Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts • Hacker News Board

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#141

Post by phsr » Thu, Aug 16, 2012, 6:30 PM UTC

adrr wrote: post #135

cletus wrote: post #109

It never ceases to amaze me how many people "fall" for this "lifetime" pricing model. In fact I said the exact same thing three months ago [1]. The fact that the service provider is not getting any future revenue from you, even if they've fairly discounted your lifetime value, gives them the incentive to get rid of you. Additionally it gives the wrong incentives to users to "abuse" their "unlimited" service. You saw…

Lots of companies including government do lifetime memberships and they aren't scams. I cat get lifetime fishing license with the state of california instead of paying $50 a year. I can get a lifetime pass to legoland here in california. REI has lifetime membership model, restaurants in my area offer lifetime drinks if you by a glass from them. These aren't charades and why do we always blame the victim?

With REI, I think you need to re-buy the lifetime membership if you do not purchase anything at an REI store for an extended period of time (IIRC, it was a year)

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#142

Post by accountoftheday » Thu, Aug 16, 2012, 6:31 PM UTC

holgate wrote: post #37

patio11 wrote: post #11

For folks who are headscratching here, back in about 2007 (I remember it because I was getting into Rails) Joyent's precursor company TextDrive bootstrapped some hardware purchases by selling a (barely capable of running Rails, fairly rare for the time) shared hosting account. The kicker was that you'd pay about ~18 months upfront and it would be Lifetime. I don't trust my memory for numbers but somewhere between $15…

There were actually a number of "VC" phases with TextDrive, starting with the "VC200" in 2004 that raised $40,000 from 200 pledges of $200 to acquire and set up the hardware-- http://photodude.com/2004/06/01/textdrive-or-how-to-raise-40... That was followed by a number of upgrade offerings ("Mixed Grill", "3 Martini Lunch") in subsequent years, extending into the Joyent merger/acquisition, that required a larger lump…

Their behavior here is embarrassing and labels them as not trustworthy in the future. Pacta sunt servanda. The other side ending up potentially getting the better end of the deal, a nowhere near certain thing here from a 2004-6 perspective where their customers took significant risk taking the deal, is not an equitable reason to terminate the services.

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#143

Post by mikeash » Thu, Aug 16, 2012, 6:33 PM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #125

cletus wrote: post #109

It never ceases to amaze me how many people "fall" for this "lifetime" pricing model. In fact I said the exact same thing three months ago [1]. The fact that the service provider is not getting any future revenue from you, even if they've fairly discounted your lifetime value, gives them the incentive to get rid of you. Additionally it gives the wrong incentives to users to "abuse" their "unlimited" service. You saw…

Reposting a dead reply from otneusnocuh because it took the exact words out of my mouth: > "As a customer, stop falling for this charade." No, theres is no reason not to take them at their word. "lifetime" and "unlimited" need to be protected advertising words. There is no reason whatsoever to tolerate straight up lies in marketing because they are common lies.

Lifetime service can be really useful for a company to sell, too. It's basically a way for them to borrow money at a cost potentially below what other capital markets may provide. If you have customers who will buy and are wiling to take the risk that you'll go out of business, it can be a good way to raise money without becoming indebted to banks or VC.

I imagine Joyent benefitted from this when they were starting out. Now that they're done reaping the benefits, they no longer want to hold up their part of the bargain... but why should we let them get away with that?

Letting companies get away with this is bad not only for the buyers, but also for the companies themselves. If you scare customers away from "lifetime" purchases by making it known that companies can get away with breaking their side of the agreement, you'll make it more difficult for them to use this useful tool.

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#144

Post by willyt » Thu, Aug 16, 2012, 6:34 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #109

It never ceases to amaze me how many people "fall" for this "lifetime" pricing model. In fact I said the exact same thing three months ago [1]. The fact that the service provider is not getting any future revenue from you, even if they've fairly discounted your lifetime value, gives them the incentive to get rid of you. Additionally it gives the wrong incentives to users to "abuse" their "unlimited" service. You saw…

The customers have only 'fallen for it' if they decide not to enforce the contract.

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#145

Post by mikeash » Thu, Aug 16, 2012, 6:36 PM UTC

larrys wrote: post #60

michaelhoffman wrote: post #47

I wonder why Joyent thinks they can get away with this. "Q: How long is it good for? A: As long as we exist." seems to be a pretty good definition of "lifetime." I would think they could only get out of their promise via bankruptcy. Maybe Joyent is trying to substitute for legal bankruptcy with moral bankruptcy.

