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Joyent Drops Lifetime Account Holders
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.'"
that they don't kill you.
Smells like a class action suit to me...
They're voluntarily discontinuing the service, they should be willing to pay the $499 back to those who ask for it.
Cause if you don't, you're probably screwed. If nothing else figure out the interest on your original $500, take them to court for the new amount, get it back and basically have gotten all their services free since you signed up because of them voiding their contract.
Well that is some bullshit, pure and simple.
I smell a class action, if enough people rely on this lifetime service, and a loss of that service would demonstrably financially harm them.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
Reading the Ad offer, and actual ToS from the time this will probably be an uphill battle, consult your local lawyer but likely they'll point out the many ways they can wiggle out of this deal.
"Thanks for helping us get off the ground by infusing us with large sums of money up front - now fuck off."
I had a similar problem happen with a web hosting firm that offered lifetime contracts and then got bought out.
I did what some others here have suggested and told them they needed to refund the money (or do some prorated refund) or I was going to get the lawyers of the organization I represented on them. This was a bit of a ruse since I probably couldn't of gotten my boss to go to our lawyer, but I figured something should back me up.
I got them to back off, but that was more private than this situation. There is likely to be a backlash on this one since it's managed to come up here....
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.
a) They shouldn't have offered a lifetime account if they didn't intend to honour it (though they're not legally obliged to), but
b) You shouldn't have paid 'a few hundred bucks' for a service of indeterminant length and value.
Also, doesn't dropbox offer like 2.5gb for free? Why pay for a lifetime service if it's going to be superceded?
Would you have taken a "lifetime" dial-up account from AOL if it was offered?
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
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.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Seriously though, for that amount your best bet is to take them to small claims court.
They are obviously saying that they are coming to kill you on 10/31 (and presumably anybody else whose service needs to be terminated). That is the only way out for them - let the rest of us beware of "lifetime" agreements!
yours, or their business model's?
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Or maybe they're planning on sending some people with bats around to make sure his lifetime commitment comes a close on schedule.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Well, I guess I know to stay away from this company in the future... Total fail.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NL_pRiXov7Q
I think this statement is fairly clear as to the definition of "lifetime". No they could re-incorporate, etc so that the old "they" no longer exists, but otherwise... I'd say that its time for a lawsuit, or at least start by having a lawyer-friend draft a simple letter that threatens a lawsuit...
There are limits to what a company can do, esp when it has agreed to provide a service and already received payment, which is the case here.
http://web.archive.org/web/20060203053316/http://www.textdrive.com/tos
"1. Indemnification. Customer agrees to indemnify and hold harmless Company and the employees and agents of Company (each an “Indemnified Party”) against any losses, claims, damages, liabilities, penalties, actions, proceedings or judgments (collectively, “Losses”) to which an Indemnified Party may become subject and which Losses arise out of, or relate to this Agreement or Customer’s use of the Services and Products, and will reimburse an Indemnified Party for all legal and other expenses, including reasonable attorneys’ fees incurred by such Indemnified Party in connection with investigating, defending or settling any Loss whether or not in connection with pending or threatened litigation in which such Indemnified Party is a party."
You got screwed.
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.
You know it's time for the next revolution when your rulers' names end with roman numerals.
It sounds to me like they're struggling financially and are trying to convert all of you "lifetime" folks back into monthly paying members so they can pay their bills. My guess is that for a measly half a gig you could find a much better deal elsewhere and a lot of very annoyed people are probably going to do exactly that. There is a good chance this company won't exist in a year regardless, and this is just giving you a head start on finding a new cloud hosting company.
I read the internet for the articles.
If there were less regulations on the industry then this company would never be able to do this. Your best bet is to vote for Ron Paul and to hope that in the future we will have a free enough market that companies will honor their contracts without having to screw their customers because of government regulation.
One could make the claim that since Joyent is not the originator of TextDrive, and has only ONE of the original textdrive founders, that the referred to "WE" no longer exists.
Of course there is also that bit where Jason Hoffman, who also co-founded Joyent, says: "Yes. Sorry. I just made bail.".
It was a silly promise to make on Textdrive's part, and a silly promise to believe on the user's part.
I've bought lifetime memberships. I have no delusional expectation of enjoying them for the rest of MY life.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Their terms of service at the time make no reference to having the ability to cancelling your services. ( http://web.archive.org/web/20060203053316/http://www.textdrive.com/tos ) They sold you a lifetime service agreement and they should be bound by it. The only time they should be able to end your service is to shut down, or determine that you're violating their accepted use policy ( http://web.archive.org/web/20060203030014/http://www.textdrive.com/aup )
This of course all relies on their terms and service not updating to invalidate these points. So check your current TOS and AUP.
Your answer is in the terms of service:
the above is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect that of the little voices in my head
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.
Waitress: Sir, this card's expired!
Professor: But it's good for a lifetime!
Waitress: Well, yours expired!
#DeleteChrome
Email them, politely requesting a full refund. They entered into a contract with you to provide service for "as long as they exist." They are attempting to unilaterally modify the terms of the agreement. While companies often try to grant themselves the right to modify a contract at will, courts have found this to be an unreasonable practice. See Douglas v. Talk America - (http://pub.bna.com/eclr/0675424_071807.pdf ) Should the company fail to respond, investigate filing a case in small claims court requesting a full refund plus interest and reasonable expenses. You may run into difficulty if you reside outside the State of California, because you agreed to undertake all legal action in that state when you signed up. That said, you can include the cost of travel in your suit. You'd have to do a bit of research before filing, but I suspect the company would chose to issue a refund instead of dealing with the hassle of a small claims appearance.
