if they weren't worried about brownie points then they wouldn't be playing this weird game of "let's pretend we never said the forever".)

Re: When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”

#99
post #82
post #73

If a company gets rid of my free forever plan with them, there is a 0% chance that they're getting any money or positive word of mouth from me in the future. It's incredibly scummy behavior. If you're not willing to actually offer it forever, just call it a free plan instead of lying about it.

doesn't seem like much of a loss to lose that "business": a user who hops from free service to free service, and is so opposed to spending money that they will badmouth any business that wants to actually charge for its service.

If a company is happy to lie to and disregard those customers, why offer a free plan in the first place? It makes no sense. People who are willing to pay will notice this behavior.

Re: When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”

#100
post #83
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not trying to be funny, but if you're on a 'free forever' plan and happy with it there's already a close-to-0% chance they'll get any money off you...

I have had my company purchase company plans for products I use as free or free for personal use. I will never recommend Google Apps for Domains or whatever it is called now after they dicked around.

Google Workspace...the one that they let us beta test for free starting like a decade ago? they rolled out a free opt-in after announcing the move to discontinue the free service. here's a cropped screenshot i just took of my control panel:

https://ibb.co/nPfLRKK

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