8 ms·

FastMail lifetime member plans to be discontinued

99 points by delhanty 9y ago

delhanty 9y ago
I submitted this in relation to a comment that I just made: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14357780 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14357780 edit: removed text duplicated from comment - maybe that was against HN guidelines ...
- corobo 9y ago
  > removed text duplicated from comment - maybe that was against HN guidelines I don't know if it was against HN guidelines but it looked an absolute mess. One giant block of text.
mrweasel 9y ago
What's the point of selling someone a "lifetime" plan of anything, if you're able to discontinue that plan whenever you feel like it? It's the equivalent of a "lifetime warranty" where you just fail to stipulate that it's the lifetime of the product and not the buyer.
- delhanty 9y ago
  Indeed! It's like if I'd invested $100 in Amazon at IPO, which is worth around $64K today but Jeff Bezos could now but my stock back for the original $100 as long as he offered me half-price on a new Kindle.
  - jpitz 9y ago
    > It's like if I'd invested $100 in Amazon at IPO, which is worth around $64K today but Jeff Bezos could now but my stock back for the original $100 as long as he offered me half-price on a new Kindle. What? No. I don't see how those two things are at all comparable. A lifetime service contract isn't an investment vehicle with variable valuation over time. It is a service contract. Moreover, lifetime service contracts sold for a one time fee should always be regarded with a fiercely critical eye: without recurring revenue, how is the service provider realistically going to be able to provide that service at a profit indefinitely? At some point, they ARE going to drop it, or they've figured out a way to use that service to drive additional profits.
    - delhanty 9y ago
      >Moreover, lifetime service contracts sold for a one time fee should always be regarded with a fiercely critical eye: without recurring revenue, how is the service provider realistically going to be able to provide that service at a profit indefinitely? At some point, they ARE going to drop it, or they've figured out a way to use that service to drive additional profits. The fact that FastMail management at that time made the (very) poor business decision to offer lifetime service for a one time fee is NOT MY PROBLEM. Now, I'll just repeat verbatim what I said in the other thread. > 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. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14357905 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14357905
      - quakenul 9y ago
        It is your problem. Which you can now take to court and likely expect to get some form of compensation, since FastMail is in violation of your agreement. I do realize putting "lifetime" on anything brings heavy emotional weight. But in the end it's simply another contract which, even without any malintent, get broken all the time. If you are the damaged party you can use the legal system to seek damages, if you feel the inflicted damage warrants going through the trouble.
        delhanty 9y ago
        FastMail and you know it's not worth my time to take them to court for $15. Besides FastMail is in Australia, my father is in the UK and I am in Japan ... Also, would the court order FastMail to continue to offer service to my father, which is what I want. I very much doubt that. FastMail would just be allowed to make the offer of the $15 plus some half-price deal on another plan, which they have done already. On the other hand, companies do seem to rather dislike bad publicity. So when they try and back-out of past agreements and contacts that no longer suit them, it is far more effective to call them out publicly on forums like this one.
  - pfarnsworth 9y ago
    Terrible analogy. The email account is not an investment. You can't "sell" your account. Your father used it for years, and now he's getting his money back. And he has alternatives, he can use gmail, etc.
    - deong 9y ago
      Sure, but the law doesn't care whether you sold me something as an investment or not. It cares that you sold me something under terms that were legal in the place where the transaction was made, that the contract was entered into voluntarily by adults with legal authority to make decisions, etc. What you're describing is perfectly true under the terms of service of pretty much any email provider, but that's only because the contracts governing your interaction with those providers are written in a way that makes it true. Fastmail's lifetime plan has a different contract, and under that contract, it's simply not true that you're paying to use the account temporarily. You're paying to have perpetual access to that account as long as the company exists as a legal partner to the contract they signed.
    - delhanty 9y ago
      Actually a lifetime (of my father) service contract is very much like an one particular investment, that is an inflation adjusted annuity. FastMail is no more free to terminate the lifetime service contract while my father still lives than the pension company is free to stop paying his annuity backed pension.
      - pfarnsworth 9y ago
        Another terrible analogy. It's not an annuity at all. You're paying for a service. You pay $15 for "lifetime" email. Your father paid less than $1/year for email service. Stop trying to make it seem like Fastmail owes you money. Quit your bellyaching and move him to gmail.
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
      That's not how contracts work. If you buy a vase on ebay for $1 because you think it looks nice, and the current owner agrees to that sale, it's yours. Suppose they then find out it's worth a million. The seller cannot unilaterally reverse the contract and "give you your money back". The vase is yours, they owe you the vase, and you owe them a dollar, that's it. If they wanted to own the vase, they would have to make a contract with its owner (that is, you) under terms that the owner is willing to agree to to transfer ownership.
- lorenzhs 9y ago
  Your analogy is flawed, that's not what "lifetime warranty" means: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warranty#Lifetime_warranty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warranty#Lifetime_warranty "A lifetime warranty is usually a warranty against defects in materials and workmanship that has no time limit to make a claim, rather than a warranty that the product will perform for the lifetime of the buyer.[6] The actual time that product can be expected to perform is normally determined by the custom for products of its kind used the way the buyer uses it."
  - axlprose 9y ago
    But that still works with op casually saying it'll last for a different interpretation of the word "lifetime" than might first be expected, namely a timeframe more closely aligned with the lifetime of the product than the buyer. Secondly, it seems odd to be pedantic about such a detail when the comment itself already defines the details relevant to the analogy, making it a self-contained statement even if you didn't know what warrantees were. An analogy doesn't have to map 1-to-1 to work, as that's what makes it an analogy as opposed to an equivalence. Saying that a dog is as big as a cat doesn't make it a flawed analogy just because the dog doesn't have sharp claws and pointy ears.