The only way to interpreter "As this service is one of our earliest offerings, and has now run its course, your lifetime service will end on October 31, 2012" is that they will come and they will kill you.
Any reasonable person (the legal standard) would have fear of imminent bodily harm. "your lifetime service will end on October 31, 2012" has no other possible interpretation (it is not capitalized) - so go ahead and sue them for all they're worth!
class action lawsuit.
The large print giveth and the small print taketh away. Somewhere in the terms they have a way of getting out of it.
I haven't read the ToS, but if there aren't any disclaimers that allow them to arbitrarily change the terms, small claims court is the place to go. They are essentially not fulfilling the contract, and you can probably get some, if not all, your money back. If enough people do this, it can become a real hassle to the provider.
This is what class action suits are for. Do you think the executives are taking any cuts or are they paying themselves huge bonuses for how smart they are. This is a classic MBA style move. They might save a few bucks and it looked good on a spread sheet; but now I have labeled Joyent as a waste product in my head. Thus if at some future time I am shopping for a replacement for my present hosting I would just strike Joyent off the list. Before this I had never heard of them. Good PR Job Joyent.
From my limited legal knowledge where a case like this lay is if the original offer was an accident then they would have some weak ground to stand on. Otherwise this is a simple case of not honoring a contract. The other key is that you paid money. If the offer had been free it would weaken your position. Kraft once printed a boatload of KD packages with a winning minivan. They got most back but still a pile of people "Won" a minivan. They didn't each get a minivan but after a legal tussle they did get something. If the "Winners" had even the slightest bit of legal ground to stand on then you would be solid.
Their only hope is that the contract says something like, "We reserve the right to screw you if we feel like it." But even then Judges rarely let someone use such a clause to change the overall flavor of a contract as contracts are usually boiled down to you offer something in exchange for something else. If one party does their agreed part then the other party is obliged to do theirs. Wishful thinking or saying, "No more free ride for those guys" doesn't change the reality that existed when the contract was signed. The only probable room for a contract dispute would be as to the definition of lifetime. Your lifetime? The estate's lifetime. The lifetime of your company? And the other possible dispute would be if they declared bankruptcy. How would you fit in as a creditor?
I suspect that the best they could hope for would be they refund you your money prorated for the "Lifetime" used. So say 60 year lifetime. You signed up 5 years ago. Then they would have to refund 55/60ths of what you paid. But you could argue that this is unexpected and that moving costs so you want more. Messy for them.
This is the most blatant case of false advertising since my suit against the movie The Neverending Story.
wow, there's like some weird Phil Hartman resonance going on with the story submission queue today...
If a company promises life-time and spell out what they mean by it, then they should be held accountable on the terms defined. Then again in all reality, there is no such thing as a life-time account, just as in life there are no guarantees.
If you aren't hosting your own service, then be ready to be kicked out when the landlord decides to kick you out, but at the same time they should a) be abiding to the terms of services and b) giving you sufficient time to find an alternative provider. One month is *very* short notice and at the very least they should be giving you six months to make your move.
I used to be with a company call 'Bigfoot', but they too changed business direction and degraded the quality of their services. At that time I moved to GMail and haven't looked back.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
"Unlimited data" means "Whatever caps and limits the corporations wants"
"Lifetime subscription" means "Whenever the corporations cancels it"
"Some restrictions apply" means "Anything the corporations want it to mean"
"Too big to fail" means "Bend over and take it"
Truth in advertising?
Probably win by default. Not only that but he'd actually get his money back this year as opposed to waiting til ~2015 and then have it go to the lawyers.
This is why they were created, find an attorney to give you a reference to someone who does this. When they settle, lawyers get half, you get 45%, and everyone else splits the rest.
Ask for the original amount paid, plus money for your time and hassle setting up a new account and moving everything over to it.
I don't know what to say to the original poster, but I know of a matchmaking site that used to offer a "lifetime" membership. Think about it. How pessimistic are you if you buy a lifetime membership to a matchmaking site?
Proverbs 21:19
According to the forums, you should be receiving a full refund. Otherwise, contact the AG's office. You probably have a slam dunk small claims court victory to recover that money.
Who knew the Mayan were really talking about Joyent all along?
That's a load off my mind anyway.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
RTFS:
"I've long been a lifetime account holder of an old textdrive (now Joyent) cloud hosting account.
The original agreement was with Textdrive. It is now with Joyent. This implies that Textdrive no longer exists.
Your "Lifetime account" is good for the "lifetime of the service'. Always be a bit skeptical of lifetime deals. Even if they weren't voluntarily closing the service, the same result could have happened if the company went out of business.
I would lawyer up and try to warn future customers away from the company as best you could. At least you could probably get a refund (adjusted for inflation, perhaps).
They (textdrive) no longer exist.
I've had these experiences with gyum memberships:
Signed up for guaranteed lifetime rate. Received notice that program was being terminated, and could sign up for limited contrct at different rate. Left for another gym.
Signed up for lifetime guaranteed rate. Gym sold to another company with new signs put up overnight, new company would not honor membership. I have both left for another gym and negotiated a reasonable rate.
Signed up for limited contract at guaranteed rate. Gym closed, re-opened under new ownership, new ownership would not honor membership. Mostly left for another gym.
Signed up for a lifetime guranteed rate, informed my contract was cancelled when the card used for payment expired and gym did not notify me my payments were not being made. Required to pay past due balance with penalties, resign for new higher rate. Ignored new rate, paid past due and refused penalties, left for another gym.
Most recently, signed up for lifetime guaranteed rate, suspended membership, notified that it was cancelled for non use. Required to resign with initiaition fee, higher rate, different terms. Refused, kept original contract and pointed to the paragraph where it was lifetime, no disclaimer for non use. Contract reinstated with dirty looks from the manager for a year until he got an offer he could not refuse.
