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Tell that to FastMail, who have pissed me off by deciding to end-of-life the "lifetime" 16Mb member account I set up for my father with a one-time $15 payment.

Tell that to FastMail, who have pissed me off by deciding to end-of-life the "lifetime" 16Mb member account I set up for my father with a one-time $15 payment. 16Mb is modulo zero these days, but it's enough for him - he just deletes some emails when it gets full. He also gets imap access and FastMail's spam filtering, which is really very good. I can also assign him an email address from a domain that I own that is associated with my FastMail enhanced account. I don't want my $15 back. What I DO want is for FastMail to honour our existing agreement, which was a LIFE-TIME 16 Mb member account in exchange for $15. See also here: http://www.emaildiscussions.com/showthread.php?p=599512 http://www.emaildiscussions.com/showthread.php?p=599512 Text of their latest email is below the line: ============================================= Back in January we contacted you with some important information about your @.* FastMail account. We're now contacting you again to remind you that from 31st July, 2017 our 'Member' level plans will be discontinued. To continue using your FastMail account after this time you'll need to select one of our current plans. Please note: your email address will remain the same. As a long-time FastMail user we're offering you 50% OFF all upgrades until the end of July, which includes our already discounted multi-year subscriptions. And if you upgrade now we'll also add all the remaining time until 31 July for free! As an added bonus we've also given you $15 credit to put towards your subscription, which is equal to the amount you originally paid for your account. This means if you were to upgrade to a Basic account today for one year, with the discount and account credit you are effectively getting FastMail at no charge until 31 July 2018 with a massive 2 GB of storage (up from 16 MB)!

jbob2000 9y ago
There could be technical issues with keeping grandfathered plans around. Maybe the 16mb email accounts were on an old system that was getting increasingly difficult to maintain?
- delhanty 9y ago
  I'm sure that's true. But then it's not my problem. FastMail made an agreement - $15 in exchange for a lifetime member account. Now they don't want to honour that agreement. And they've created work for me: What to do about my father's email account? I have his email address as part of the domain that I have associated with my (legacy) FastMail enhanced account. They've discontinued family accounts for new signups.
- Can_Not 9y ago
  Yeah but you could move their account over physically but continue to not bill them. I doubt 16MB is anything more than a properly enforced column value in a CRM.
- staticelf 9y ago
  Then they should upgrade the account to a new plan without cost imo.
delhanty 9y ago
I decided to submit the link that I gave: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14357859 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14357859 I'm not sure whether my chosen title follows HN guidelines - admins please feel free to edit
muraiki 9y ago
Thanks for sharing this. I had recently set up an account with FastMail, but now that it's clear that they won't abide by their own promises, I'll look elsewhere.
- macintux 9y ago
  I would be cautious about extrapolating from that. Yes, it sounds like an unfortunate decision, but I've been a FastMail user for many years and have been very happy with them.
- eridius 9y ago
  I think you're being a bit hasty. This is literally the first negative thing I've seen anyone post about FastMail, and my experience as a customer of theirs has been fantastic.
- FireBeyond 9y ago
  Yeah, don't be so fast. I've had a legacy Enhanced account which they show no signs of removing - I went to renew it today and could (though I went to the Standard). I've had nothing but excellent, and personal, service from them, for years. Very high availability, no canned responses. Even when bitching about Google's support of "this address used to be with Gmail but is now external, but we'll make it problematic for other users to send it calendar invites", though in no way did I imply Fastmail was at fault, they jumped into the HN thread to say "Hey, let us know if we can be of assistance figuring out the issue".
- sleepydog 9y ago
  I'm a long-time and happy Fastmail user. I'm not defending their decision, but I personally never trust "lifetime" plans of any kind -- it's impossible for a business to know they can sustain you forever, and dishonest for them to say they can.
ams6110 9y ago
I am a long-time Fastmail user who also was on the "lifetime" 16MB plan. Last year I switched because I wanted some features that were only available with a newer plan. I was a little annoyed to have to give up my lifetime plan but in my case it was more understandable. I've been very happy with Fastmail for over a decade and this seems like one of the few missteps they've made. New "lifetime" 16MB accounts have not been available in years. It really doesn't seem that there could be very many of them still in active use that it would hurt anything to just continue to grandfather them, especially since they were sold explicitly as "lifetime" one-payment accounts.
pranavsinghca 9y ago
I don't think this should have ever been offered. Curious - how could FastMail ever properly close/sunset these accounts? Were they going to regularly check on all of their customers to see if they had passed away? Was there some 'we close the email if you don't log in for 5 years straight'? Serious question - how should these type of lifetime promises ever be properly managed? (especially when the customer is an individual)
- delhanty 9y ago
  From a business point of view, they are generally regarded to be a bad idea. See various comments on what is now the main FastMail thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14357859 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14357859 My point is simply this: FastMail unwisely offered lifetime email service for one-time $15 payment. I accepted that offer on behalf of my father. FastMail should now honour that agreement.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

