I think, they need another nore skilled Product Manager. Offer "Free Forever" is a big mistake. Silently closing it - another big mistake.
Instead of the first they could offer user count limited version. I.e. 10 users max, $10/month. The same as Atlassian did with Jira.
Instead of the second, they could offer 50 or even 70% special discount from paid plan($10/user/month) to move free users to paid plan. Company gets money and users loyalty and no negative.
When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”
171–180 of 267 posts
Re: When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”
#172Does anyone think there could be potential for some sort of escrowed trust fund structure around guaranteed long-term service hosting? As a third party service, like Stripe.
Customers could have an option to pay a bit more for a "lifetime" long-term subscription plan. Part of the fee goes into the trust fund, which has guidelines on low-fee investments and designed to produce an income for more than 30 years, with something like a 3% withdrawal rate annually.
Actual hosting costs are pretty marginal with the right setup and decreasing over the long-run, it's really the security & compatibility updates, and any app-killing bugs that could be tricky to handle cost-wise.
Re: When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
GP post regarding 1 is just a manifestation of the illness in the US of considering companies to be people. You should not have empathy for a company.
A little while back I went looking online to find the origins of “a corporation is a person”. I’m no lawyer… so feel free to correct me if anyone is… but it looked like the origins of a “corporation is a person” came from simple administrative needs. That it would be unrealistic to make someone indivdually sue each shareholder separately instead od bundling them into one suit and treating the corporation as “one pers…
In Belgium administration for example, you usually call a company a “moral person” (as opposed to a “physical person” for humans). This is used to know who is the “person” on the end of various contracts, tax filings, ownerships etc
Re: When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”
#174If 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…
Either offers and contracts are valid or they are gibberish. Anyone who is continuing to honor them as valid loses out in a system where others can promise the impossible and not suffer consequences.
If you offered impossible lifetime deals you should have gone bankrupt before the honest diligent company that did their math and then didn't, not had a decade of eating their cake.
We can't take back all the benefits of fraud, but we can force companies to burn everything to meet obligations so that future ones are less inclined to put on rose colored glasses and start making fraudulent offers.
Re: When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”
#175Re: When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
Forever is such a word that it should never be expected to hold except in some limited scientific and mathematical contexts.
If a company states something is 'forever' or 'unlimited' they should be held to exactly that offer. Companies should not be able to use very appealing language and then just say "but obviously we didn't really mean forever !". Using language with a specific meaning with no intention to actually honor what you're offering is fraud.
if you had read some of the previous thread you might have picked up on the subtle distinction that some of the people being dinged for saying Forever probably meant forever when they said it but then ran up against reality.
True if you say forever you should be held to it, on the other hand if someone says forever to you you should hopefully be clever enough to realize they can't do it because forever is unknowable.
But once again I seem to have run up against the great moral pillars of HN for noting that you should not believe forever when you hear it because well, whatever.
Re: When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
Forever is such a word that it should never be expected to hold except in some limited scientific and mathematical contexts.
Why is it my responsibility as a consumer to know that "forever is a word that should never be expected to hold" , rather than the business's responsibility to know that "forever is a word that should never be [promised if it cannot] be expected to hold" ?
I guess my eyesight must be failing me, or my reading comprehension and memory because I keep looking through what I said and I don't see a mention of responsibility anywhere.
I would say it's not any consumer's responsibility to know that but when it does not hold it may be expected that the cynics who did not expect it to hold point sideways and chuckle because believing "forever" when you hear it is a bit too doe-eyed with wonder, even though you should probably be recompensed in some way.
Re: When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”
#178Google pulled off a similar thing with their photos app. Offered "unlimited" storage in 2016, improved the AI leveraging all our data, discontinued in 2021. Never using cloud again.
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Re: When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”
#179If 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…
They didn't overpromise. They made a promise they could easily keep, but have decided against doing so.
Classic bait and switch. Embarrassing to find this sort of scam being defended here on HN.
Re: When “free forever” means “free for the next 4 months”
#180"forever" or "lifetime" to a running service is a red flag. It makes no sense unless you explicitly know how it fits their business model. Ex they take your data, have ads etc
They made a mistake promising you such a deal, but I dare say you also made a mistake trusting it.