I doubt you'll get satisfaction, but they have several ways to legally avoid this. I would try to negotiate something like a minimal yearly fee, and when they offer a contract, ask them how this one is any more binding than the last one... And it is highly likely that they are doing this because they are losing money on those lifetime deals. The worst-case resolution is for them to go out of business, and leave you with not even your old data.
Sucks to be a realist.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
This is not legal advice. But if the company advertised lifetime service then reneged, Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Company is still good law, and probably applies.
Your State's Attorney General has the power to prosecute the company, get in contact with them, and the BBB. Essentially they are stealing $500 from you, the AG office may advise you to file a claim in Small Claims court. Don't worry about the arbitrator clause because they voided the contract the second they broke the terms by discontinuing the service so you are no longer bound to the contract.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
They do over here too, except this particular offer explicitly defined lifetime as "as long as we exist". Therefore that becomes part of the contract terms.
... is it really a good idea?
Just sayin..
Create like a god, command like a king, work like a slave. -Guy Kawasaki
They are now offering a refund or 5 years of hosting. I'll probably take it and move on.
I remember vividly the day I read the offer and noted the "as long as we exist" line. I thought... "I doubt that will be very long offering a deal like this!" and took a pass. It's somewhat smugly gratifying to see my skepticism pay off... sort of.
It's not uncommon for this to happen and apparently, it's legal.
A fitness centre near here sold "lifetime memberships" and after 5 years, cancelled them. They duly got taken to court and the judge ruled in favour of the fitness centre. You might possibly be able to argue that if the supplier had known at the time of selling these "lifetime" products that they would withdraw them after a short time, there was a fraud, or mis-seling, or false advertising - but it would be difficult to prove and probably not the case, anyway.
This is just another phrase that changes its meaning where money and profit are involved. Just like "unlimited" (broadband), "free speech" and "our customers are important to us".
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
depends on the state
"Joyent"
I mean really. It makes my mind wretch. It's like some kind of INGSOC Newspeak name, for a happy happy joy joy Enterprise Computing corporation. Very "Doublethink". You know, like "Minipax", " Miniplenty", "Minitrue", "Miniluv"... Looks like Joyent's private Thinkpol threw your Time Live contract down a Memory Hole.
For example, in Texas they are definitely allowed, though not required.
I am sure I will get a lot of flack just because how my subject line reads, but, looking at the track record of oline services, it is never a good idea to buy into any kind of cloud/web service, by paying your hard earned cash. I have been bitten by the now-defunct sunrocket.com VoIP service, which was supposed to cost me $200 for 2 years and after my 7th month they went belly up with no recourse for me to recoup my money. So I paid $200 for 7 months of VoIP service at the time. And there were much cheaper alternatives available when I got into this situation. The original poster is in a better position than I was, because he has an entity to sue and get some of their money back. How much is a question to be answered by small claims courts of California, but still, it is better than nothing. And this is exactly the reason why I refuse to pay for any service which is running on the goodwill of a person or few people, residing on the cloud. It is very easy for these outfits to disband themselves and ride into sunset with your money. $10 per year for a simple service may not be much but in principle, if I am making a contract to earn that money, I want to see the same from any service provider, to whom I will hand out any tangible object to acquire their service. And last but not the least, some half-baked, hare-brained ideas of 20-something year olds without much business understanding (which this particular case definitely sounded like one) is never a good idea to buy into, at any capacity, paid or not. I will be happy to give some of my screen real estate to ads, if the service is good enough to warrant some use from me. At least, when they disappear, I don't have to deal with financial losses. And to the original poster : What were you thinking when you aere shelling ot half a grand from your already non-existent funds, to sign up for such an ephemeral service ? Really, I don't see the value in the premise. I mean 2 months after they take your $500, they could have disappeared and you could have nothing to show for that loss. And I love the TechCrunch'es take "It's not about the money". To the people who did not lose money on a deal, it is never about the money. But for people like me, regardless how much money I make, I am pissed off if someone walks away with my $500 or even much less. And yes it *IS* about the money. Things like this, make my blood boil. Thanks for reading my rant, if you lasted this long.
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
Because many folks google, bbb, etc ... before doing business with businesses. When they google joylent they'll see what their word is worth.
If they sold you a service, then they are obligated to provide it.
I wonder if you could sue for specific performance,
or if the terms force you to arbitrate instead.
If the terms in their agreement are clear, and after a good faith effort, you can't get them to explain why they are no longer obligated,
then you might have a rare case where the company's arbitrator is on your side.
If so, then you might end up with the service you paid for as long as the company, or whoever buys it is still around.
Perhaps you would only have to convince them that you have a good case, are persistent, and have a viable way to force them to do what you want.
You would probably have to gather up all the agreements and e-mails and buy a hour of a lawyers time to figure out what you can do.
If this is worth it depends on what you think the lifetime service is worth to you.
They are betting that you either won't follow through, or will just decide it's not worth the trouble.
"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. *SNIP* For reference, this was the original offer. In it, they state: 'How long is it good for? As long as we exist.'"
If that's indeed what the contract stated, then walk into small claims court and ask that your money be refunded because they violated the terms of their own contract. No, you don't need a lawyer. Just a copy of the contract and what they said. Learn how to use the wayback machine to show historical statements that it's "for as long as we exist." It shouldn't take longer than an hour to gather this info up. Then it's to small claims, where you represent yourself, and they're not allowed to send a lawyer if they send anyone at all.
The only other question to ask is "how much is my time worth?" - to follow through or to just say "fuckit" and consider it a lesson in consumer science.
Someone mentioned class action. You'll get nothing in a class action. At best you'll get a coupon for further services that you don't want since you are now a former customer.