- quakenul 9y ago
  Well, the point is that, as with any deal, you hopefully intended to keep up your end. And if you fail to do so you, you are suspect to legal consequences.
zdw 9y ago
Pretty common - I bought into the TextDrive (became Joyent) lifetime hosting plans, and then got the shaft a few years later, as everyone else who bought into it did: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4391669 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4391669 I can understand if I bought the lifetime plan and you go under or pivot to something entirely different and it ends, but it seems churlish if you're still in the same business and you renege on the first people who believed in you.
- faitswulff 9y ago
  Is there precedent for a company being sued for something similar? Seems like false advertising to me.
  - yborg 9y ago
    As pointed out elsewhere in thread, it is, and you can then incur the legal costs of recovering your $50 or whatever the "lifetime" fee was. If the company wasn't completely retarded about it, even a class action with attorney's fees is probably not going to be that costly. For the company doing this, it's essentially a promotional cost. Doing it in such a way that generates negative PR later seems to make the whole thing a waste of time, but that's the calculus that a company does. Seems much smarter to me to make these things "free for x months/years" etc. and at least cap your costs if this approach is the best way to get signups.
- dave84 9y ago
  I was the same, but I had moved everything to a VPS before they cancelled the plan because it was so slow. I seem to remember Textdrive splitting out from Joyent and attempting to honor the lifetime plans, but it didn't last.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- wlesieutre 9y ago
  Yeah, I see a lot of VPN services advertising "lifetime membership" for like $30 on StackSocial. I'll pay more than that for a 1 year membership somewhere else just because I anticipate it still existing 6 months from now.
paulgb 9y ago
After seeing everyone rave about FastMail in the other thread I signed up for the demo. I've been looking to move a domain I have off of G Suite and it seemed like the best option. Now I'm having second thoughts, if this is how they treat paying customers.
- fpoling 9y ago
  I have Gmail for domains from the time when it was free for 5 users. Surprisingly Google keeps that working even if I have not paid them anything.
  - StavrosK 9y ago
    I have one of those too, and I switched to Fastmail, which is much better. At the $4/mo I pay for it, it's a much better value than the free Gmail.
  - pyre 9y ago
    Same here. I signed up for Google Apps for Domains, and it keeps on chugging, even though that program is no longer.
  - j_s 9y ago
    It used to be free for more than 5 users, I believe the limit was decreased gradually. I have one account with 20 free users and I vaguely recollect hearing about it being free for 50 users, possibly even 100's. As recently as 3 years ago you could still sign up for 1 user. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4885538 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4885538 > If you create a new Apps account going through the App Engine Admin Console you'll still be able to create a Standard Apps account for free but you'll only be able to get 1 user per account rather than the 10 you get today. But per the referenced Google Groups discussion that has been shutdown sometime before January 2015. > You'll now have to pay for a Google Apps account, there's no more freebie "1 user per account" provision.
- delhanty 9y ago
  As the submitter, their general service is good enough. Sometimes their server seems slow from here in Japan. Also, their support staff sometime seem complacent due to lack of competition. But it will probably work out for you if you go for it. I am pissed off that they want to renege on our agreement. One concrete negative point for me: the current plans have a fixed price per user and are not very flexible if the users have very different use levels. (My father is a very light user, whereas I am heavy user.) Some of the legacy plans - family and business were more flexible in his regard, but they are not offered to new signups.
michaelbuckbee 9y ago
With respect to SAAS services, I treat lifeTime plans as maybe even a step _below_ free plans in terms of longevity. They typically signal to me that the service is in some kind of bad financial state (and hoping to prop things up with an influx of one-time payments). On the part of the providers, they attract pathologically bad customers. Lifetime memberships set up all kinds of weird incredibly hard to fulfill expectations. It's a truism in SAAS community that someone paying $5/mo will be 10x the support and onboarding nightmare of someone willing to pay $50/mo. All that being said, Fastmail has moved aggressively away from them to the extent that I (as a paying Fastmail customer for the last 3 years) never even knew they existed. And while I think they're a bad idea, I do think that a promise is a promise and if they offered them they should abide by them.
- delhanty 9y ago
  As the submitter, I agree with all this. Sure from, FastMail's point of view my father is a bad customer. Not that he's even aware who FastMail are though ... But FastMail freely chose to make the poor business decision to offer that lifetime service for a one-time payment, and I freely chose to purchase that service for my father. We had an agreement. Now I would like them to honour that agreement.
- brongondwana 9y ago
  Thanks for this response - and sorry I didn't reply to anything last night, I'd just got home from a mad day getting my kids prepared for their mid-year concert and then watching all 4 hours of it (every ensemble has to show what they've learned!) so went to bed early - I didn't see this until today Melbourne time. On the topic of support - one thing that's hard for FastMail is that with customers who are paying every month/year/whatever, we have a billing contact which gives us a way to get in touch when their account gets locked. Non-paying accounts are just as likely to have their credentials stolen and used for spam, but they are even _more_ costly to re-identify the owner. Refusing to try to identify the owner and just leaving locked accounts locked would get us just as much bad press as this, and be much worse for the affected users - since there would be no warning period before losing the account. The Member service was always intended to be the same as Guest, but allow commercial use and not have ads. We decided many years ago that the ads business was not for us (it's part of why we left Opera, they were focusing more on the advertising business, and we wanted no part of it.) We didn't actually use the term "lifetime", we said "one-time payment". I know it sounds like weasel words - but we chose to shut both Guest and Member down at the same time because they are basically the same. That payment was supposed to offset advertising revenue - it certainly doesn't offset the cost of keeping things deliverable in today's world where email accounts have become a really important part of people's online identities. Email account theft has become the way to send spam, as domain reputation makes it much easier to send through stolen accounts than just blast SMTP directly. So we appear to be pretty horrible to the people who don't value their service enough to pay US$3/month for it, but as you noted - it became a choice between having our paying customers keep subsidising the support costs of stopping spam through those stolen non-paying accounts, or shutting them down and making our sending addresses more trustworthy for those willing to pay.
