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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Life is not for the lazy.
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
They are now offering a refund or 5 years of hosting. I'll probably take it and move on.
>>>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"
1. Joyent isn't textdrive, i.e. textdrive doesn't exist anymore, so the lifetime obligation has been exhausted.
Given that the summary linked to the original offer...
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.
Want to try that again?
2. Whose lifetime? The service's, i.e. no shorter than its lifetime.
What they said was
As long as we exist.
The thing is, even though TextDrive, Inc. no longer exists, "three products in our family" and including two products other than TextDrive makes the offer explicitly from the parent company Joyent, Inc. The same company which still hosts the article author's site.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
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!"