--
BMO
I heard a comment recently where a BBC reporter was talking about a particular American industry and he used the phrase "the US privatizes profits but socializes losses." I've been thinking about that.
Had this lifetime service disappeared because they went out of business, we would have all said, oh well. It's sad it didn't work out and would lament the loss and move on. But, they didn't. They decided it wasn't "profitable." Well, it isn't profitable for the consumer to invest and lose, but we accepted those risks. So, like the BBC mentioned, the losses are everyone else's problem and the business wins (while the consumer loses).
I completely disagree with an earlier comment that people got their money's worth math BS of multiplying the monthly rate to date. These users took a risk and fronted the company payments years ahead of the monthly service cost with no guarantee it would be in business that long. Now they tell them thanks for funding our business and you get nothing. This is a broken social contract and that makes them unethical wankers. They certainly couldn't do this with company stock.
I make it a point to not do business with wankers. I put them on the list.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It looks like at most you can sue in small claims court for $250 (you agreed to arbitration for disputes beyond that amount). They will probably be a no-show granting you the judgement. They may or may not pay up on it. If your time is worth anything, you probably won't come out ahead.
>>>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.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
This is the full ToS from TextDrive from when this offer was available:
TextDrive Terms of Service
The following terms and conditions (these “Terms”) govern the provision by TEXTDRIVE, INC. (“Company”) of the services and/or products (referred collectively herein as “Services and Products”) described on the Server Order Form, the Service Level Agreement and Service Exhibit attached hereto (collectively the “Service Descriptions”) and defined in any of the Company’s product support listing, to the customer (“Customer”) identified on the Service Descriptions. The Service Descriptions, these Terms and the attachments and any addenda hereto, executed with respect to the Services and Products, are referred to herein, collectively, as this “Agreement.”
Our Hosting Services
Maximum Hard Disk Space. Customer will be provided with the amount of disk space stated in either their dedicated quote or corresponding plan from http://textdrive.com/plans/. Disk space and usage are monitored by TextDrive, Inc., when possible quotas are soft and responsible overages should not impair Customer’s ability to access said disk space. Customers are responsible for purchasing additional disk space beyond that detailed in their “Plan” or to remove files in order to bring their usage with their Plans’s limit.
Jurisdiction and Jurisdictional Disputes. TextDrive Inc is a California corporation. The parties recognize that TextDrive, Inc is under the legal jurisdiction of the State of California, and US federal law. The parties expressly recognize that, where TextDrive, Inc. is acting solely as Customer’s Host, TextDrive, Inc. is not engaged in, and is not actively soliciting, interstate or international commerce for said Customer. Where TextDrive, Inc. is a named party to any type of dispute or litigation involving any acts by Customer that affect out-of-state persons or entities, Customer agrees that it shall indemnify, hold TextDrive Inc. harmless, defend TextDrive, Inc. and challenge the jurisdiction of out of state authorities over TextDrive, Inc.
Storage, Backups and Internet Link. TextDrive Inc. shall store Customer’s Web Sites and Email messages on TextDrive Inc’s servers. The parties expressly recognize that Internet servers and links are susceptible to crashes and down time. TextDrive, Inc. warrants that it shall maintain a consistent link with the Internet, but TextDrive, Inc. cannot and does not warrant that it shall maintain a continuous and uninterrupted link. However, TextDrive, Inc does pass through the following Service Level Agreement from it’s Managed Hosting Provider (NextLevel Internet, Inc. of San Diego, California) and that is 100% Power Uptime and 100% Network Uptime. TextDrive Inc. does monitor all services on our servers at minimum of 5-minute intervals.
Bandwidth. TextDrive, Inc agrees that it shall maintain a 100Mbps connection to each server, however, TextDrive, Inc. does not warrant any response rate or download time beyond it’s control, as this is depending on Customer’s and End Users ISP connections.
Maintenance. TextDrive Inc. may, at its own discretion, temporarily suspend all service for the purpose of repair, maintenance or improvement of any of its systems. However, TextDrive, Inc. shall provide prior notice where it is reasonably practicable under the circumstances, and shall restore service as soon as is reasonably practicable. Customer shall not be entitled to any setoff, discount, refund or other credit, in case of any service outage which is beyond TextDrive Inc’s control or which is reasonable in duration.
Security. The parties expressly recognize that it is impossible to maintain flawless security, but TextDrive, Inc. shall take reasonable steps to prevent security breaches in server interactions with Customer and security breaches in TextDrive Inc’s server interaction with resource
Except Steam have already made it publicly known that they have a procedure in place to ensure you don't lose access to games in the event that they have to close doors.
It's not uncommon for companies to buy less than a whole company to avoid lines of business they are not interested in.
No sir I dont like it.
Take them to small claims court, get your few hundred bucks back and move on.
Famatech did the same crap with radmin. They forced all their old customers (who had bought 1.x which promised lifetime upgrades) to withdraw their right to their lifetime upgrades in order to get one final "free" upgrade to 2.x.
Of course nothing happened, we like to bitch a lot but we hardly ever take action.
I'd still try to get money back. Joyent continued to support the service for some time with no comment - the implication being that they would continue to do so.
Personally, I'd try to figure out a reasonable value for the service you received and just aim for the remainder...
Good point... and even better: your signature.
I was involved in a similar situation where I had free rentals for life with a purchase of a VCR. They had a pitiful movie selection but it was still a good deal. Eventually, they decided to drop the rental portion of the business and effectively said too bad. A quick lawsuit later I had my full purchase price back in my hands. Not a lawyer but it was about 2 hour total to file in small claims and prove my membership and lifetime certificate.
It's not "free" to the person who paid.