sarreph 9y ago
You. Cannot. Trust. "Lifetime". Guarantees. ...Because you cannot trust the future of any business.
- dustinblake 9y ago
  Sure, a business can cease to operate—that's a risk that seems pretty clear cut and understandable. Or, if the business completely changes and doesn't offer that type of product or service anymore. If the lifetime offer was for unlimited (one at a time) VHS borrowing at the neighborhood video rental, and then the store shifted to only offering DVDs, or (perhaps better) streaming, the fact that there are no longer any VHS tapes to borrow makes sense. But this is a case of an email company (likely profitable) that still offers email accounts. It's likely that the only difference between the product that they're taking away and current offerings is that the 'lifetime' accounts have FAR lower quotas and features offered. The cost of computing, storage and bandwidth trend downward over time. No new lifetime accounts are being created, so they've got a fixed quantity of lower-usage level accounts. They can already forecast the maximum technical cost for these over the next 10/20/30/40 years. Now these accounts may have high costs in terms of providing customer support, and that would be unpredictable, and potentially costly. I doubt anyone would fault Fastmail for simply stating that outside of a few designated problems/issues (either on their side or the most important) that no technical support would be provided for these accounts. If they wanted to be nice, they might offer that non-crucial support issues could be handled at the lowest tier/priority. That would be a sensible way to move forward.
kmfrk 9y ago
Reminded of this from "The Second Coming of Steve Jobs": "Just fuck 'em" became one of Steve's favorite lines. When he had taken over, he had inherited a program called SOS Apple, which let people sign a contract for unlimited customer support over the telephone for a lifetime. It was a bad financial move for Apple. Steve said to shut it down. What about the customers who have a contractual obligation? Jeff asked. "Just fuck 'em," Steve said. The Federal Trade Commission sued Apple over the issue. Apple lost.
- delhanty 9y ago
  It was probably still worth it for Apple though to be able to dump the unlimited commitments ... ? Facebook, LinkedIn etc. have the same playbook when they play fast and loose with the privacy rules with respect to spamming contact lists. Any penalty is tiny compared with the gain. I'm sure that's FastMail's current management's thinking in my case.
  - jhall1468 9y ago
    > Facebook, LinkedIn etc. have the same playbook when they play fast and loose with the privacy rules with respect to spamming contact lists. Any penalty is tiny compared with the gain. Not even close to the same thing. Apple agreed to a contract to provide unlimited support. Facebook/LinkedIn privacy policies explicitly state they can change them with notice, and they do.
    - delhanty 9y ago
      This is do with the violation of EXISTING policies. LinkedIn in particular paid $13 million in 2015 to settle a class action lawsuit about their slightly misleading "Add Connections" feature. http://fortune.com/2015/10/05/linkedin-class-action/ http://fortune.com/2015/10/05/linkedin-class-action/ IMO $13 million was a small price to pay compared with the $26.2 billion Microsoft paid to acquire LinkedIn: https://www.wsj.com/articles/microsoft-to-acquire-linkedin-in-deal-valued-at-26-2-billion-1465821523 https://www.wsj.com/articles/microsoft-to-acquire-linkedin-i...
tiatia 9y ago
I mean, this is the case with every "life time" plan. Valid until the company goes bankrupt or has financial issues or changes it mind. Once there were life time "all you can fly" airplane passes for US$ 100k.
- carussell 9y ago
  This is not a case of someone going out of business. This is a case of a healthy business not holding up their end of a purchase.
  - tiatia 9y ago
    "..or changes it mind."
    - carussell 9y ago
      I don't see what you're getting at. That matches exactly the "not holding up their end" that I mentioned. What's the problem?
      - tiatia 9y ago
        You are irrational expecting any other outcome.
yladiz 9y ago
To those that don't want to read the email that was linked here, here are links to FastMail help that talk about their discontinuation of the Member and Guest plans: https://www.fastmail.com/help/account/member.html https://www.fastmail.com/help/account/member.html https://www.fastmail.com/help/account/guest.html https://www.fastmail.com/help/account/guest.html Of course it sucks if you use this plan, but I think that giving nearly 6 months of notice after allowing you to use a plan for nearly 8 years after it was discontinued is generous. I think what they're offering, which is 50% off any upgrades and a credit equal to the amount they originally paid ($15) is a good gesture as well, and in the thread it seems they would be okay with refunding the $15 to those that aren't okay with this.
- delhanty 9y ago
  >it seems they would be okay with refunding the $15 to those that aren't okay with this. To that I'll quote what zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC posted just now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14358874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14358874 >Now, I don't know the details of the contract, but generally, the value this is about is not $15. The value is the damage caused by them failing to fulfill their contracts, which would be the discounted value of the market price of all future payments needed to replace their failure to perform. >There is no general legal option for one party to a contract to simply pull out and give you back your money. They owe you what they promised in the contract, and if they don't deliver, they are liable for the damage that that causes for you.
  - yladiz 9y ago
    Can you link to or post the actual contract from when you signed up? Without seeing this contract what you're saying is without context.
infogulch 9y ago
Monthly service costs / subscriptions are a feature. This happens all the time with mobile apps, for example. You find a nice new shiny todo app that costs $5 and invest heavily in it, lo and behold, 6 months later the 2k people that bought it isn't enough to sustain the creator indefinitely and it dies a slow and neglectful death. But if just 500 of those people paid $5/mo that would be much more likely for the developer to continue supporting it. When I'm looking for something that I expect to invest in and rely on for a long time, "has a paid subscription" becomes an important consideration when evaluating different options.
- kartickv 9y ago
  I'm building a camera app. Would you suggest I charge annually, instead of one-time? None of the other camera apps I've used has a subscription. Would you pay via a subscription?
  - mcgrath_sh 9y ago
