Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
They're voluntarily discontinuing the service, they should be willing to pay the $499 back to those who ask for it.
Well, I read the archived FAQ and TOS and I didn't see any disclaimers. Technically, a company that lists something like a lifetime guarantee or lifetime warranty can get away with only warrantying or guaranteeing the product or service for its market life. Meaning my frying pan with a lifetime warranty is good for what the company deems the lifetime of the frying pan, modified by federal and local laws on what constitutes an acceptable minimum lifetime period. On the other hand, the ad you linked via the Wayback Machine didn't say lifetime, but rather the life of the company. If they've been bought and changed hands they could be considered a new company. Either way, I'd say there certainly seems to be the possibility that they could be legally liable for breach of contract. Just make sure if you decide to take them to small claims court that there's no activity in your own history with their service that violates their TOS and Acceptable Use provisions, because they can use that against you.
Charlie 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
Well, I guess I know to stay away from this company in the future... Total fail.
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.
Link is here
:)
Agreed, nothing in the TOS talks about cancellation, and given the boilerplate nature of such things, me thinks they can cancel it if they want. Besides, how much money are you going to spend to fight them in court? Me thinks, not much.
And more importantly, how many other people are in your situation? Me thinks not many.
'Not Much' + 'Not Many' = you get to find another solution. And of course rightfully bitch about them publicly
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
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.
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.
Wait'll Steam shuts down. Whether it's in 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, if it's hosted in the cloud, it'll eventually go away. If it's hosted on your own drive, and copied to your backup drive that's in a geographically-remote location, it's yours forever.
I'd file in small claims court for the original amount paid. If they don't send a representative you win a default judgement and send them a letter including the court document link. If they don't pay you turn them over to a collection agency (trust me NO company wants a collection agency showing up in a credit report).
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
It doesn't say anything of the sort under their Terms of Service at the time, available through the wayback link.
It says"
How long is it good for? As long as we exist.
The original company no longer exists, and only half of the principals there of, are participants in the new owners.
Still, one wonders why he can't move all of that into a virtual machine and put the storage in his cloud. That is after all their current line of business is it not?
Unless a bankruptcy ruling released them from those lifetime commitments there is no way out, when you purchase a company you don't just purchase its assets you get everything including any commitments they made and any liabilities they have.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
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 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.
If enough individuals file separate small claims suits, then THEY will be the ones wanting to consolidate into a class action.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Sure, but the commitment that they had was, by its express terms, not for the users lifetime, but for the original company's lifetime.
So the question isn't jsut whether the obligation was acquired, but what the scope of the obligation was to start with.
>>>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"
Aside from just totally going out of business, Joyent has a commitment to honor. If we don't start holding companies to their word, they will walk all over us worse than they already do.
It may sound anti-business, but it's more "don't write checks your wallet can't cash". AT&T, Verizon and Sprint have all pulled that bullshit, as well as countless other companies and then weaseled out of it in the name of marketing, once they got their customers. Consumers may not be able to hold their feet to the fire, but we can damn well make sure we minimize the number of companies that try to pull marketing scams like that to get customers.
Besides, $500 is $500 and thats no small amount of money in these economic times.
"My God...it's full of trolls!"
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.
You haven't looked at any of the documents. You don't know FACT ONE about how this all transpired.
Did Joynet purchase textdrive?
The answer is YES
Did the lifetime customers receive service from Joynet after the purchase?
Again the answer is Yes for the last 7 years they have
Now we have established that Joynet purchased Textdrive, and that the customers were acquired by Joynet so please explain to me how it would be possible for joynet to claim that Textdrive sold the Lifetime customers when provided services? Or that Textdrive did not become a part of Joynet even though they were purchased by Joynet and the services remained.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
We know nothing of the terms of the sale until we see the terms of the sale. Bulk sales are like bankruptcies. The laws vary. IANAL, but I've seen bulk assets shed contract liabilities to an empty corporate shell, where a suit against that shell is meaningless.
Duty? We're talking corporations here. That's how liabilities are shed. I don't like the idea either. I'm a 99%er, but I understand the 1% very thoroughly.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.