jbob2000 9y ago

There could be technical issues with keeping grandfathered plans around. Maybe the 16mb email accounts were on an old system that was getting increasingly difficult to maintain?

delhanty 9y ago
I'm sure that's true. But then it's not my problem. FastMail made an agreement - $15 in exchange for a lifetime member account. Now they don't want to honour that agreement. And they've created work for me: What to do about my father's email account? I have his email address as part of the domain that I have associated with my (legacy) FastMail enhanced account. They've discontinued family accounts for new signups.
Can_Not 9y ago
Yeah but you could move their account over physically but continue to not bill them. I doubt 16MB is anything more than a properly enforced column value in a CRM.
staticelf 9y ago
Then they should upgrade the account to a new plan without cost imo.

delhanty 9y ago

I decided to submit the link that I gave: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14357859 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14357859 I'm not sure whether my chosen title follows HN guidelines - admins please feel free to edit

muraiki 9y ago

Thanks for sharing this. I had recently set up an account with FastMail, but now that it's clear that they won't abide by their own promises, I'll look elsewhere.

macintux 9y ago
I would be cautious about extrapolating from that. Yes, it sounds like an unfortunate decision, but I've been a FastMail user for many years and have been very happy with them.
eridius 9y ago
I think you're being a bit hasty. This is literally the first negative thing I've seen anyone post about FastMail, and my experience as a customer of theirs has been fantastic.
FireBeyond 9y ago
Yeah, don't be so fast. I've had a legacy Enhanced account which they show no signs of removing - I went to renew it today and could (though I went to the Standard). I've had nothing but excellent, and personal, service from them, for years. Very high availability, no canned responses. Even when bitching about Google's support of "this address used to be with Gmail but is now external, but we'll make it problematic for other users to send it calendar invites", though in no way did I imply Fastmail was at fault, they jumped into the HN thread to say "Hey, let us know if we can be of assistance figuring out the issue".
sleepydog 9y ago
I'm a long-time and happy Fastmail user. I'm not defending their decision, but I personally never trust "lifetime" plans of any kind -- it's impossible for a business to know they can sustain you forever, and dishonest for them to say they can.

ams6110 9y ago

I am a long-time Fastmail user who also was on the "lifetime" 16MB plan. Last year I switched because I wanted some features that were only available with a newer plan. I was a little annoyed to have to give up my lifetime plan but in my case it was more understandable. I've been very happy with Fastmail for over a decade and this seems like one of the few missteps they've made. New "lifetime" 16MB accounts have not been available in years. It really doesn't seem that there could be very many of them still in active use that it would hurt anything to just continue to grandfather them, especially since they were sold explicitly as "lifetime" one-payment accounts.

pranavsinghca 9y ago

I don't think this should have ever been offered. Curious - how could FastMail ever properly close/sunset these accounts? Were they going to regularly check on all of their customers to see if they had passed away? Was there some 'we close the email if you don't log in for 5 years straight'? Serious question - how should these type of lifetime promises ever be properly managed? (especially when the customer is an individual)

delhanty 9y ago
From a business point of view, they are generally regarded to be a bad idea. See various comments on what is now the main FastMail thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14357859 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14357859 My point is simply this: FastMail unwisely offered lifetime email service for one-time $15 payment. I accepted that offer on behalf of my father. FastMail should now honour that agreement.

deleted 9y ago

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