    Not the person you replied to, but I have pretty strong feelings on this so I am going to reply. I have no issue paying for apps/software. My iPhone homescreen is made up almost entirely of paid apps or apps for services I pay for. Some of these apps cost $10-20 and I happily pay that every 18-24 months for a new version. I use Drafts so much that I would gladly pay up to $40 every 18-24 months as an outright purchase for it. That being said... if Drafts went to a subscription model for $5 a year, I would stop using it and find an alternative. Most apps are not services. Full stop. They are apps. Outside of the apps tied to a service (i.e. Dropbox, NewsBlur) I would find alternatives to every one of my paid apps if they went to a subscription model, even if that subscription was cheaper than buying a new version in a similar timeframe. I have this stance for multiple reasons: - I have subscription fatigue. I don't want to start managing dozens to use my computer/phone. - I don't want to wake up one morning and find out a utility app isn't working because I didn't pay, forgot to renew etc. If I have a down month I don't want to choose between a working text editor and working spreadsheet software. - I value owning software. Period. I know that if the state of my system doesn't change I can continue to use that version on tht OS for as long as I can make that OS function. That is important to me. - Renting software decreases its value for me as a customer in a way that paying a comparable sum for an upgrade in a similar time frame does not. The analogy I fall back on is a drill from a hardware store. If I am drilling for one project I have no issue renting a drill. But if I am drilling every weekend for a year and maybe a half dozen times a year going forward I want to own the drill. I don't want to go to use a drill and suddenly find it non-functional because I forgot to pay my rental fee. Most software is not a service. It is a tool. If you are providing a tool I will gladly pay to own that version that works on that OS and preferrably is guaranteed to work for 18-24 months after purchase (much like a warranty on a physical tool). After that timeframe, I can continue to use the tool in its current state on its current platform(s) and it should continue to work as long as it "physically" (i.e. no more updates or new features) lasts. If I want new features or continued support, I then have to buy a new tool. To emphasize: I have no issue buying software and paying devs for the work they do. I do, however, heavily object to renting software, especially because most apps are tools and not services. I have dropped several pieces of software over the last 18 months as they moved to the SaaS platform because I wanted to own the tools that they wanted to rent to me.
delhanty 9y ago
This is the bit that pissed me off the most. In their most recent email FastMail wrote: >We're now contacting you again to remind you that from 31st July, 2017 our 'Member' level plans will be discontinued. There is no reference to the fact that it was a life-time plan. Do FastMail think that people are just going to forget that fact? Are we supposed to be that dim?
delhanty 9y ago
TL; DR; FastMail support is arrogant and inflexible. I contacted FastMail support: referencing this thread, explaining my situation, pointing out that the member accounts were lifetime and asking them to switch my (legacy) enhanced account to a (legacy) premier family account and include my father on that. Technically they could do that, as they will still run the family accounts for legacy accounts. But the technical support point blank refused, did not acknowledge that the member plans were lifetime, did not explain how I am supposed to make the existing domain that I have associated with my enhanced work with my father's account once I pay for an unwanted upgrade to a life-time account. The reply is just a cut & paste job from their existing support material: Wed, 17 May 6:02 PM (5 hours 58 minutes ago) +0000 Admin : Shifana Hi, >but you have emailed him to state that you are terminating the agreement. Today FastMail is a service that requires multiple data centres and a 24 hour operations team, together with an ongoing commitment to continuing development, which is why a recurring revenue stream is essential for developing and maintaining FastMail for all of our customers. We understand the inconvenience these changes may cause some customers. To assist existing users that would like to stay with FastMail we are crediting the initial cost of their account and also offering a significant discount on any new plan chosen. So if you were to upgrade to the Basic account for one year from today, with the discount and account credit you are effectively getting FastMail at no charge for another 12 months. That's also with a massively upgraded 2 GB of storage (up from 16 MB). In addition to this you also receive any remaining time until 31 July for free. That means at no cost to you, with even more storage, you can still keep your account active until 31 July 2018. On top of this we are offering 50% of all upgrades made before 31 July 2017. This includes our already discounted multi-year plans which for the Basic plan are $55/ 2 years and $80/ 3 years before any discount is even applied. > so none of the offers of your current accounts work for me. >I would accept is for you to convert my Enhanced account to the Premier Family account Sorry, we could only provide offers to the users who upgrade their member accounts to our new plan. Also existing users cannot upgrade to an older service level. They can only upgrade to a new plan. We are happy to offer a full refund of the cost you paid for your service if you would like to close your account instead of upgrading to one of our current plans >migrate my father's email to that under the domain *. To migrate emails from your member account to your paid account, you can use the “Import & Export” screen in the paid account. However, before you do that, you will first need to create an 'app password' in the member account. To learn how to do that, see the below link: https://www.fastmail.com/help/clients/apppassword.html https://www.fastmail.com/help/clients/apppassword.html Once you have created the app password, login to your paid account and go the 'Import & Export' screeen. You can specify the following details there: IMAP server: imap.fastmail.com Username: your member username Password: your new app password Use SSL: Enable Folders: <choose the desired option depending on whether you wish to merge into existing folders or migrate into a separate migrate folder> 1. Click on "Migrate" to migrate the emails from member account into this account 2. Wait for the migration to complete. You should get a migration status email once its done 3. Make sure all your emails are correctly migrated. Hope that clarifies your question. Let me know if there is anything else that I can help you with. Regards, We are waiting for more information about this ticket. If your problem is resolved, you can close this ticket now by checking the 'Close ticket' box and clicking on the 'Add Update' button. This ticket will be automatically closed if no update is made in 7 days.
muraiki 9y ago
Hmm, this post isn't showing up on any page of HN for me. I guess it's been flagged or moderated into oblivion.