Now the company, always hungry for that quarterly number sees it as "free" because they aren't getting anything now.
That is the cost of undervaluing service to buy market share and those costs need to be carefully considered, or things like this happen.
Blogging because I can...
I wonder if this part of the TOS allows them to pull this service without liable
"Limitation on Company Liability. Company shall not be deemed to be in default of any provision of this Agreement or be liable for any failure of performance of the Services and Products to Customer resulting, directly or indirectly, from any (i) weather conditions, natural disasters or other acts of God, (ii) action of any governmental or military authority, (iii) failure caused by telecommunication or other Internet provider, or (iv) other force or occurrence beyond its control. The exclusive remedy against Company for any damages whatsoever to Customer arising out of or related to this Agreement shall be the refund of the fees paid by Customer to Company with respect to the then current term of this Agreement. COMPANY SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR (i) ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS OR LOSS OF REVENUE RESULTING FROM THE USE OF THE COMPANY’S SERVICES AND PRODUCTS BY CUSTOMER OR ANY THIRD PARTIES, OR (ii) ANY LOSS OF DATA RESULTING FROM DELAYS, NONDELIVERIES, MISDELIVERIES OR SERVICE INTERRUPTIONS COMPANY PROVIDES THE SERVICES AND PRODUCTS AS IS, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED COMPANY DISCLAIMS ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE CUSTOMER SHALL BE SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE SELECTION, USE AND SUITABILITY OF THE SERVICES AND PRODUCTS AND COMPANY SHALL HAVE NO LIABILITY THEREFORE."
It has been 100% clear that the only promises that hold are those in which both parties have an permanent interest, i.e., you need a service and they want your money... not once, but continuously, like in every month. Ceasing their incentive to offer the service any company will find a way to get out of the deal no matter what has been promised. Simple enough? Sure you can sue, and probably will get your $$. Most people won't bother. Damage to their reputation?? Who the heck remembers what joyent is never mind who will remember in 2 months? Got it yet?
Bankruptcy lets a company renege on its obligations. If the company goes bankrupt, the bankruptcy court gets to decide whether the company has to make good on the "promise" that you can keep accessing your games. They may very well decide that the company should pay all its money to creditors and not use any money to pay for programmers, servers, or customer service people to give you access to your games. They might decide that the company should do it anyway to avoid losing intangible goodwill value, but they by no means have to.
Sure you can. It's done all the time.
The only time where it is (mostly) NOT the case is buying land because there are liens against it and also any environmental liabilities are also attached to the land.
Joylent (green) is no long made of people? ...sorry, couldn't resist
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
A good example of "Lifetime" agreements can be found with airlines. Delta Airlines has acquired several competitors over the years, almost all of them had a small subset of lifetime Lounge/Club memberships.
For Northwest airlines, which was a merger, the lifetime memberships were honored, and continue to be honored.
For TWA, Delta acquired specific TWA assets in bankruptcy court. Because Delta was one of many buyers of assets they did not assume the liability of the lifetime agreements. TWA folks were SOL.
So, in general, unless they have done something to distance themselves from the liability of the Lifetime memberships I just don't see them getting out of the obligation.
Jason reminds me of Derek Smart.
They should at least change their name to "Joyend".
You do still have your copy of the contract, right? What does it actually say?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
This is not surprising. I am one of the original VC200 and was privy to a great deal of information. Joyent has been trying to get out of that lifetime commitment ever since they purchased TextDrive (which should come as no surprise to those few of us left in their shared-hosting ghetto.)
I do think it's funny that they're finally making good on that t-shirt, though.
What if their only other choice is not existing anymore?
Golly make a backup.
Ask folk at what was Danger.
Anytime something changes hands stuff falls on the ground.
The problem with the cloud is a backup takes time and bandwidth in addition to capacity.
When something breaks or changes all the users have the same problem slowing things a lot.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
I don't see the issue. Joylent should just put 20,000 lifetime shell users on a single 256MB virtual machine with extremely limited storage. Over time, they should slowly reduce the amount of CPU and storage available per use until only inactive accounts remain. Put in a clause about inactive accounts being removed - bam, problem solved.
I say this as a Lifetime TiVo S2 owner. The tivo device worked the last time I booted it a few months ago, but my cable provider has completely screwed me making it worthless due to the migration to digital cable. The S2 doesn't do ATSC or digital cable. Sure, I could hook it up to a low-def converter and use an IR blaster to change channels, but I'm more likely to get a network cableCard tuner. I already have a HDHR network dual tuner working with linux and 7MC.
This weekend, I'm cancelling all CATV and switching to the 61 OTA/ATSC TV channels locally available here. Even though 30 of those are ultra religious or radio stations, the remaining stations do have movies and education and networks. I had to build a db4/m4 antenna to get from 19 stations with poor reception to 61 and had to put the antenna in the attic to get the last 30 stations. It is amazing what 8 ft of height does for HDTV reception.
I'm also a "lifetime" DynDNS customer. I made a donation about 10-15 yrs ago and have been using their service all this time. I've purchased a few other services from time to time from Dyn, but their other offerings are for experts, not noobs. You can buy email port forward services for inbound and/or outbound - they are separate services. It would have been nice if they sold a bundle last year when I needed it. When they stop the subdomain DNS service, all my friends who I've setup will get a subdomain from my DNS domain. That is easy enough to do.