"I wonder why Joyent thinks they can get away with this" "As long as we exist" Possession is 9/10ths of the law. Nobody is going to file a private lawsuit to enforce this (assuming there is even a leg to stand on to enforce it I haven't read the exact contractual promise..) And the other option would be a class action lawsuit where there would have to be enough class members to interest an attorney. (Not relevant in…

Why wouldn't somebody sue? It sounds like this service cost a minimum of hundreds of dollars, which is enough to be significant, but still small enough to fit within small claims. If I were one of these customers I'd certainly consider it.

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#146

Post by wmf » Thu, Aug 16, 2012, 6:40 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #54

zdw wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The prices were considerably higher than you mention - $500 or $1000 - here's a post about moving between "lifetime" plans from 2007: http://discuss.joyent.com/viewtopic.php?id=13148

Which (if you signed up at the end of 2006 and just got cancelled) comes out to about $7.50 a month. That's more than a EC2 micro instance on a 3 year reserved plan.

You can't project today's EC2 prices back in time; micro didn't even exist in 2006 and prices for all hosting were higher in the past.

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#147

Post by wpietri » Thu, Aug 16, 2012, 6:41 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #139

wpietri wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the comments seem to be filled with people saying that it's not practical to provide "lifetime", and people buying it should have known they didn't mean it anyway. And that fascinates me. There's a clear information asymmetry here, and therefore a clear power differential. But so many people are instantly willing to blame the weaker party for being trusting, rather than blaming the stronger party for abusing th…

It's an interesting question. If I make a promise I know I can't fulfill, and you know I can't fulfill, is it still a promise? Is there a breach of trust when I end up not being able to fulfill it? I'd say that yes, it's still a promise and a breach of trust even if everybody knows I don't really mean it. But I don't think there's a single obvious answer.

If you know you can't fulfill it then I believe it's all on you, in that you're lying.

Some fraction of people will believe you, and even those that don't can't know you can't fulfill it. There are plenty of legitimate life-of-the-company deals. One of them is buying stock. And there are plenty of companies that offer lifetime warranties. Only the person offering the deal has the information to know that they can't honor it.

And in this case, Joyent can honor it; it's not like keeping these servers running would put them out of business. They just don't want to honor it, so anybody who took this deal is so far correct in thinking that Joyent made a promise that they could fulfill.

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#148

Post by wpietri » Thu, Aug 16, 2012, 6:44 PM UTC

adrr wrote: post #135

cletus wrote: post #109

It never ceases to amaze me how many people "fall" for this "lifetime" pricing model. In fact I said the exact same thing three months ago [1]. The fact that the service provider is not getting any future revenue from you, even if they've fairly discounted your lifetime value, gives them the incentive to get rid of you. Additionally it gives the wrong incentives to users to "abuse" their "unlimited" service. You saw…

Lots of companies including government do lifetime memberships and they aren't scams. I cat get lifetime fishing license with the state of california instead of paying $50 a year. I can get a lifetime pass to legoland here in california. REI has lifetime membership model, restaurants in my area offer lifetime drinks if you by a glass from them. These aren't charades and why do we always blame the victim?

And let's forget buying stock. Unless a company goes bankrupt, thereby sinking all the shareholders, then every share sold must be honored.

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#149

Post by ubernostrum » Thu, Aug 16, 2012, 6:45 PM UTC

typicalrunt wrote: post #39

As annoyed as I am with all of it, I'm more interested to know how to move off of their products and services now. My lifetime account is where I have several important email servers, and I don't know how to migrate them. All the email says is to contact Joyent about getting migrated to one of their other product offerings. However, if I am only given 2.5 months to sort all this stuff out, I DO NOT WANT to use Joyent…

When Connector shut down, I switched to Fastmail, which had a nice little "fill in the credentials and press the button" migration process. Been with 'em ever since.

Re: Joyent ending "lifetime" hosting accounts

#150

Post by brey » Thu, Aug 16, 2012, 6:46 PM UTC

raganwald wrote: post #132

The fairest way to offer "lifetime" or "unlimited" plans is to include a simple warranty: "If we ever cancel this plan, we will refund your money in full."

yup. I'd be suspicious of any "unlimited" plan which didn't offer such a guarantee - anything that doesn't put its money where its mouth is is just marketing, a polite euphemism for "lies" in this case.

or time-bound it, so everyone's clear - if I know I'm buying a 10 year plan, that's fine. I know I'm getting value for money, and the service provider knows they have a finite projected cost.