99 points by delhanty 9y ago

I submitted this in relation to a comment that I just made: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14357780 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14357780 edit: removed text duplicated from comment - maybe that was against HN guidelines ...

corobo 9y ago
> removed text duplicated from comment - maybe that was against HN guidelines I don't know if it was against HN guidelines but it looked an absolute mess. One giant block of text.

mrweasel 9y ago

What's the point of selling someone a "lifetime" plan of anything, if you're able to discontinue that plan whenever you feel like it? It's the equivalent of a "lifetime warranty" where you just fail to stipulate that it's the lifetime of the product and not the buyer.

delhanty 9y ago
Indeed! It's like if I'd invested $100 in Amazon at IPO, which is worth around $64K today but Jeff Bezos could now but my stock back for the original $100 as long as he offered me half-price on a new Kindle.
- jpitz 9y ago
  > It's like if I'd invested $100 in Amazon at IPO, which is worth around $64K today but Jeff Bezos could now but my stock back for the original $100 as long as he offered me half-price on a new Kindle. What? No. I don't see how those two things are at all comparable. A lifetime service contract isn't an investment vehicle with variable valuation over time. It is a service contract. Moreover, lifetime service contracts sold for a one time fee should always be regarded with a fiercely critical eye: without recurring revenue, how is the service provider realistically going to be able to provide that service at a profit indefinitely? At some point, they ARE going to drop it, or they've figured out a way to use that service to drive additional profits.
  - delhanty 9y ago
    >Moreover, lifetime service contracts sold for a one time fee should always be regarded with a fiercely critical eye: without recurring revenue, how is the service provider realistically going to be able to provide that service at a profit indefinitely? At some point, they ARE going to drop it, or they've figured out a way to use that service to drive additional profits. The fact that FastMail management at that time made the (very) poor business decision to offer lifetime service for a one time fee is NOT MY PROBLEM. Now, I'll just repeat verbatim what I said in the other thread. > 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. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14357905 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14357905
    - quakenul 9y ago
      It is your problem. Which you can now take to court and likely expect to get some form of compensation, since FastMail is in violation of your agreement. I do realize putting "lifetime" on anything brings heavy emotional weight. But in the end it's simply another contract which, even without any malintent, get broken all the time. If you are the damaged party you can use the legal system to seek damages, if you feel the inflicted damage warrants going through the trouble.
      - delhanty 9y ago
        FastMail and you know it's not worth my time to take them to court for $15. Besides FastMail is in Australia, my father is in the UK and I am in Japan ... Also, would the court order FastMail to continue to offer service to my father, which is what I want. I very much doubt that. FastMail would just be allowed to make the offer of the $15 plus some half-price deal on another plan, which they have done already. On the other hand, companies do seem to rather dislike bad publicity. So when they try and back-out of past agreements and contacts that no longer suit them, it is far more effective to call them out publicly on forums like this one.
- pfarnsworth 9y ago
  Terrible analogy. The email account is not an investment. You can't "sell" your account. Your father used it for years, and now he's getting his money back. And he has alternatives, he can use gmail, etc.
  - deong 9y ago
    Sure, but the law doesn't care whether you sold me something as an investment or not. It cares that you sold me something under terms that were legal in the place where the transaction was made, that the contract was entered into voluntarily by adults with legal authority to make decisions, etc. What you're describing is perfectly true under the terms of service of pretty much any email provider, but that's only because the contracts governing your interaction with those providers are written in a way that makes it true. Fastmail's lifetime plan has a different contract, and under that contract, it's simply not true that you're paying to use the account temporarily. You're paying to have perpetual access to that account as long as the company exists as a legal partner to the contract they signed.
  - delhanty 9y ago
    Actually a lifetime (of my father) service contract is very much like an one particular investment, that is an inflation adjusted annuity. FastMail is no more free to terminate the lifetime service contract while my father still lives than the pension company is free to stop paying his annuity backed pension.
    - pfarnsworth 9y ago
      Another terrible analogy. It's not an annuity at all. You're paying for a service. You pay $15 for "lifetime" email. Your father paid less than $1/year for email service. Stop trying to make it seem like Fastmail owes you money. Quit your bellyaching and move him to gmail.
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 9y ago
    That's not how contracts work. If you buy a vase on ebay for $1 because you think it looks nice, and the current owner agrees to that sale, it's yours. Suppose they then find out it's worth a million. The seller cannot unilaterally reverse the contract and "give you your money back". The vase is yours, they owe you the vase, and you owe them a dollar, that's it. If they wanted to own the vase, they would have to make a contract with its owner (that is, you) under terms that the owner is willing to agree to to transfer ownership.
lorenzhs 9y ago
Your analogy is flawed, that's not what "lifetime warranty" means: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warranty#Lifetime_warranty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warranty#Lifetime_warranty "A lifetime warranty is usually a warranty against defects in materials and workmanship that has no time limit to make a claim, rather than a warranty that the product will perform for the lifetime of the buyer.[6] The actual time that product can be expected to perform is normally determined by the custom for products of its kind used the way the buyer uses it."
- axlprose 9y ago
  But that still works with op casually saying it'll last for a different interpretation of the word "lifetime" than might first be expected, namely a timeframe more closely aligned with the lifetime of the product than the buyer. Secondly, it seems odd to be pedantic about such a detail when the comment itself already defines the details relevant to the analogy, making it a self-contained statement even if you didn't know what warrantees were. An analogy doesn't have to map 1-to-1 to work, as that's what makes it an analogy as opposed to an equivalence. Saying that a dog is as big as a cat doesn't make it a flawed analogy just because the dog doesn't have sharp claws and pointy ears.
quakenul 9y ago
Well, the point is that, as with any deal, you hopefully intended to keep up your end. And if you fail to do so you, you are suspect to legal consequences.