There are lots of companies who either had free or really cheap initial offerings. I've considered that for my company too. The key is to get enough users who can be converted into paying customers that actually lead to a profit. Customers that cause losses aren't good. Ask Sunrocket and Oooma about this. Vonage is still in business because they priced their offering right - they made a profit and still make profits. Hiugh quality wholesale VoIP service can be had for $5/month - again, this is for experts, not average people. I pay by the minute for every outbound call - it is always less than $0.50/month. We don't watch the time at all. Even if the phone were used 20 hrs a day, we'd come out cheaper every month than Vonage charges. The extra costs for Vonage - like roaming SIP access is just knowing how to setup a SIP client on your laptop or smartphone or other device. No extra costs. Each inbound phone line is $2 extra - $2, not $2 per month. Vonage customers are paying for the handholding, not the technology. BTW, Vonage has a $10/month plan these days.
Joylent just needs to encourage freeloaders to switch away. Definitely the people should ask for a refund if that was in the terms.
How many people would be prepared to move their textdrive account to another provider if they would continue the same service?
http://web.archive.org/web/20060203030930/http://www.textdrive.com/mixedgrill
LegendMUD
Many companies take your money to finance themselves today and hope another customer comes in tomorrow to give them the money to supply you with what you've 'purchased'. Ever since I opened a regulated travel business (Ontario, Canada) I've thought that this should be made illegal for all businesses.
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.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Your argument has been refuted many times over in the comments by now. RTFC
You bought into the "Cloud". Honestly, what did you expect?
Why would anyone believe a corporation will be around for their entire lifetime?
This is like those Ginsu knives they sold with the "50 year warranty". The company was sold and sold again and the name sold a third time. Does anyone believe they're going to honor those warranties?
There is zero reason to believe any warranty, guarantee, etc from any corporation. There are a thousand ways they can screw you over.
Now, you might get lucky with a 1 year replacement warranty, and if so, I'm glad, but nobody should pretend it's anything like a gamble. We already know from economics 101 that a corporations single responsibility is to increase value for shareholders. That's an admission that they'll only look out for you as long as it doesn't cost them anything.
I see that the advertisements for Progressive Auto Insurance say that they'll look out for their customers. There's a case that's being discussed all over the Internet where a lady who bought Progressive car insurance got killed by another driver and Progressive represented the killer in court to try to get out of having to pay out on the insurance policy.
And you're upset because some dot.bomb company isn't going to honor their "lifetime account". You should feel lucky it lasted this long.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The ad was for as long as "they" exist. "They" don't exist anymore. Obviously the new company didn't buy your contracts so they're done holding up their end of the bargain.
6 years of service for $500 is pretty reasonable. About $6.95 a month which is comparable to GoDaddy.
The cost and hassle of trying to sue them is not worth it and really just silly.
Just because you blew money you didn't really have doesn't make the contract any different than it is. You made a bet that they'd exist for Y years and they lasted 6. Not surprising. It costs money to run a business and it was approaching "not worth it" on their lifetime product.
Work Safe Porn
The people with Tivo lifetime memberships brag about their financial prowess every chance they get.
Learn to love Alaska
Yeah, and that's as legally valid as the commitment Joyent's users had about "lifetime" accounts. Even without bankruptchy, which, as another poster pointed out, means it's not Steam's commitment to make, it's the debtor-in-posession's commitment. You think servers just stay up forever of their own accord?
They get the money from the people who are paying monthly/yearly, who either haven't done the calculation to figure out that the lifetime makes more sense, or simply choose not to get the lifetime membership. (Maybe it's to only one specific one, and they may move, or something.)
Heck, even if the company does go out of business, the "lifetime" membership could be worth it to the user, still being amortized over the amount of time they were able to use it.
I always get lifetime subscriptions on TiVos, even though it's for the lifetime of the device.. (and I do have one that died, though I now have another for parts to hopefully revive it.. it's not a hard drive issue, the usual easily-fixed issue).
Implications are not legally binding.
Learn to love Alaska
Unless only the assets of a company are sold in a Chapter 7/11 proceeding, the purchasing company purchases all liabilities of the company bought.
This would be a clear breach of agreement by the new owners.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Come on! CORPorations are more important than people, life and liberty. Anything else is not profitable! You must work, for electronic and quantum money.
If the OP sues he will lose. Perpetuities are not allowed by virtually all common law jurisdictions. Many jurisdictions do not allow lifetime contracts under Consumer Protection legislation. And yup I'm a lawyer.
Well, in case of going out of business, or shutting down an MMO, the "as long as we exist" clause would kick in. This is a case of the CEO admitting "we would have to upgrade the hardware providing the service, and we don't want to do that". Some lawyers will make a lot of money of it, and the victims will get a $10 off coupon.
I'm aging rapidly, I bought a new game and had no idea if my machine was good for it.
I bought a lifetime TiVo DVR service about 12 years ago and DirecTV STILL honors it on their DirecTV-branded DVRs. If you can see that the lifetime is cheaper than about 2 years worth of service, I'd say it's worth the risk. As it goes, I paid $250 to save $10/month for 12 years.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
True, but they can't buy existing customers without also accepting the liability for their contracts. I.e. this guy still has a claim, joyent bought his contract, no matter what else they bought they accepted that they'd uphold it. They decided to pull the plug, so he should decide to be refunded.
It also depends on the fine points of the contract. If a clause limiting the terms of the "lifetime membership" was in that contract, the case that five years is sufficient might have been even a correct ruling, assuming that reading such a contract was implied and other kinds of fraud such as employees promising things that weren't in the written contract also did not occur.
It also seems very unlikely that this particular judge set any sort of common law precedence that would apply to the Joyent situation, unless you can show it happened in California and was upheld by a court of appeals or the California state Supreme Court (which in the original contract was the jurisdiction for contract disputes for this particular contract for cloud services).
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.
Can someone please tell that to John Corzine? And Barack Obama?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
If the site costs $30/month, and a "lifetime" membership is $100.
