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.'"

Comments

Recourse

[Anonymous Coward]

Smells like a class action suit to me...

Re:Recourse

[hobarrera]

In many cases, judges have ruled that the changes cannot be so unbalanced towards one side. "No longer providing a service you have already paid for without any compensation" sounds like a case that would most likely result in this.

Re:Recourse

[DigiShaman]

I'm not a lawyer, but he may have a case. Joyent may in fact already know this and calculated it cheaper to settle on offering a lifetime account again --on a per user basis--. The idea betting on all other account holders shrugging it off. In the end, Joyent saves money.

Re:Recourse

[swell]

Forget class action- after attorney fees you will have little or nothing.

Small claims court is what you want. There are some huge advantages: 1- low cost to file. 2- attorneys are not allowed- only plaintiff and defendant. 3- if defendant does not appear, he will usually lose automatically. What's the chance that the CEO will come to your town to contest a $500 claim?

Sometimes there is difficulty collecting your judgement if, for instance, an individual skips town. This defendant is easy to find and easy to force payment from.

Usually you can only make them pay for actual costs. No 'pain and suffering' claims, etc. IANAL, check the rules where you live.

Have fun. If hundreds do the same you might actually be a nuisance to them.

Re:Recourse

[Terry95]

Very likely not true. When one company buys another they take on all liabilities (like long term contracts and loans) as well as all assets (like cash and computers). I don't know, or particularly care, if Joyent is a different corporation or if textdrive just changed their name. But conceptually it doesn't actually matter. In practice of course you ALL the rights you can afford to prosecute in court. And NO others.

Re:Recourse? probably not

[petes_PoV]

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".