zdw 9y ago

Pretty common - I bought into the TextDrive (became Joyent) lifetime hosting plans, and then got the shaft a few years later, as everyone else who bought into it did: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4391669 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4391669 I can understand if I bought the lifetime plan and you go under or pivot to something entirely different and it ends, but it seems churlish if you're still in the same business and you renege on the first people who believed in you.

faitswulff 9y ago
Is there precedent for a company being sued for something similar? Seems like false advertising to me.
- yborg 9y ago
  As pointed out elsewhere in thread, it is, and you can then incur the legal costs of recovering your $50 or whatever the "lifetime" fee was. If the company wasn't completely retarded about it, even a class action with attorney's fees is probably not going to be that costly. For the company doing this, it's essentially a promotional cost. Doing it in such a way that generates negative PR later seems to make the whole thing a waste of time, but that's the calculus that a company does. Seems much smarter to me to make these things "free for x months/years" etc. and at least cap your costs if this approach is the best way to get signups.
dave84 9y ago
I was the same, but I had moved everything to a VPS before they cancelled the plan because it was so slow. I seem to remember Textdrive splitting out from Joyent and attempting to honor the lifetime plans, but it didn't last.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
wlesieutre 9y ago
Yeah, I see a lot of VPN services advertising "lifetime membership" for like $30 on StackSocial. I'll pay more than that for a 1 year membership somewhere else just because I anticipate it still existing 6 months from now.

paulgb 9y ago

After seeing everyone rave about FastMail in the other thread I signed up for the demo. I've been looking to move a domain I have off of G Suite and it seemed like the best option. Now I'm having second thoughts, if this is how they treat paying customers.

fpoling 9y ago
I have Gmail for domains from the time when it was free for 5 users. Surprisingly Google keeps that working even if I have not paid them anything.
- StavrosK 9y ago
  I have one of those too, and I switched to Fastmail, which is much better. At the $4/mo I pay for it, it's a much better value than the free Gmail.
- pyre 9y ago
  Same here. I signed up for Google Apps for Domains, and it keeps on chugging, even though that program is no longer.
- j_s 9y ago
  It used to be free for more than 5 users, I believe the limit was decreased gradually. I have one account with 20 free users and I vaguely recollect hearing about it being free for 50 users, possibly even 100's. As recently as 3 years ago you could still sign up for 1 user. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4885538 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4885538 > If you create a new Apps account going through the App Engine Admin Console you'll still be able to create a Standard Apps account for free but you'll only be able to get 1 user per account rather than the 10 you get today. But per the referenced Google Groups discussion that has been shutdown sometime before January 2015. > You'll now have to pay for a Google Apps account, there's no more freebie "1 user per account" provision.
delhanty 9y ago
As the submitter, their general service is good enough. Sometimes their server seems slow from here in Japan. Also, their support staff sometime seem complacent due to lack of competition. But it will probably work out for you if you go for it. I am pissed off that they want to renege on our agreement. One concrete negative point for me: the current plans have a fixed price per user and are not very flexible if the users have very different use levels. (My father is a very light user, whereas I am heavy user.) Some of the legacy plans - family and business were more flexible in his regard, but they are not offered to new signups.

michaelbuckbee 9y ago

With respect to SAAS services, I treat lifeTime plans as maybe even a step _below_ free plans in terms of longevity. They typically signal to me that the service is in some kind of bad financial state (and hoping to prop things up with an influx of one-time payments). On the part of the providers, they attract pathologically bad customers. Lifetime memberships set up all kinds of weird incredibly hard to fulfill expectations. It's a truism in SAAS community that someone paying $5/mo will be 10x the support and onboarding nightmare of someone willing to pay $50/mo. All that being said, Fastmail has moved aggressively away from them to the extent that I (as a paying Fastmail customer for the last 3 years) never even knew they existed. And while I think they're a bad idea, I do think that a promise is a promise and if they offered them they should abide by them.

delhanty 9y ago
As the submitter, I agree with all this. Sure from, FastMail's point of view my father is a bad customer. Not that he's even aware who FastMail are though ... But FastMail freely chose to make the poor business decision to offer that lifetime service for a one-time payment, and I freely chose to purchase that service for my father. We had an agreement. Now I would like them to honour that agreement.
brongondwana 9y ago
Thanks for this response - and sorry I didn't reply to anything last night, I'd just got home from a mad day getting my kids prepared for their mid-year concert and then watching all 4 hours of it (every ensemble has to show what they've learned!) so went to bed early - I didn't see this until today Melbourne time. On the topic of support - one thing that's hard for FastMail is that with customers who are paying every month/year/whatever, we have a billing contact which gives us a way to get in touch when their account gets locked. Non-paying accounts are just as likely to have their credentials stolen and used for spam, but they are even _more_ costly to re-identify the owner. Refusing to try to identify the owner and just leaving locked accounts locked would get us just as much bad press as this, and be much worse for the affected users - since there would be no warning period before losing the account. The Member service was always intended to be the same as Guest, but allow commercial use and not have ads. We decided many years ago that the ads business was not for us (it's part of why we left Opera, they were focusing more on the advertising business, and we wanted no part of it.) We didn't actually use the term "lifetime", we said "one-time payment". I know it sounds like weasel words - but we chose to shut both Guest and Member down at the same time because they are basically the same. That payment was supposed to offset advertising revenue - it certainly doesn't offset the cost of keeping things deliverable in today's world where email accounts have become a really important part of people's online identities. Email account theft has become the way to send spam, as domain reputation makes it much easier to send through stolen accounts than just blast SMTP directly. So we appear to be pretty horrible to the people who don't value their service enough to pay US$3/month for it, but as you noted - it became a choice between having our paying customers keep subsidising the support costs of stopping spam through those stolen non-paying accounts, or shutting them down and making our sending addresses more trustworthy for those willing to pay.