You might expect to take at least a year to find somebody, so in that respect $100 isn't all that pessimistic.
if you're in the US. A few years ago when Paypal stole $1200 from us our case was thrown out of small claims court, essentially because the judge didn't want to hassle with it. He argued that the small print in the Paypal user agreement means they can just take your money for no reason and you have no recourse. Two state Attorney's general helped us though. All it took was one inquiry from Ohio and Paypal gave us our money back, no explanation. Washington later followed up with us just to make sure everything was squared away. I don't think we had even contacted them, they had found out about our case somehow and were doing their own investigation.
I'm not sure if it will help you, but in our case the system worked the way its supposed to.
You forgot, "our employees are our most valuable resource".
Lifetime could mean many things.
It could be lifetime of the service,
Lifetime of the company,
Lifetime of the consumer,
Lifetime of the developer,
Lifetime of their beta fish,
Lifetime of the server,
etc...
RTFLink in the summary:
The Mixed Grill – A Special Offer
TextDrive, Strongspace and Joyent
One-time payment of $499
We're pleased to announce a special offer that combines three great products in our family — TextDrive, Strongspace and Joyent — available for a one-time payment of just $499.
What do you get?
TextDrive's spectacularly feature-rich web, mail and data hosting; oceans of backup room at Strongspace; early access to the future of web-based organization, communication and productivity through the Joyent suite of interconnected applications. Perfect for a smart small business or smart individuals of any size.
Joyent is a party to the original agreement. Joyent still exists. This implies that Joyent at the very least is on the hook for the agreement.
The magazine Consumer Reports used to offer lifetime subscriptions in exchange for a very large donation. I think it was something like $1000 in the late 1990s or early 2000s when they stopped offering it. Even at 3-4%, the interest on $1000 would more than cover a years' subscription.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
This is my response, I just sent this back to the CEO.
---- start ----
I am understandably upset by this particular turn of events, since the terms that I signed up for stated that this service would be available for "as long as we exist" http://web.archive.org/web/20060203030930/http://www.textdrive.com/mixedgrill. That's pretty cut and dried as far as I'm concerned.
I'm not usually someone to make waves, but is my single little shared server with 2-3 domains pointed to it (that receive a few hundred hits a month) really impacting your bottom line enough to justify breaching the deal that we agreed to way back in the beginning?? If anything it costs you significantly less to maintain that service for my one account now than it did in 2006.
The goodwill that offers like the Mixed Grill and your excellent service and customer support have earned you have been reciprocated by me (and other Mixed Grill customers) over the years in the glowing reviews that we have given you, increasing your customer base. If the other Mixed Grill users have been anything like me, they have recommended you to friends, coworkers, and business associates. They have probably enjoyed watching your company become the leading company to use Solaris and OpenSolaris technologies and they have probably been in awe of your advances with ZFS (as Strongspace), zones (with Shared Accelerators and now SmartOS), and they have been your biggest fans. I will bet that you have made a lot more money off of the Mixed Grill users than we have cost you. If the experience of Oracle with OpenSolaris has taught you anything, keeping the goodwill of your long-term fans and supporters is the most important resource that you have. Oracle learned the hard way that alienating your die-hard fans for short-term profit will probably hurt you in the long run.
I urge you to rethink this decision, and approach the original Mixed Grill customers as fans and supporters, and let us keep our little Shared Accelerators, or just migrate us to SmartOS instances without charge and let us continue to enjoy the great service that you are known for, all under the spirit of the original agreement.
---- end ----
If only "common" sense was actually that common...
Hey, someone had to post it.
I still have an AOL account, they wont let me cancel. Halp?
your account was lifetime. the service's life is over. therefore, the guarantee is honored.
this is how weasels think, and it's all around us. moral: they lie. back up your stuff.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
6 years / (90 - 20 years = 8.57% of his lifetime usage.
They owe him about $US 456.23
It's actually common practice when selling a company to only sell the assets of the company, leaving the liabilities with the original company. This is done so that the buyer can't be surprised by any unrealized liabilities/debts/lawsuits etc.
paintball
It is almost NEVER a good idea to buy a lifetime membership in anything.
"But, I can get a LIFETIME of (whatever) for only the cost of 10 years!"
First problem with that is your breakeven point is much later than 10 years. If an annual membership costs $100, and the lifetime membership costs $1,000, then your break-even point is somewhere around year 20, not 10, because....
$100 now is worth more than $100 in 10 years.
If you instead bought a one-year membership, you could then invest the remaining $900 in something else, and use the proceeds from that investment to fund future membership purchases.
And that's just the math. The other problem is the reality... ...what happens when the business goes out of business? ...what happens when the business changes fundamentally? Hours change, location changes, quality of service changes? ...what happens if YOU change, you move out of the service area, you change your habits, etc?
Lifetime purchases are for suckers.
paintball
You're 100% wrong.
You can absolutely sell the assets of a company without transferring the liabilities. I should know, I've done it twice.
Now, if I sell $1 million in assets to my mother for $1, and then someone sues me, they're going to have a good cause for going after that $1 million. But if I sell $1 million in assets for $1 million, those assets are out of reach of anyone who wants to sue me.
paintball
And you believe their non-binding statements because?
Based on your spelling you are either from Canada or the U.K. where the laws may vary from the U.S.
This undermines their credibility.
I was going to use their platform for a project as a test but now I'll just stick with EC2 thanks.
Engineering to Marketing -
I've discovered this website, slashdot, where nerds or geeks hang out, and they are actually so silly that they believe that when they buy a "lifetime" offer it should extend for their lifetime.