sarreph 9y ago

You. Cannot. Trust. "Lifetime". Guarantees. ...Because you cannot trust the future of any business.

dustinblake 9y ago
Sure, a business can cease to operate—that's a risk that seems pretty clear cut and understandable. Or, if the business completely changes and doesn't offer that type of product or service anymore. If the lifetime offer was for unlimited (one at a time) VHS borrowing at the neighborhood video rental, and then the store shifted to only offering DVDs, or (perhaps better) streaming, the fact that there are no longer any VHS tapes to borrow makes sense. But this is a case of an email company (likely profitable) that still offers email accounts. It's likely that the only difference between the product that they're taking away and current offerings is that the 'lifetime' accounts have FAR lower quotas and features offered. The cost of computing, storage and bandwidth trend downward over time. No new lifetime accounts are being created, so they've got a fixed quantity of lower-usage level accounts. They can already forecast the maximum technical cost for these over the next 10/20/30/40 years. Now these accounts may have high costs in terms of providing customer support, and that would be unpredictable, and potentially costly. I doubt anyone would fault Fastmail for simply stating that outside of a few designated problems/issues (either on their side or the most important) that no technical support would be provided for these accounts. If they wanted to be nice, they might offer that non-crucial support issues could be handled at the lowest tier/priority. That would be a sensible way to move forward.

kmfrk 9y ago

Reminded of this from "The Second Coming of Steve Jobs": "Just fuck 'em" became one of Steve's favorite lines. When he had taken over, he had inherited a program called SOS Apple, which let people sign a contract for unlimited customer support over the telephone for a lifetime. It was a bad financial move for Apple. Steve said to shut it down. What about the customers who have a contractual obligation? Jeff asked. "Just fuck 'em," Steve said. The Federal Trade Commission sued Apple over the issue. Apple lost.

delhanty 9y ago
It was probably still worth it for Apple though to be able to dump the unlimited commitments ... ? Facebook, LinkedIn etc. have the same playbook when they play fast and loose with the privacy rules with respect to spamming contact lists. Any penalty is tiny compared with the gain. I'm sure that's FastMail's current management's thinking in my case.
- jhall1468 9y ago
  > Facebook, LinkedIn etc. have the same playbook when they play fast and loose with the privacy rules with respect to spamming contact lists. Any penalty is tiny compared with the gain. Not even close to the same thing. Apple agreed to a contract to provide unlimited support. Facebook/LinkedIn privacy policies explicitly state they can change them with notice, and they do.
  - delhanty 9y ago
    This is do with the violation of EXISTING policies. LinkedIn in particular paid $13 million in 2015 to settle a class action lawsuit about their slightly misleading "Add Connections" feature. http://fortune.com/2015/10/05/linkedin-class-action/ http://fortune.com/2015/10/05/linkedin-class-action/ IMO $13 million was a small price to pay compared with the $26.2 billion Microsoft paid to acquire LinkedIn: https://www.wsj.com/articles/microsoft-to-acquire-linkedin-in-deal-valued-at-26-2-billion-1465821523 https://www.wsj.com/articles/microsoft-to-acquire-linkedin-i...

tiatia 9y ago

I mean, this is the case with every "life time" plan. Valid until the company goes bankrupt or has financial issues or changes it mind. Once there were life time "all you can fly" airplane passes for US$ 100k.

carussell 9y ago
This is not a case of someone going out of business. This is a case of a healthy business not holding up their end of a purchase.
- tiatia 9y ago
  "..or changes it mind."
  - carussell 9y ago
    I don't see what you're getting at. That matches exactly the "not holding up their end" that I mentioned. What's the problem?
    - tiatia 9y ago
      You are irrational expecting any other outcome.

yladiz 9y ago

To those that don't want to read the email that was linked here, here are links to FastMail help that talk about their discontinuation of the Member and Guest plans: https://www.fastmail.com/help/account/member.html https://www.fastmail.com/help/account/member.html https://www.fastmail.com/help/account/guest.html https://www.fastmail.com/help/account/guest.html Of course it sucks if you use this plan, but I think that giving nearly 6 months of notice after allowing you to use a plan for nearly 8 years after it was discontinued is generous. I think what they're offering, which is 50% off any upgrades and a credit equal to the amount they originally paid ($15) is a good gesture as well, and in the thread it seems they would be okay with refunding the $15 to those that aren't okay with this.

delhanty 9y ago
>it seems they would be okay with refunding the $15 to those that aren't okay with this. To that I'll quote what zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC posted just now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14358874 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14358874 >Now, I don't know the details of the contract, but generally, the value this is about is not $15. The value is the damage caused by them failing to fulfill their contracts, which would be the discounted value of the market price of all future payments needed to replace their failure to perform. >There is no general legal option for one party to a contract to simply pull out and give you back your money. They owe you what they promised in the contract, and if they don't deliver, they are liable for the damage that that causes for you.
- yladiz 9y ago
  Can you link to or post the actual contract from when you signed up? Without seeing this contract what you're saying is without context.

infogulch 9y ago

Monthly service costs / subscriptions are a feature. This happens all the time with mobile apps, for example. You find a nice new shiny todo app that costs $5 and invest heavily in it, lo and behold, 6 months later the 2k people that bought it isn't enough to sustain the creator indefinitely and it dies a slow and neglectful death. But if just 500 of those people paid $5/mo that would be much more likely for the developer to continue supporting it. When I'm looking for something that I expect to invest in and rely on for a long time, "has a paid subscription" becomes an important consideration when evaluating different options.

kartickv 9y ago
I'm building a camera app. Would you suggest I charge annually, instead of one-time? None of the other camera apps I've used has a subscription. Would you pay via a subscription?
- mcgrath_sh 9y ago
  Not the person you replied to, but I have pretty strong feelings on this so I am going to reply. I have no issue paying for apps/software. My iPhone homescreen is made up almost entirely of paid apps or apps for services I pay for. Some of these apps cost $10-20 and I happily pay that every 18-24 months for a new version. I use Drafts so much that I would gladly pay up to $40 every 18-24 months as an outright purchase for it. That being said... if Drafts went to a subscription model for $5 a year, I would stop using it and find an alternative. Most apps are not services. Full stop. They are apps. Outside of the apps tied to a service (i.e. Dropbox, NewsBlur) I would find alternatives to every one of my paid apps if they went to a subscription model, even if that subscription was cheaper than buying a new version in a similar timeframe. I have this stance for multiple reasons: - I have subscription fatigue. I don't want to start managing dozens to use my computer/phone. - I don't want to wake up one morning and find out a utility app isn't working because I didn't pay, forgot to renew etc. If I have a down month I don't want to choose between a working text editor and working spreadsheet software. - I value owning software. Period. I know that if the state of my system doesn't change I can continue to use that version on tht OS for as long as I can make that OS function. That is important to me. - Renting software decreases its value for me as a customer in a way that paying a comparable sum for an upgrade in a similar time frame does not. The analogy I fall back on is a drill from a hardware store. If I am drilling for one project I have no issue renting a drill. But if I am drilling every weekend for a year and maybe a half dozen times a year going forward I want to own the drill. I don't want to go to use a drill and suddenly find it non-functional because I forgot to pay my rental fee. Most software is not a service. It is a tool. If you are providing a tool I will gladly pay to own that version that works on that OS and preferrably is guaranteed to work for 18-24 months after purchase (much like a warranty on a physical tool). After that timeframe, I can continue to use the tool in its current state on its current platform(s) and it should continue to work as long as it "physically" (i.e. no more updates or new features) lasts. If I want new features or continued support, I then have to buy a new tool. To emphasize: I have no issue buying software and paying devs for the work they do. I do, however, heavily object to renting software, especially because most apps are tools and not services. I have dropped several pieces of software over the last 18 months as they moved to the SaaS platform because I wanted to own the tools that they wanted to rent to me.

delhanty 9y ago

This is the bit that pissed me off the most. In their most recent email FastMail wrote: >We're now contacting you again to remind you that from 31st July, 2017 our 'Member' level plans will be discontinued. There is no reference to the fact that it was a life-time plan. Do FastMail think that people are just going to forget that fact? Are we supposed to be that dim?

delhanty 9y ago

TL; DR; FastMail support is arrogant and inflexible. I contacted FastMail support: referencing this thread, explaining my situation, pointing out that the member accounts were lifetime and asking them to switch my (legacy) enhanced account to a (legacy) premier family account and include my father on that. Technically they could do that, as they will still run the family accounts for legacy accounts. But the technical support point blank refused, did not acknowledge that the member plans were lifetime, did not explain how I am supposed to make the existing domain that I have associated with my enhanced work with my father's account once I pay for an unwanted upgrade to a life-time account. The reply is just a cut & paste job from their existing support material: Wed, 17 May 6:02 PM (5 hours 58 minutes ago) +0000 Admin : Shifana Hi, >but you have emailed him to state that you are terminating the agreement. Today FastMail is a service that requires multiple data centres and a 24 hour operations team, together with an ongoing commitment to continuing development, which is why a recurring revenue stream is essential for developing and maintaining FastMail for all of our customers. We understand the inconvenience these changes may cause some customers. To assist existing users that would like to stay with FastMail we are crediting the initial cost of their account and also offering a significant discount on any new plan chosen. So if you were to upgrade to the Basic account for one year from today, with the discount and account credit you are effectively getting FastMail at no charge for another 12 months. That's also with a massively upgraded 2 GB of storage (up from 16 MB). In addition to this you also receive any remaining time until 31 July for free. That means at no cost to you, with even more storage, you can still keep your account active until 31 July 2018. On top of this we are offering 50% of all upgrades made before 31 July 2017. This includes our already discounted multi-year plans which for the Basic plan are $55/ 2 years and $80/ 3 years before any discount is even applied. > so none of the offers of your current accounts work for me. >I would accept is for you to convert my Enhanced account to the Premier Family account Sorry, we could only provide offers to the users who upgrade their member accounts to our new plan. Also existing users cannot upgrade to an older service level. They can only upgrade to a new plan. We are happy to offer a full refund of the cost you paid for your service if you would like to close your account instead of upgrading to one of our current plans >migrate my father's email to that under the domain *. To migrate emails from your member account to your paid account, you can use the “Import & Export” screen in the paid account. However, before you do that, you will first need to create an 'app password' in the member account. To learn how to do that, see the below link: https://www.fastmail.com/help/clients/apppassword.html https://www.fastmail.com/help/clients/apppassword.html Once you have created the app password, login to your paid account and go the 'Import & Export' screeen. You can specify the following details there: IMAP server: imap.fastmail.com Username: your member username Password: your new app password Use SSL: Enable Folders: <choose the desired option depending on whether you wish to merge into existing folders or migrate into a separate migrate folder> 1. Click on "Migrate" to migrate the emails from member account into this account 2. Wait for the migration to complete. You should get a migration status email once its done 3. Make sure all your emails are correctly migrated. Hope that clarifies your question. Let me know if there is anything else that I can help you with. Regards, We are waiting for more information about this ticket. If your problem is resolved, you can close this ticket now by checking the 'Close ticket' box and clicking on the 'Add Update' button. This ticket will be automatically closed if no update is made in 7 days.

muraiki 9y ago

Hmm, this post isn't showing up on any page of HN for me. I guess it's been flagged or moderated into oblivion.