Mareting -
no one is that clueless, are they ?
e - these are the same people who seriously thought you could mine asteroids by crashing the asteroids into the ocean
m - but wont they sue us over our lifetime product ?
e - yeah, but instead of hiring a lawyer, they'll get some FOSS crowdsource lawyering software, adn then spend 6 months trying to get the printer driver working, and then they will sue the printer company
m - don't these people have a life ?
e - apparently not
m - well if they are that clueless, why don't we sell them lifetime insurance for lifetime offers...
499 was what he paid back then. That's not what he can sue for today. Figure out what it would cost to buy the same lifetime service from someone else, plus the cost of moving, and that's what you sue for. As a plausible thing, pick some current hosting service, take the current monthly cost, calculate the Net Present Value of, say, 20 years worth of that service assuming some statistically defensible interest and cost change, and that's what you sue for. This is what insurance companies selling annuities are in the business of, after all.
Say you can buy the service for $10/month For 240 months (that's 20 years), it would be $2400, if there's no interest/inflation.
At today's small account passbook rates, the interest is essentially zero, and, these days, 10 year government bonds are effectively paying a negative rate of interest..
No, that's how it works in the US. This is a pretty clear win for the customer if he wishes to pursue it.
... killed Sun and now it will kill Joyent.
Lifetime is not reasonable. Also, the lifetime is probably stipulated nicely in the TOS. No one in business is going to offer lifetime anything. It is the TOS that really matters, forget the false advertising.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
I found nothing in the archived Terms of Service, that stated they could or would terminate the service in this manner.
If they terminate, they will be in breach of contract, plain and simple. Sue them.
Ground's not very solid is it?
what gym costs 100 dollars a year? the cheapest I've seen in a small town is 40 dollars a month and in the cities, 100/month is pretty common (and I've seen it up to 250/month. If I could get a lifetime membership at a gym for 1000 bucks, I'd do it in an instant as it'll be paid for within a year (assuming it's not a crap gym in my city). Several gyms have a sign up fee of 1000 dollars......
was this what they used to charge back in the 70s?
The people with Tivo lifetime memberships brag about their financial prowess every chance they get.
Well since you mentioned it, I have four tivo's and two directv-tivo's, all bought with lifetime around 6-11 years ago. They all still work, and they've been free to use since purchased. They even let me transfer the lifetime to another box a couple of times, then left it still working on the old one.
On three other tivo's, I hacked in some huge hard drives and sold them for more than I paid for the box, hard drives and lifetime. I actually have come close to having a zero cost for all of my tivo's and lifetime.
But then again I'm a multimillionaire that retired at 40, so I guess my financial prowess was already well established.
This is a case of the CEO admitting "we would have to upgrade the hardware providing the service, and we don't want to do that".
There are all sorts of things I don't want to do, but I'd be divorced and homeless if I quit doing them. Lifetime deals sound great for small businesses to bring in a lot of future income. But they do sort of have to remember that years later when all of that free early funding starts becoming onerous.
If they don't want to upgrade the hardware for the older service, then give free lifetime usage for the new system.
This is akin to saying "Hey, all you people about to retire next month? Yeah, well all that money you put into social security over the last 40 years got spent on pork, and we don't want to stop our frivolous spending so we can send you your retirement check."
I guess the morale of the story is "Don't give out lifetime deals if you aren't planning on supporting them for a lifetime."
I'm sure more will be spent on lawyers than it would have cost them to do the right thing.
Terms are only as valid as your will to pursue their enforcement in a court of law. In at practical sense, that means promises by customers are inviolable and promises by companies are meaningless. They will always find a loophole to get out of anything they now find undesirable. So, unless you can out lawyer them, you are screwed.
So, the lifetime account is being revoked when the lifetime of the service expires. Sounds fair to me. What, you didn't think it was the lifetime of the customer they were talking about, did you?
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Here's what you're probably looking at if they send no one: Judgement in your favor with a few stipulations you should be able to get... What you paid: $500.00 Add your court costs: (+/- $120.00) Add travel expenses, be prepared to produce invoices/receipts Add lost wages (pre tax, if applicable) Add legal fees (if allowed/applicable) Judgement against you: pay court costs waste vacation day(s) IF they send someone that knows what he's doing: Judgement in your favor: What you paid: $500.00 Add your court costs: (+/- $120.00) Add travel expenses, be prepared to produce invoices/receipts Add lost wages (pre tax, if applicable) Add legal fees (if allowed/applicable) Subtract what you would have paid on an annual agreement for the same time period you have had the service (if he/she's really good, monthly agreement) Judgement against you: pay court costs pay legal fees (if any, theirs and yours) If the defendant is a bloodsucking asshat: forced to fight likely counter suit which will cost you god knows what and probably put you in financial ruin... More than likely the judgement will be in your favor, unless the judge finds himself on their payroll.....
No, not at all. Buyouts are structured typically to buy *assets* only (including the trade name), not obligations (debts, contractual obligations, etc). Warranties go extinct in such cases. No knowledgeable businessman would buy a whole business in the sense of buying into potentially unlimited liabilities. When you buy anything for a "lifetime" of support or warranty, you are only in effect buying a promissory note from a business that may or may not even exist when you come calling to collect.
So far the government hasn't tried to do that with Social Security, but private companies do it all the time when they shed pension obligations and retiree health benefits when they're in Chapter 11. This amounts to making the employees and former employees take a retroactive pay cut - the value of those pensions was part of the package they agreed to when they took the job. The companies argue that "we can't meet those obligations and stay in business". Fine then, don't stay in business; liquidate the company to fund the pensions. Keeping companies operating shouldn't be sacrosanct; requiring companies to fulfill their promises to employees SHOULD be.
110% correct. Somewhere along the line our corporate leadership stepped away from doing the right thing to doing the thing that gets them the biggest paychecks.
But this is the mindset these days...how to get out of your obligations. Pensions, mortgages on underwater homes, etc.